Slashdot Mirror
Invading Privacy for School Credit
veryloco writes "Students in Prof. Avi Rubin's Security and Privacy course at the Johns Hopkins University completed a project where they gathered as much public data on residents of Baltimore City as possible. One interesting fact was that 50 deceased persons voted in the last election. Read on to find out what other interesting tidbits were discovered."
You know what that means... Zombies!!!
Sorry this is off topic but is anyone else enamored with the way IHT formats their articles?
Did the dead people vote democratic or republican.
Let the meltdown begin!
But how many of them are still posting to Slashdot?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Is that next to Gotham City?
I think having records available to the public is a good thing, especially when it comes to the government. So how do we fix potential problems without letting the government operate in secrecy, which is what it always tends to like more? How do we have records available to the public, and prevent them from ending up in the hands of aggregators?
At the price of Hopkins tuition, maybe this isn't the best "HOWTO" for a course there ;)
timothy
(lapsed member of the JHU alumni association, thanks to high-school summer courses at CTY)
50 deceased persons voted in the last election
Ah, but did they die right around election time. Could they have sent in an absentee ballot before they died? Or did they die on election day after they voted? Not having all the info can lead to misleading ideas in our overactive imaginations.
Or, it could be like the earlier post... zombies or ghosts.
Evolution or ID?
I want to know who they voted for.
I'll bet it wasn't Nader.
"We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal."
There is a lot of public data about everyone. Basically, any transaction you do with a government office or agency is public data. If someone views that public data, how are they invading your privacy?
The previous comment is purposely vague and generalized, but all of the facts are completely true.
I might actually spend some time getting (or trying to get) and cross-referencing deaths and voting records. Seems like a worthwhile project to me.
1500 dead people were registered to vote. But did they join those records on SSN or some other unique identifier? There might be some cases of people with the same name, right?
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
I bet if they had done this in Chicago, the number would be above 5,000 dead voting people. And, many of them would have voted at least twice.
Seriously, Chicago does have this problem and every attempt to cleanse the voting roles of dead voters is shot down as being discriminatory against minorities.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Speak truth to power.
The "privacy battle" was over long ago. This article just shows how slow senators can be in figuring stuff out. Sadly no legislation is ever going to put the horse back in the barn. Granted, things like public offices handing over entire databases burned to CD MIGHT (depending on the data) be preventable. However as anyone who comes to slashdot should know, social engineering works great.
So what is the solution? Just prepare for your identity theft now, keep good records and generally don't be a jerk to those you post about and email. Because its all out there.
That's what I call applied privacy to dig into other people's personal information. I wonder who pays for this "study"? Don't tell me it is us tax payers.
Rubin has been one of the people screaming the past few years about how easy the elections would be to hack. Now it seems that he's widened his scope, showing how much of a joke is any attempt at precise counting of so many people.
We need election laws that guarantee the margin of victory is larger than the sampling error. In fact, we need a law that requires the office get at least a simple majority (50%) of the eligible voters, or it goes unfilled. With so few eligible voters actually voting, that would force districts to hold runoffs, and parties to get out the vote. Or just get outnumbered by the representatives from districts which do turn out. Put a little competition into our rotten voting system, and cut out the deadwood.
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make install -not war
I've thought, and I'm interested in (constructive) comments, that a three tiered system should be used. The 'green' level, is basically that which any person can get freely, which should be equivalent to that info one can get just by, let's say, seeing you in the street. Basic physical parameters. If a person chooses, they can make other information 'green' such as name and age, etc.
Yellow would be freely available to law enforcement, and to others only with express permision from the individual. This should include credit information, address, ssn, ....city hall sort of stuff.
Red would be available to law enforcement without permission only by court order, or with permission from the individual. This would include things like phone records, or other information that currently requires a supoena.
An individual can make information more or less private for the general public (i.e. I can decide that no one shold really know that I am 6'2 with brown hair.) or more available (i.e. I live here, come visit me!). I think an auditing system should be built in, tracking access, informing an individual of the identity of people accessing their information.
Auditing would require a central repository of information, which would then be the only source of the info, and that could be a problem, with privacy/security of information. However, the rest really only requires a change in legislation, but doesn't really provide a mechanism for enforcement or knowing if someone is invading your privacy.
What do you think?
