Slashdot Mirror
Georgia Gives Personal Data of 6 Million Voters To Georgia GunOwner Magazine (ajc.com)
McGruber writes: A class action lawsuit alleges that Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp's office released the personal identifying information of Georgia voters to twelve organizations, "including statewide political parties, news media organizations and Georgia GunOwner Magazine".
According to Kemp, his office shares "voter registration data every month with news media and political parties that have requested it as required by Georgia law. Due to a clerical error where information was put in the wrong file, 12 recipients received a disc that contained personal identifying information that should not have been included."
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution independently confirmed the inclusion of the personal data in the October file. The AJC did so by accessing the October data disc, looking up information for an AJC staffer and confirming his Social Security number and driver's license information was included. The AJC has returned its copy of the disc to the state.
According to Kemp, his office shares "voter registration data every month with news media and political parties that have requested it as required by Georgia law. Due to a clerical error where information was put in the wrong file, 12 recipients received a disc that contained personal identifying information that should not have been included."
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution independently confirmed the inclusion of the personal data in the October file. The AJC did so by accessing the October data disc, looking up information for an AJC staffer and confirming his Social Security number and driver's license information was included. The AJC has returned its copy of the disc to the state.
There were 12 organizations which received the info, which included some mistakenly provided personal info.
Singling out one organization in the headline seems to make this story a politically driven one.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
OK, so, is Slashdot a tech-news page or just trying to be Gawker?
The story here is that personally-identifying information was sent to 12 organizations. One of those organizations was a gun magazine (because they were one of the 12 that requested the info).
Editor 101 quiz, which of these headlines is more informative, and which is just polemic clickbait:
"Georgia Gives Personal Data of 6 Million Voters To Georgia GunOwner Magazine"
or
"Georgia Gives Personal Data of 6 Million Voters To 12 Organizations"
?
If we're going to go the polemic route, why not just go all the way? The Governor of GA is a Republican, you could instead re-title this:
"Republican Governor's office hands citizen data to Gun Magazine"?
-Styopa
Those dastardly (probably all white!!!!11!) editors and writers might use the information to... send poor black voters information about how they can exercise their right to keep and bear arms and information on why they might want to do it.
Thanks for the rant. Now for reality...
Voter records have ALWAYS been publically available. The cost was probably just paying someone in govt the time it takes to gather it and burn it to a disk. Many people have used these records to show dead people voting (Social Security also keeps a list of dead people), or other voter irregularities.
The difference here is they released SSNs of the voters, along with other "private" information.
But thanks for the rant on how evil capitalism is when this is a 100% screw up of the government. That's like blaming a mugging victim for daring to carry something valuable to be robbed and saying the only solution is to give the muggers more power to ensure people don't dare carry valuables anymore. You would think anti-freedom people like this would be ridiculed instead of listened to.
The voter roll is a matter of public record in pretty much every state, and for very good reason - if it's not public, there's no way for the public to cross check to make sure that someone in government hasn't been adding people who don't exist. Like a lot of public data, it's available to anyone who wants it, so long as they cover the cost of providing the data. Sounds like these 12 organizations have, in effect, a subscription.
When you want clicks and ad revenue, you relate what you are talking about with something very controversial and that has passions running very high on either end of the debat - blind rage, actually.
Guns have become one of those issues. Add in guns owners paranoia that their guns are honing to be confiscated by the government, we have here an attempt to garner quite a bit of outrage from the anti-government gun owner crowd.
It's a cheap trick but the public gets suckered every time.
Fixed your headline for you.
I am certainly not a gun-nut, but it seems that the magazine in the headline has no more blame in this matter than the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
Here is the list of organizations who got the info:
Georgia Democratic Party
Georgia Republican Party
Georgia Libertarian Party
Independence Party of Georgia
Southern Party of Georgia
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Macon Telegraph
Savannah Morning News
Georgia GunOwner Magazine
Georgia Pundit
News Publishing Co.
RedState
Who is the biggest risk? Who has the least to lose and the most ideological fervor? Who is most likely simply to get hacked?
Actually, it isn't the gun nut magazine, it's the Southern Party of Georgia.
That would make an even better headline: Georgia Gives Personal Data of 6 Million Voters To Racist Lost Cause Political Party You've Never Heard Of
Yes, definitely, including the other information (SS#, DL#, etc.) was a massive screwup, but that wasn't supposed to happen. From the article, sounds like someone, in effect, forgot to delete some columns from Excel.
The level of incompetence in the State of Georgia government has been increasing at an exponential rate for well over a decade now. As a life long Georgia Resident and former employee of this State it is not news to anyone living here. The guiding principle of governance by the last two administrations (and to some extent the one before) has been to outsource anything and everything to the bidder that make the largest campaign contribution. Low bid, high bid, competence -- none of those matter.
The higher paying State Jobs that are supposed to be overseeing this outsource mania have been filled by politically correct incompetents that have no idea of what they are supposed to be doing --and it is getting worse. I was fortunate to escape when I did.
To clarify one point in the article and the comments. The voter data that is mandated to be public record by law is limited to the voter's name and possibly address. The screw up in this is that they included such things as the full social security number, driver's license number, and other sensitive personal information. The Secretary of State (Bryan Kemp) maintained that since there was no security breach, this didn't have to be reported as such under law. I guess that gives is a good clue as to his mental state.
It shouldn't be a big deal if social security numbers are released - the fault lies with a system that makes them so powerful.
Have you read my blog lately?
Most of the CD's have been returned. For some reason the Libertarian party is being a jerk about it and is dawdling.
What I can't find out is which of the others still have their copy, or worse yet, are making copies.
Well, the magazine is singled out because unlike everyone else on the list (major newspapers, political parties and RedState) it's a minor organization. If the NSA had a major leak where they sent secret data to CIA analysts, the White House and the Russian Embassy, I would expect most news stories to focus on the Russian connection.
But one group should be singled out. The Libertarian Party. The other groups have promised to keep the data safe and return it. The Libertarian Party is fucking around with the idea of maybe returning/destroying the data. I get that we don't pretend the breech didn't happen, but FFS, now the Libertarian Party is putting the info in danger as well.
Full list of the 12:
Your ad here. Ask me how!