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I hate to be in the position of defending a leak such as this. But if what they've done is "merely" compiling data that was available from our public profiles,

I hate to be in the position of defending a leak such as this. But if what they've done is "merely" compiling data that was available from our public profiles, are they obligated to secure that compilation? I'm asking -- I don't know for sure how the data was gathered, it just sounds like it was from scraping public records + public web sites. Also, can someone ask Troy Hunt whether he has or can get access to this data so he can let us all know if we're on it? (But will it even matter if they don't have an email address field?)

wang_li 9y ago
Voter registration information is public. It doesn't seem like any of the information "leaked" is actually private.
mattnewton 9y ago
I missed where it was all public; couldn't you share information with your political party you wouldn't want shared with others? And wouldn't the accumulation of all that data be valuable?
- ryanworl 9y ago
  Many states have very loose control over their voter database. The control is mostly exerted through the force of the law prohibiting certain uses of the data. For example, I can order the voter database for the state of New York and receive it on a CD in a few weeks. Other states will simply email you a link to a big bundle of CSV files. There is other information besides what is on the voter database in this disclosure, it appears, but the voter data itself is mostly not a secret and can be trivially accessed by any citizen. They just have to promise not to break the law around what they do with it.
yahelc 9y ago
Voter files being public data depends on which state you're talking about -- you're looking at ~50 different sets of laws and regulations. Some states restrict access to only political parties using it for political uses and prohibit distribution to non-parties/candidates. Some states (Florida, for example) will let anyone just apply to get it. To your latter question, some states, like California, do include email addresses on their voter file, but the coverage tends to be poor. You can probably assume that, if you're a registered voter in the United States, you're on this dataset, as is your age, gender, party affiliation if applicable, and race/ethnicity info if your state collects that, as well as modeled information projecting things like party support, race, age, and likelihood to turnout.
- thegayngler 9y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_ballot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_ballot All 50 states have some form of secret ballot. Only WV has an open ballot.
  - travoc 9y ago
    This is voter registration data, not ballot data.
- j88439h84 9y ago
  May I ask, where have you seen a voter file with email addresses? I haven't seen something like that myself.
AndrewKemendo 9y ago
It's an interesting question, because there is a comparable in the intelligence community called aggregation. Effectively two pieces of information when separate, might not be classified, but if they are linked with a third or combined they become classified. Add more and it changes the classification further. I wonder if there should be something similar for data aggregation companies. Like what we see with HIPAA.
- gozur88 9y ago
  That's not a bad idea, but the specifics would be pretty hard to nail down.
falcolas 9y ago
Personally, while I understand that this is nothing illegal, I think it's terribly wrong. We just handed everyone, including the 5% of society who tend towards sociopathy, a nicely tagged, collated (and yet probably slightly inaccurate) list of minorities. Hate women? You have a nice list which includes the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of all those women. Hate muslims? Boy do I have just the list for you. Blacks? Republicans? White muslim men who live in the same neighborhood as you? Let's omit the sociopaths for just a moment, and let's look at the ad networks. Can you picture how much more accurate a picture those companies have of you now? They no longer have to guess at your age, ethnicity or religion - they now know. What could go wrong when that list of "legally" collated data gets combined with the RNC leak, and is subsequently itself leaked? So no. It's probably not illegal to compile these lists. It's probably not even illegal that it was released. But it was, for certain, a damned immoral thing to do, and there will be consequences.
- cookiecaper 9y ago
  One of the weird effects of the internet is that stuff that used to be considered obvious and self-evident is now treated as very sensitive. For example, no one used to consider their gender or race "private" information; rather, it was nearly impossible to interact with another human without these things being self-evident. Not many years ago, there used to be a book distributed far and wide with the names, address, and phone number of virtually everyone that lived in your city. This was accepted as normal and routine, and you had to specifically opt out of being included.
  - falcolas 9y ago
    The difference is in the scope. Back when phonebooks were widely used, there was no automated way to correlate those records with other records to create a highly specific list of all Asian women who live in a four block radius of a specific address. You could walk around and find some of them, but that would take a significant amount of time and effort. Phones were also not capable of interrupting you while you were out of the home, nor were they capable of receiving short messages on your dime.
- 9y ago
rattray 9y ago
Most data in there isn't public; voter files is only one part.