This article appears in the NY Times today http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/18/technology/18dat a.html?
and the primary focus of the article is on how easy it is to steal identities on line using legal methods and less than $50.
The slashdot title implies that a college course was used to invade the privacy of Baltimore individuals. This is most misleading. While this is nothing new to most readers here, the significant thing is that this article is in a mainstream media publication and may help to strengthen some of the right to privacy laws that are currently under the gun.
once again proves that geek security is compromized by cleavage or the promise that someone likes you.
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
Bart: "Oh my God...the dead have risen and they're voting Republican!"
The dead have risen, and they're voting Republican!
That's the kind of thing that makes you proud of being an American.
diegoT
Where's that? Is it near Baltimore?
I'd be curious to see how many Zombies we have here.
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
I though that if it could be proven that election fraud existed in any manner all the votes of that district needed to be thrown out.
Privacy for the rest of us.
The only benefit of openness comes with elected officials, government appointees, government contracts, campaign financing etc being available to us.
Everyone else deserves privacy.
Nixon!!
Nah, they're usually too stoned to vote. Although if anyone named Garcia ran, he'd probably win.
It's actually true, the city has more then just crabs, heroin, and hospitals! Not mention syphilis and a yearly contender for US murder capital. Now they are a hot spot for identity theft, yippee! Its still better then moving to Virginia.
Ehh...this is the life we chose.
I'd say that the opposite is true - this information is in the public domain, and the students were able to demonstrate how easy it is to access and collate, thus stimulating debate (look, we're having a real debate, on Slashdot!).
Invasions of privacy, in my mind, constitute one of two things. 1) Attempting to make someone reveal personal information about themselves that they may not want to, or 2) revealing data on someone else that you have not been given permission to reveal.
While some of the original sources of the data that the students used could have invaded privacy to get the data, by using data already in the public domain the students weren't invading privacy.
If they'd acted illegally or persuaded someone to breach someone else's privacy as part of the project, that would be another thing, but the students weren't allowed to do that as part of this project.
This reminds me a news item I saw/read about 1-2 years ago where a student wanted to see if he could map out the U.S.'s infratructure given public records/information. He was extremely successful in that he mapped out whole power grids, telecom lines, subways, etc and overlayed them all. Much to his dismay, he was held from presenting this (his doctorate thesis, I believe) by the Feds who worried that terrorists would want to get their hands on the info.
And if you're a terrorist, that makes sense; someone else has already done the work for you and provided additional instructions on how to do so. On the other hand, this poor guy can't complete his work. And all he did was what any Tom, Dick, or Harry could've done.
We need responsibility and liability. Those that provide public records need to be responsible for security and cleansing of data. Those that aggregate and disseminate these records for profit need to be liable and responsible for security. If any of these institutions are derelict in their duties, they must be 100% responsible for cleaning up the mess and paying off the debts. I suspect this will never happen, as industry will lobby against it, and government NEVER makes itself liable for any failings. And potential legislations will surely absolve the government from liability. If no one can be found responsible and liable for damages they will have no reason to fix things.
Privacy vs. openness: A data dilemma in U.S.
By Tom Zeller Jr. The New York Times
WEDNESDAY, MAY 18, 2005
BALTIMORE Ted Stevens wanted to know just how much the Internet has turned private lives into open books. So the U.S. senator, a Republican from Alaska and the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, instructed his staff to steal his identity.
"I regret to say they were successful," the senator reported at a hearing he held last week on data theft.
His staff, Stevens reported, came back not just with digital breadcrumbs on the senator, but also with insights on his daughter's rental property and some of the comings and goings of his son, a student in California. "My staff provided me with information they got from a series of places," he said. "For $65, they were told, they could get my Social Security number."
That would not surprise 41 graduate students in a computer security course at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, who, with $15 less than that, became mini data brokers themselves over the last semester.
Working with a budget of $50 and a strict requirement to use only legal, public sources of information, groups of three to four students set out to vacuum up not just tidbits on individuals, but whole databases - death records, property tax information, campaign donations, occupational license registries - on citizens of Baltimore. They then cleaned and linked the databases they had collected, making it possible to enter a single name and generate multiple layers of information on individuals.
