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198 Million Americans Hit By 'Largest Ever' Voter Records Leak (zdnet.com)
Political data gathered on more than 198 million US citizens was exposed this month after a marketing firm contracted by the Republican National Committee stored internal documents on a publicly accessible Amazon server, reports say. From a ZDNet article: It's believed to be the largest ever known exposure of voter information to date. The various databases containing 198 million records on American voters from all political parties were found stored on an open Amazon S3 storage server owned by a Republican data analytics firm, Deep Root Analytics. UpGuard cyber risk analyst Chris Vickery, who found the exposed server, verified the data. Through his responsible disclosure, the server was secured late last week, and prior to publication. This leak shines a spotlight on the Republicans' multi-million dollar effort to better target potential voters by utilizing big data. The move largely a response to the successes of the Barack Obama campaign in 2008, thought to have been the first data-driven campaign. Further reading: Republican Data-Mining Firm Exposed Personal Information for Virtually Every American Voter - The Intercept; The RNC Files: Inside the Largest US Voter Data Leak - Upguard; Data on 198M voters exposed by GOP contractor
Data On 198M Voters Exposed By GOP Contractor - The Hill.
Pay a nominal fee to the right company and you have access to all voter records nationwide.
This is "a matter of public record" in the information age: zero privacy.
From TFA
We accept full responsibility, will continue with our investigation, and based on the information we have gathered thus far, we do not believe that our systems have been hacked," he said.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
The Donald confirms they were all fake democrat registrations anyway.
Commonly referred to as the "VAN", State voter participation records, even for party primaries/caucus, are a matter of public record. Who you voted for may be confidential, but that you showed up and voted isn't.
Larger political organizations go the extra mile to annotate these records and aggregate them. They even have door to door pollsters that go around to those who have voted recently and target them with polling questions.
IMHO it is a good thing this is open to the wider public, and not just in the hands of a few with the deep pockets to aggregate it.
bash-2.04$
bash-2.04$yes "Don't you hate dialup connections?"| write USERNAME
American voters from all political parties
What? Both of them?
(I know there are more political parties in the USA, but Americans themselves do not seem to know it.)
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
198 million records of people over the age of 18 and registered to vote... isn't that basically "everyone who's registered to vote?" Or dang near?
Anyone with more spare research cycles? How many registered voters are in america currently?
Can we class-action sue them if they leaked our data? If we get the usual $10 gift certificate to Hot Topic, that'd be a cool couple billion dollars. It would also propel Hot Topic to the top of the stock market.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
They have no inherit right to that information. Its really non of their business at all. They shouldn't be allowed to gather any information on voters unless the voter allows them. I know its unlikely since they now want to be able to harass us with messages straight to our voicemail.
What? Did the bus already arrive?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
to hunt down and kill all those shit stains
That's some great data right there.
The data is relatively common and something you can find in any census or online "white pages," with perhaps the exception of the political party you're registered with. How is this information sensitive in nature?
We're all gonna DIE!
(You did not write this, douchebag! - I did!)
In my case, the spotlight is on managers who say, "put everything on S3".
The move largely a response to the successes of the Barack Obama campaign in 2008, thought to have been the first data-driven campaign.
And look, it worked - too bad Obama's former campaign workers (now ensconced in his "Organizing For America" non-profit, which was fully-formed from his 2012 "Obama For America" campaign) were unavailable to Hillary...
Ken
Well, the democratic effort has been famous and bragged-about for several years, during which time it's never been described as anything but huge. It's like you're complaining about some story talking about the "Multi-Hundred-Billion-Dollar Russian Submarine program, seen as an effort to catch up with American submarines"...for not stressing for the thousandth time that America spends more on military (including submarines) than anybody. That's real famous, too.
(PS: The Russians do not have hundreds of billions to spare for submarines; that part was very fictional.)
It is scary when you start to realize how our information is not safe. It seems like new compromises are happening daily. But luckily there is a place where you can check if your information has been previously breached from other similar data leaks and breaches for free at https://heroic.com/
After Sony, we quickly heard their security was worthless - every VP who wanted to watch some video somewhere could get another hole punched in the firewall.
Then the Democrats were "hacked" by.... asking for the top guy's password, which was promptly given!
Warning after warning that we aren't taking this seriously. I'd love to make some stupid partisan remark about this ("these are the people who mocked Clinton for a potential data exposure that never happened?!!?") but the fact is that everybody has done incredibly stupid crap like this, are still doing it, and will continue.
Until we get some kind of worse event, I guess. What will it take!?!
maybe its more about reinforcing the intended message that Republicans should be perceived as wealthy money-bags types, while the Democrats are the simple ground roots folks.
Aren't the democrats assumed to be spending Billions?
Also, they're not relevant to the topic at hand, because they haven't leaked voter records yet. You're off-topic, unless you think every company that spends millions of dollars is somehow what this story is about.
Russia is increasing their submarine arsenal? Well shit post the story to slashdot so you can say how trump is funding them. It'll be a riot.
It's "you're a pal and a confidant".
