Tag Archive for: voters

Georgia’s Brian Kemp Decides To Dox Absentee Voters, Revealing Why They All Voted Absentee

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Kind of a key part of the American election setup is the concept of a secret ballot for hopefully obvious reasons. We haven’t gone quite so far as eliminating that, but down in Georgia, Secretary of State Brian Kemp (who was running for governor at the same time as he was overseeing the integrity of the election and also putting in place a bunch of attempts at voter suppression) has doxxed hundreds of thousands (291,164 to be exact) of absentee voters by posting an Excel file on the state’s website listing out the names, addresses and reasons why they voted absentee.

In typical spokesperson Candice Broce fashion (see her previous nonsensical quotes defending her boss), Broce/Kemp denied that there’s anything wrong with this at all. The systems, they are all working perfectly:

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 it is true that voter name and address info is required to be made available, it is usually not made available in aggregate for anyone to just download without restrictions. And, it’s especially concerning that they released the reasons for voting absentee just a day or so after the election — as people pointed out that this could be quite useful info for criminals looking for who might be away from their homes.

More concerning, of course, is the idea that this could scare off future voters as well who don’t want such info being released in such a manner.

Either way, the idea that the Secretary of State, who kept insisting how wonderful his electronic voting systems were, would then release a giant Excel spreadsheet should again raise questions about the technological skills of whoever set up the system, let alone Kemp for overseeing such a system.

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Techdirt.

Tasmanian voters’ details, including addresses and emails, stolen in Typeform data breach

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  1. Tasmanian voters’ details, including addresses and emails, stolen in Typeform data breach  ABC News

  2. Data breach at Tasmanian electoral body  The Australian

    3. Full coverage

data breach – read more

Americans value online privacy but voters do not care when it counts

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The rush by Republicans in Congress to kill still-pending Obama-era rules that would put curbs on the ability of ISPs to collect and sell our personal Internet usage data has been met with howls of protest from privacy advocates and citizens.

And the outrage is no wonder, as the idea of our browsing habits and histories being hawked to the highest bidder is an affront to any understanding of personal privacy rights.

It’s also an affront to public opinion, as a Pew Research Center Survey last year shows:

  • 93% of adults say that being in control of who can get information about them is important; 74% feel this is “very important,” while 19% say it is “somewhat important.”
  • 90% say that controlling what information is collected about them is important—65% think it is “very important” and 25% say it is “somewhat important.”

Despite such overwhelming public sentiment, Republican majorities in both the House and Senate have voted in recent days to scuttle the privacy protections authorized last October by the Federal Communications Commission, protections that were scheduled to take effect later this year. That FCC measure passed on a 3-2 party-line vote, with then-Chairman Tom Wheeler and two fellow Democratic appointees in the majority, and current Chairman Ajit Pai and fellow Republican Michael O’Reilly opposed.

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Network World Paul McNamara

154 million American voters’ records exposed thanks to unsecured database

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154 million U.S. voters’ records were exposed due to a misconfigured CouchDB instance, according to MacKeeper security researcher Chris Vickery. “It was configured for public access with no username, password, or other authentication required.”

Vickery determined the leaky database was on Google’s Cloud services and traced it back to a client of L2, a company which claims to be the country’s “most trusted source for enhanced voter” data.

The database included fields for addresses, age, congressional as well as state senate districts, education, estimated income, ethnic, name, gender, languages, marital status, phone, voting frequency, presence of children, and if the voter was a gun owner.

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Network World Security