The Johns Hopkins students demonstrated - as has a growing chorus of privacy advocates around the United States - that there is plenty of information to be had on individuals without ever buying it (or stealing it) from big database companies like ChoicePoint and LexisNexis. And as concerns over data security mount, the inherent conflicts between a desire for convenience, openness and access to public records on the one hand, and for personal privacy on the other, are beginning to show.
The Johns Hopkins project was conceived by Avi Rubin, a professor of computer science and the technical director of Johns Hopkins's Information Security Institute. Rubin has used his graduate courses in the past to expose weaknesses in electronic voting technology, digital car keys and other byproducts of a society that is increasingly dependent on computers, networks and software.
"My expectations were that they would be able to find a lot of information, and in fact they did," Rubin said.
In some instances, students visited local government offices and filed official requests for the data - or simply "asked nicely" - sometimes receiving whole databases burned onto a CD.
In other cases, they wrote special computer scripts, which they used to slurp up whole databases from online sources like Maryland's registry of occupational licenses (barbers, architects, plumbers), or from free commercial address databases.
"I think what this professor and students have done is a powerful object lesson in just how much information there is to be found about most of us online," said Beth Givens, the director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse in San Diego, "and how difficult it is, how impossible it is, to control what's done with our information."
David Bloys, a private investigator in Texas, has helped craft a bill now pending in the state legislature there that would prohibit the bulk transfer and display over the Internet of documents filed with local governments.
There are real dangers involved, Bloys said, when such information "migrates from practical obscurity inside the four walls of the courthouse to widespread dissemination, aggregation and export across the world via the Internet." However convenient online access made things for legitimate users, the information is equally convenient for "stalkers, terrorists and identity thieves," Bloys said.
The bill, which was introduced in Austin by Representative Carl Isett, a Rep
Every one is completely digitized execept the 30 million illegal immigrants.
Not that Ted, the one from Alaska. I wonder how many pages of info his staff turned up in their identity theft exercise about his nose picking?
a sp
http://www.jsonline.com/news/president/0213notes.
"If some citizen is concerned about dead people remaining registered to vote, he can simply obtain the database of deaths and the voter registration database and cross-correlate," said Joshua Mason,
Umm, you know, maybe the government should do that as part of the electoral process? If felons can be removed from voting lists, so can dead people.
It is pretty rough.
/. Username I was able to get the following all from public sources in about 15 minutes.
For instance, with nothing more then a
Name
Address
Phone number
Resume
Wifes name
Mothers name
Kids names (well he only had 1 daughter)
Employer name and address
Of course part of this problem is what people post on the internet. After finding out his name, his webpage exposed wifes, kid , mother, resume, and employer.
Your identity really is valuable, stop posting personal shit on the intraweb IT IS NOT SAFE!
You need to fix the voting process, not hide public data from the public.
I understand you overall point, I disagree with you with respect to cemetery records. If they were readily available, it would (presumably) be easier for those in charge of voting to prevent the dead from voting than it would be for someone to use that dead person's name to vote.
Additionally, those of us interested in genealogy find our research much easier where cemetery records are available.
Being dead is one state of health that should not be considered private. :)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Ok, seriously though, certainly there are at least some errors in each database. Right, we'd like to think otherwise, but it happens. Credit reports notoriously have mistakes. How many of these supposedly dead people might not really be dead?
The ballot is not a sample. An election is not a poll. That is as it should be.
If you don't care enough to vote, you don't matter.
And government would work so very well with offices going unfilled wherever apathetic people live or the vote is split 3 ways. It would be SO LOVELY to have the country run by 2 congressmen and a senator from Wisconsin.
...than forcing the apathetic to randomly select our leaders!
MORE WONDERFULLY STUPID IDEAS!
I think this little test should be run in every state. First, let's find out just how many deceased people voted. Find out when they voted, find out their official date of death. If the vote came before their death date listed on the certificate, it's a valid vote. If not, vote stricken down.
To add to this, Every voter should be confirmed as a valid vote by linking with their SSN. There's only so many SSN's out and active today, and if the vote tally goes over the amount of SSNs available, you know something is wrong there as well.
Once an SSN has been recorded as having voted, that number is no longer allowed to be used anywhere else for the purpose of voting for that particular election. Any and all votes should also require other forms of identification, such as your Driver's License, Military ID, Gov't Id, etc. (No picture on credit card BS, anyone can get that.)