Cosmonaut... ha!
Please do tell, oh victimized conservative, how calling the Republican effort "multi-million" and not, this time, calling the Democratic equivalent the same label, although it has been done many, many, times before, is somehow harmful to Republicans.
Is someone seriously not going to vote Republican because they heard they spent millions of dollars on a part of their campaign? Is someone seriously going to think the Democrats don't?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Either way, this is perfect. Now we can name and shame all of the Trump voters!
Well, they certainly are heavily stacked in favour of "billionaires willing to bankroll all manner of tv and print organizations." The Dems only have one.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
The Democrats' effort isn't really relevant to the article because it wasn't their data that was exposed. In an article talking about R. Scalise being shot while practicing for a baseball game, do you expect them to also talk about a time that a Dem was shot in the past? If you want an article that might sound negative about the Dems, wait until something actually happens that involves them.
And all the Hillary voters too, unless you agree that all 198 million leaked voters voted for President Trump.
There is enough shame for both sides.
Florida voter records are public record and available freely to anyone that asks. That isn't a leak, it's called open government. What's the issue here again?
Maybe you're going to ridiculous lengths to ignore the obvious for purposes of confirmation bias.
Besides all the other reasons you shouldn't vote...
It is not ONLY state records it contains additional profiling information. The additional information is the thing to worry about here. Regardless of the accuracy of the information it could be abused in many ways. It could find it's way into other profiling systems and you could be denied a job because the employer doesn't like certain groups and their only source of that information is breaches such as this one.
The billions spent on elections likely will produce the best profiling data on citizens along these lines that there is available (or it will be.)
It is not actually published to the public, I've done consulting work in my state and you have to sign for it and there are restrictions to it's use. It is not allowed to be used for hiring data-- such as not hiring people who are over/under your desired level of political activity (although that is totally LEGAL to discriminate on, the data they collect has strings attached to deter such legal abuses.) The GOP wants their door knockers to enter in your car in the driveway and other info to help their demographic database; they purchase any credit related info they can get cheaply... they would love your purchase history from visa / mastercard to be in there too someday (I was at a meeting where this was suggested.) They lack volunteers so they are huge on automated systems; the Dems have tons of volunteers and probably are not half as organized (even if they have some big data, they are not likely utilizing it effectively.)
Ever do those polls on the phone? Sometimes they know already - it's just an exercise in testing and training their profiling. They don't know how you vote but they are modeling it and they love to get your confirmation to further enhance their predictions on your behavior.
While that information may be publicly available to one degree or another I don't think I would want it *freely* available to the next lunatic with a political axe to grind who lives down the street.
Trump voters have no shame.
Whew! I knew there was a good reason I decided not to vote!
From Wapo: "It is not known whether the information has been accessed by anyone but Vickery." So not really a confirmed hit/leak, just a serious vulnerability at this point.
So the GOP left the entire database of American voters exposed to whom ever chose to grab it. I say LOCK UM UP, this is Mega gross negligence and then some.
Also, they're not relevant to the topic at hand, because they haven't leaked voter records yet.
This "leak" is the same non-story as it was when the Dems "leaked" voter data. All of this data is public already, both the GOP and Democrats spend a bunch of time and effort aggregating the data into one place for easy access for their own internal purposes.
Now, there might be a story regarding what records they are aggregating, as it could possibly reveal information about their plans and strategies. But such a story would have a headline reading something like "leaked data show GOP doing blah blah." The headline in this case is an obvious attempt to try to smear the Republicans by implying they are giving up private information due to incompetence. (Both of which are probably true, but are aside from this discussion)
Seems intentional. Why make the russians hack when you can just be incompetent.
There is absolutely no reason for regular people to safeguard anything about themselves, because the Government, and the Universities, and the hospitals, and the department stores simply give it away for free.
And I suspect that the Republican party simply made a few of their best friends aware of this tiny little "mistake", and their new owner is very, very pleased.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Voter records are released with restrictions on use and are usually traceable to the persons/organizations they are released to. There are seeded registrations that if contacted for inappropriate reasons (sales, non-governmental, non-political, non-educational, etc..) reasons will flag the particular file as being misused and may result in fines/prosecution.
Having this file leaked to the public domain without the ability to trace who is using the list removes this detection & deterrent mechanism. The file can now be used to target low-propensity voters for voting fraud. These voters who are unlikely to show up to the polls or cast a mail ballot would not throw up alarms if someone shows up at a polling location to cast a ballot. One person could go from poll to poll and cast votes under these persons. Most states do not require identification, and many do not validate poll book signatures before allowing a ballot to be cast. This is the way it must be in practice because poll workers are not identity validation experts (fake ids easily pass the untrained eye). Poll workers are also not trained/certified to validate signatures in their many forms and permutations and would result in barriers to voting.
Mail ballot voter fraud is much MUCH less likely due to the signature verification against on-file signatures by centrally managed & trained workers.
So, all this non-existent fraud could come to be a minor reality given this leak. Although the effort required to pull this fraud off would require immense manpower.
Damned Putinbots.