wang_li 9y ago

Voter registration information is public. It doesn't seem like any of the information "leaked" is actually private.

mattnewton 9y ago

I missed where it was all public; couldn't you share information with your political party you wouldn't want shared with others? And wouldn't the accumulation of all that data be valuable?

ryanworl 9y ago
Many states have very loose control over their voter database. The control is mostly exerted through the force of the law prohibiting certain uses of the data. For example, I can order the voter database for the state of New York and receive it on a CD in a few weeks. Other states will simply email you a link to a big bundle of CSV files. There is other information besides what is on the voter database in this disclosure, it appears, but the voter data itself is mostly not a secret and can be trivially accessed by any citizen. They just have to promise not to break the law around what they do with it.

yahelc 9y ago

Voter files being public data depends on which state you're talking about -- you're looking at ~50 different sets of laws and regulations. Some states restrict access to only political parties using it for political uses and prohibit distribution to non-parties/candidates. Some states (Florida, for example) will let anyone just apply to get it. To your latter question, some states, like California, do include email addresses on their voter file, but the coverage tends to be poor. You can probably assume that, if you're a registered voter in the United States, you're on this dataset, as is your age, gender, party affiliation if applicable, and race/ethnicity info if your state collects that, as well as modeled information projecting things like party support, race, age, and likelihood to turnout.

thegayngler 9y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_ballot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_ballot All 50 states have some form of secret ballot. Only WV has an open ballot.
- travoc 9y ago
  This is voter registration data, not ballot data.
j88439h84 9y ago
May I ask, where have you seen a voter file with email addresses? I haven't seen something like that myself.

AndrewKemendo 9y ago

It's an interesting question, because there is a comparable in the intelligence community called aggregation. Effectively two pieces of information when separate, might not be classified, but if they are linked with a third or combined they become classified. Add more and it changes the classification further. I wonder if there should be something similar for data aggregation companies. Like what we see with HIPAA.

gozur88 9y ago
That's not a bad idea, but the specifics would be pretty hard to nail down.

falcolas 9y ago

Personally, while I understand that this is nothing illegal, I think it's terribly wrong. We just handed everyone, including the 5% of society who tend towards sociopathy, a nicely tagged, collated (and yet probably slightly inaccurate) list of minorities. Hate women? You have a nice list which includes the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of all those women. Hate muslims? Boy do I have just the list for you. Blacks? Republicans? White muslim men who live in the same neighborhood as you? Let's omit the sociopaths for just a moment, and let's look at the ad networks. Can you picture how much more accurate a picture those companies have of you now? They no longer have to guess at your age, ethnicity or religion - they now know. What could go wrong when that list of "legally" collated data gets combined with the RNC leak, and is subsequently itself leaked? So no. It's probably not illegal to compile these lists. It's probably not even illegal that it was released. But it was, for certain, a damned immoral thing to do, and there will be consequences.

cookiecaper 9y ago
One of the weird effects of the internet is that stuff that used to be considered obvious and self-evident is now treated as very sensitive. For example, no one used to consider their gender or race "private" information; rather, it was nearly impossible to interact with another human without these things being self-evident. Not many years ago, there used to be a book distributed far and wide with the names, address, and phone number of virtually everyone that lived in your city. This was accepted as normal and routine, and you had to specifically opt out of being included.
- falcolas 9y ago
  The difference is in the scope. Back when phonebooks were widely used, there was no automated way to correlate those records with other records to create a highly specific list of all Asian women who live in a four block radius of a specific address. You could walk around and find some of them, but that would take a significant amount of time and effort. Phones were also not capable of interrupting you while you were out of the home, nor were they capable of receiving short messages on your dime.
9y ago

rattray 9y ago

Most data in there isn't public; voter files is only one part.