And to top that off, get rid of the Electoral College. (Oh, look, I've got a degree in rigging elections!) The whole voting system should not go by who gets the most electoral votes, it should be the TRUE majority of the population that should count in an election, such as it was done 150-200 years ago.
Now on the issue of privacy, unfortunately there are too many holes in the FOIA (Freedom Of Information Act for the legally-unaware) that allow for this kind of information to be gathered, not to mention anyone with enough money, looks, brains, or combination of either/all, could most likely obtain the information from some corrupt individual within an organization, for a nominal fee. (Money, blowjob, massage, whatever, you get the point)
The fact of the matter is that until the people themselves wake up (Seeing as most of the majority of the population, as Sum 41 put it, 'We're hopelessly blissful and blind') and realize that they're being anally raped, without lube, with a dildo double the size of Thor, inserted SIDEWAYS, this situation is not going to change. In fact, it will become easier for BS like this to happen as the technology progresses and people become smarter, or dumber as the case may be for certain issues. Until this happens (and pray to whatever invisible being you worship that it happens soon,) we're completely SOL.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Milwaukee, WI has become a much for voter fraud than Chicago. In the last Presidential election, there was:
- over 5600 invalid address on the rolls (including vacant lots)
- 1200 votes from invalid addresses
- 100 votes where people voted twice, or used fake names, false addresses or the names of
dead people
- 278 felons illegally voted
- tire slashing of vehicles meant to bring people to the polls
And this is just the city of Milwaukee. And this is just the proven problems. And this is a state that had the narrowest margin on the presidential race in the county.
Here is a article from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal talking about the problems and the various suggestions for fixing it.
You may ask why. This came about after a few cases of abused women trying to flee husbands and starting a new life in another part of the country, but being found and battered by their former husbands. When the media found out that the former husbands had gotten the new address of their former wifes from public offices, we had a sensible political reaction.
But then, I live in a european country. In Europe we have a very different attitude to, and better laws on the treatment of personal information compared to the US.
Where I live now, anyone and their mom's dog can look up the tax records of my property. This database is searchable by either name or address and returns how much a given property has been accessed for (plus the five year history), how much the current taxes are, a picture of the property (which is often the front of the house), and sometimes the floorplan of the house. Not only would I never provide this information to any of my friends (much less a stranger), but I'd consider it rude if they were to ask.
Another invasive database, which has been mentioned several times here on Slashdot, is Fundrace. I work very hard to make sure that my political views are not know at the workplace. However Fundrace allows anyone to search by name or address who gave how much to a given political candidate or party. I understand the value of tracking political donations, I really do. Should my employees or peers have the capability to track me specifically? It somewhat defeats the point of the secret ballot. I'd love to contribute money to those candidates which I support, but I won't.
My colleagues don't need to know how much I make, pay in taxes, or contribute to a given political organization. At best the information simply satisfies some misplaced curiosity, but more likely this information is used to judge (often incorrectly) without any opportunity for a rebuttal or explanation on my part.
This is an outrageous example of governmental negligence. Instead of properly "wait"ing, SIGCHLD pleas from dying children are being callously ignored by government officials. They are wholly responsible for the hordes of bloodthirsty zombies roaming the streets of Baltimore and terrorizing the voting booths!
I hate it so much, that I immediatly clicked back, without reading a single word, just to descend it into flame here.
That's right. The Democrats try to add fraudulent voters to the roles. The Republicans, on the other hand, are busy trying to keep fraudulent voters off the roles.
Redundancy is good And also good.
Sorry. Just found a major bug in the IHT format (at least when viewing in Firefox on Windows). To see what I mean, do the following:
1. Left-click and hold to select some text in, say, the middle column.
2. Drag down to select all of the column and keep going past the bottom of the frame.
3. Watch the weirdness which results in the article scrolling up into oblivion.
4. If you are the web designer for IHT, pray that your boss isn't reading this post.
50 deceased persons? The dead have risen and are voting republican!
What a wonderfully typical Anonymous stupid Coward. If you don't vote, you don't get represented. Instead of now, where if you don't vote, you get represented by your neighbors' choice. Which lets people off the hook, with consequences too easily hidden by the media. If you had less representation in proportion to your representation of yourself at the polls, the other representatives would take advantage of you in the full government body. Which you could correct, merely by showing up at the polls. Or, get what you really deserve. If only Wisconsiners show up to vote, they should be the ones making the decisions. Actually, that would more likely be Minnesotans or Mainers, the leaders in 2000 turnout, though Wisconsin was #3.
