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Georgia's Secretary of State Brian Kemp Doxes Thousands of Absentee Voters
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Georgia's secretary of state and candidate for state governor in the midterm election, Brian Kemp, has taken the unusual, if not unprecedented step of posting the personal details of 291,164 absentee voters online for anyone to download. Kemp's office posted an Excel file on its website within hours of the results of the general election, exposing the names and addresses of state residents who mailed in an absentee ballot -- including their reason why, such as if a person is "disabled" or "elderly."
The file, according to the web page, allows Georgia residents to "check the status of your mail-in absentee ballot." Millions of Americans across the country mail in their completed ballots ahead of election day, particularly if getting to a polling place is difficult -- such as if a person is disabled, elderly or traveling. When reached, Georgia secretary of state's press secretary Candice Broce told TechCrunch that all of the data "is clearly designated as public information under state law," and denied that the data was "confidential or sensitive." "State law requires the public availability of voter lists, including names and address of registered voters," she said in an email. "While the data may already be public, it is not publicly available in aggregate like this," said security expert Jake Williams, founder of Rendition Infosec, who lives in Georgia. Williams took issue with the reasons that the state gave for each absentee ballot, saying it "could be used by criminals to target currently unoccupied properties." "Releasing this data in aggregate could be seen as suppressing future absentee voters in Georgia who do not want their information released in this manner," he said.
The file, according to the web page, allows Georgia residents to "check the status of your mail-in absentee ballot." Millions of Americans across the country mail in their completed ballots ahead of election day, particularly if getting to a polling place is difficult -- such as if a person is disabled, elderly or traveling. When reached, Georgia secretary of state's press secretary Candice Broce told TechCrunch that all of the data "is clearly designated as public information under state law," and denied that the data was "confidential or sensitive." "State law requires the public availability of voter lists, including names and address of registered voters," she said in an email. "While the data may already be public, it is not publicly available in aggregate like this," said security expert Jake Williams, founder of Rendition Infosec, who lives in Georgia. Williams took issue with the reasons that the state gave for each absentee ballot, saying it "could be used by criminals to target currently unoccupied properties." "Releasing this data in aggregate could be seen as suppressing future absentee voters in Georgia who do not want their information released in this manner," he said.
he won after all. And his party held onto the Senate, paving the way fro Trump to fire Sessions. This is what winning at any cost means.
My question is will the voters keep going along with it. So far it looks like the answer is yes. If that's the case I'm hoping to die before we go full on authoritarian and that my kid gets to move to Canada. I'm not being hyperbolic anymore. This timeline sucks.
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An Anonymous Coward noted:
The link is just shitty. It's actually http://sos.ga.gov/admin/files/...
Normally, I refuse to expend mod points on ACs. This post, however, definitely qualifies as "informative," and it deserved to be upmodded as such so it will be more visible to others.
I spent the last of my most recent mod points awarding it a +1 Informative upmod, because that was the right thing to do.
You're welcome, Slashdot ...
(Posting as AC only so as not to undo prior upmods in this thread.)
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Expect to see more of this in the coming days. A heavily Republican-leaning 'watchdog' organisation, Project Veritas, did a lot of undercover filming during the election. I wouldn't trust any of it because they have a long history of selectively editing videos - looks like they were manipulating polling booth staff into saying they are happy to let illegal immigrants vote, or editing videos in a way that implies that is what was said. I'm sure it'll be all over right-leaning media soon as the smoking gun that proves Democrats stole the election with illegal voters.
OTOH if everyone's dirty laundry were plainly out for anyone to see, people might stop criticizing others for things they have plainly also done. Less hypocrisy is good. This goes double for anything considered even slightly deviant related to sexuality.
A separate problem that needs addressing more is that employers tend to terminate any employee that catches the public eye for some controversy, regardless of if they're in the wrong. This is along the lines of whistleblower protection, in that employees need to be protected sometimes even if their employer might consider them a liability.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
This is the same issue as the "right to forget" that so many decry. Decades ago you had a chance to rehabilit people in case of offense, or in case of incident (debt/accident etc...) have them have a second chance because people had to do an EFFORT to get data or collate it. So de facto we had the possibility to be forgotten. This is going away. Which is why I think the right to be forgotten is good (yes I am an Euro trash which think rehabilitation/second chance is not a dirty word).
The issue you speak about is a general one. Bad situation which were avoidable decades ago because data could not be easily gatherable or collatable are now becoming increasingly possible. I personally think the right that information do not get collated and stay semi private is a greater right than the one of the public think they have to get "informed" about everything and anything.
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Not much different than the newspaper posting a list of Gun Owners home addresses ?
Easy way to steal caches of weapons and in Maryland, Easy way for police to publicly execute political minorities. 'Well look, they had weapons'... no matter that more Republicans are well armed...
The issue isn't really criticism, it's safety and privacy.
Many people would prefer that the fact they are elderly or disabled is not generally available to anyone with a couple of clicks, both because they are vulnerable to bad actors abusing that information and because medical privacy is important to them.
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ACCEPT, CANCEL, REJECT, SUPPRESS
And this is exactly why the list was published. The Democrats of Georgia have been running around for weeks claiming there was voter suppression happening and using as example situations they themselves setup. In one of the most diverse counties around metro Atlanta, dozens of people reported they had received voter registration ballots in the mail already filled out with "Democrat" pre-marked next to party affiliation. A number of people who reported it did so because they were actually not eligible to vote and were confused. Others pointed out that there were slight mistakes on many of the registration ballots, a misspelled name, address off by a street number, etc. The registrations were all traced back to the Abrams campaign. Under Georgia law the registration information must be an "exact match" to the persons State registration such as on their drivers license. Any variation and the voter registration is rejected. This is a law that was passed by the State legislature during the time Abrams was a member but it is the responsibility of the office of Secretary of State to enforce.
So the Abrams campaign sends out known bad registrations then spreads false stories that Kemp, as Secretary of State, is denying all of the bad ones and suppressing the vote. The whole thing was a ginned up ploy with the local lapdog media.
When reached, Georgia secretary of state’s press secretary Candice Broce told TechCrunch that all of the data “is clearly designated as public information under state law,” and denied that the data was “confidential or sensitive.”
“State law requires the public availability of voter lists, including names and address of registered voters,” she said in an email.
That might be technically true.
Love how the report says technically true when it is state law. Kemp didn't pass the law, he wasn't in the legislature, Abrams was though.
So you have the above situation where Abrams is running around screaming racism, voter suppression because her campaign setup the false conditions to make that claim. She is mathematically so far behind Kemp even with absentee ballots she can't get enough votes to even flip this into a run off (Georgia requires over 50% win or it is an automatic run off), but she goes out claiming that absentee ballots are also being suppressed, so the SoS office publishes the list and now you have a compliant leftist media outlet reporting it as "doxxing the voters".
She lost because her campaign was based predominately on being another historic election, first black woman to run Georgia, same type of historic crap that stuck us with Obama and the Hillary tried to play up. Fact is her policies are too radical for Georgia and she lost.
But oh no, she couldn't have lost because of her policies, where she talked about confiscating guns or how no one should have to work in agriculture to a group of farmers, or who paid the no-talent Will Ferrell $250k to stump for her, no no no, her loss could only have happened because of voter suppression don't you know.
I mean, this came out a couple of days ago:
https://politics.slashdot.org/...
Interestingly, few people thought they were evil. The left-leaning folks here who are getting the vapors didn't seem to show up for that one, presumably because it was also made by left-leaning folks.
Do you have ESP?