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make install -not war
Two solutions. One stop using the Social Security number for ID purposes.
Does the cable company, gas company, electric, wireless phone company NEED that? No. They are worried about losing money if I skip town. Fix that with a large deposit and usage blocks. I just read the privacy statement that came with my Bill yesterday (Time Warner)They say they have my Social Security number and later they mention they keep records for 15 years! That means my social security number is on file in a database for at least that long.
A simpler solution to ID theft involves those three main credit bureaus. At this time in my life, I don't need credit I don't use credit. No one should be accessing my credit report. If they do, I need to give permission. I fill out a credit application.... you have 24 hours to access it with this code.
Public court records... The actions of my neighbors affect me and the value of my property. There is no need for some records to become or stay public, especially if they have dismissed or paid in the idea of civil cases. It is to the publics benefit to include how much you paid for your house (tax reasons) or if you are a child predator but not if you had a judgment and paid it off. That really only effects me and my future creditor, which is in my credit report...see above.
Not anymore. Read privacy agreements on most credit cards, banks, and other 3rd parties. Usually somewhere down in the fine print is a statement that allows the use of your information by the 3rd party's company and "their affiliates" - meaning anyone that wants to buy the information from them.
A good example of this is Wells Fargo - whenever you open an account with them, their agreement gives them a right to share your data unless you mail some form off. By default - your information is for sale.
Taking information off the internet, like the bill (that was introduced into the Senate), won't do much good to stop the flow of information, restricting businesses' right to sell and use your information will (but that is not likely to happen). Besides, the majority of ID theft happens offline anyways, the net just makes it easier...
There is always a frontier where there is an open and willing mind
From TFA:
. . . whose group discovered 1,500 dead people who were also listed as active registered voters. Fifty of those dead people somehow voted in the last election.
The 1500 are the ones you want to be concerned about, because if they're not removed from the rolls, their votes can be used fraudulently in the next election. The 50 are not necessarily a problem at all. This course was taken over the course of the last semester. I'm surprised it hasn't occurred to anyone that:
Most of those 50 dead people voted in the last election because they were alive during the last election. They probably died during the months following that. People do die, y'know.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
public records are just that..public, not private.
sheesh.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"Oh no, the dead have risen and they're voting Republican." -- Lisa Simpson
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
allow mail in voting like Oregon does.
Oregon has the highest voter response in the nation.
I love it, it allows me to sit down and think and time for research.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Considering how bad crime is in Baltimore, perhaps we could explain it by showing that the voters were killed immediately after pulling the lever.
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
I am a vegitarian zombie, you insensitive clod!
Graaainnnnsss, GRAIINNSssss
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I didn't vote in 2000, due to being in college. Figuring that Gore would win Massachusetts handily (where I lived and where I was in college) and not knowing about local issues where I was registered, I didn't feel any guilt over the issue.
That being said, the Massachusetts voter rolls will show that I voted. Why? My father and I have the same name (he's the third, I'm the fourth) and after giving the info to the lady at the poll, he looked at the list and saw the lady marked off my name rather than his.
That being said, I can very easily imagine the reverse result accounting for 50 votes: people who have the same or similar name to someone who died being incorrectly marked off.
I thought that our public duty to vote ended once you died, but I stand corrected.
-Michael, AKA Frankie.
This information float is just a reflection of how's U.S. homeland security.
:P
And about the 30 mi immigrants? Well, they run the basis of America. Only a small percentage live in poverty, the rest of them clean our houses, delivery our pizzas and do all that "nasty" job that your mom wouldn't be pride at all.
If you can find a deceased person voting, you can find a false SSN number, you can track immigrants, etc. But this can't be done, it's a reality: America needs them.
And public service is and will never be prepared to deal with homeland security issues, that's the reason terrorists came here and bombed NY.
This crappy administration is worried about sending our boys to be killed in Iraq because of their Oil companies and after their era is gone, we'll be the fucked up ones! Oh yeah, and Bush will build him a nice bunker to protect from future attacks!
If you want to get any laws changed or amended, the class could have looked up the federal, state, and local govt officials information. This would have highlighted the point. Either way, could we see exactly how they got this info so we can reproduce it for ourselves and contact the various entities about our own info? Is the class work itself public information?
I should be able to find out every time my records (at least the important ones) are accessed, and by whom. If I can't be anonymous, then the people investigating me shouldn't be either.
Well, how about making reporting to the polling booth mandatory, but make the act of voting voluntary?
I believe there are Western nations that do this already.
Alternately, put an option on the ballot for "I just showed up because I have to. I am uninformed and/or not impressed with my options"
Then, if a certain percentage of the electorate shows up and either doesn't vote or leaves a "I care not" mark on their ballot, the election should be deemed worthless.
A lot of seniors vote using absentee ballots (from nursing homes, particularly) months before the elections, and it is not uncommon for many of them to die before all ballots are counted.
actually, contrary to what you believe, efax are actually not spammers at all.
efax is a compnay with an interesting business model. they basically give you a phone number to recieve faxes. Usually this would be some sort of 1 800 number. now when you send a fax to the number, efax translates the fax into an email type format (.efx) or a picture in tiff format. anyways, long story short they are providing an excelent service at excelent prices.
as the CEO of a large fortune 500 company, we rely on efax daily for all of our incoming faxing needs. they make money by charging us a fee so they have no need to spam anyone. i suggest you re adjust your "crazy" hat that makes you froth at the mouth and start yelling spammer spammer at everyone in the street.
as you can clearly see efax are NOT spammers. Your sig therefore is in error.
The project was gathering public data on citizens. The article is titled: "Invading Privacy for School Credit" (Public=Private)
Our society has distorted the values of public, individual, and private as they apply to data. People cry foul at the compiling public data with "Invasion of Privacy".
Much of the furor is mis-directed by well meaning advocates of privacy, who count individual data as private data. How can a public address be private information?
What is private and what is public?
That assumes you still believe Cheney was Bush's real running mate.
If privacy means different things in different contexts, what we need is a taxonomy.
I fail to understand how any discussion of privacy can possibly take place w/out mentioning ZabaSearch.
/. the other day, but I guess the editors didn't want any random /.er to search for their home phone numbers and every single place they've ever lived.
I even submitted it to
[o]_O
I posted an analysis of the NYT article and these issues at: http://yourpinews.blogspot.com/
They may not have actually voted at all but were miscredited as voting for various reasons. Sometimes the "DECEASED" notation poll workers put on the signature line will be interpreted as the person signing for a ballot, even though none was ever given. There's also the problem of people accidently signing on the wrong signature line; they don't get a credit but the person whose line they signed does.
I doubt these people checked the actual poll books so it's very likely a good chunk of the 50 dead "voters" didn't actually vote.
> Just prepare for your identity theft now
Or, we can eliminate identity theft simply by no longer calling it identity theft.
Say someone goes to my bank and withdraws all of my money. We could call this identity theft, or we could call it "those fucktards at the bank gave all of my money to someone just because they claimed to be me" and thus "those fools at the bank are out $10,000 because they went and gave it to someone they thought was me" instead of "I'm out $10,000 because someone 'stole' my identity."
The term "Identity Theft" is nothing but a way for those who are responsible for identifying people to pretend as if they didn't make a mistake.
Imagine living in a world where you are no longer responsible for making sure that whatever flimsy systems (like knowledge of a SSN) other people use to identify you actually work. You would no longer have to burn papers with your SSN on them (so they don't get dug out of your trash) because it would no longer be your problem, it'd be the problem of the fool who was stupid enough to think that a SSN is some kind of PIN.
That's the real problem here. The problem isn't that this information is available, but that certain people are stupid enough to believe that just because someone knows this information that it means that they are you.
Standard Service:
Full certificate of birth, marriage, death or adoption - £11.50
ordered online via the internet - £7.00
A party that'll support legalized abortion will do and say anything to get power.
So what's the Republicans' excuse?
This sort of Zombie voting thing has happened before.
Students have proven that all it takes to obtain reams of personal data is Internet access, a few dollars and some spare time.
I hear owning a certain large, well-known media website does the job too:
For free access to this article and more, you must be a registered member of NYTimes.com
"property tax information, campaign donations"
www.tad.org
www.newsmeat.com
Ok that took a whole 2 seconds. Not very hard.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
I wish i had mod points...