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> “State law requires the public availability of voter lists, including names and address of registered voters,” she said in an email. > It’s little surprise t
by whack 8y ago
> “State law requires the public availability of voter lists, including names and address of registered voters,” she said in an email.
> It’s little surprise that the way Kemp’s office approached confirming absentee ballots was met with anger. “While the data may already be public, it is not publicly available in aggregate like this,”
It's interesting how so many laws are predicated on limited resources. Ie, all names and addresses of registered voters should be publicly available, because we don't think anyone has the resources to manually request, retrieve and process all of that data.
Except that even in the old days, corporations and ultra-wealthy individuals did have the resources to do things that were out of reach to the common person. But because it's so rare, and because it's usually kept secret, no one knows or worries about the ramifications.
And then along comes technology and levels the playing field. Things that only the moneyed people could do previously, can now be done by anyone. And suddenly, people start to realize that's a huge problem.
Many people seem to think that the solution to such flare-ups is to introduce more friction, so that the average person can no longer afford to take advantage of the situation. Perhaps that's better than nothing, but it still leaves a loophole wide enough for megacorps and billionaires to take advantage of. Perhaps the real solution is to change the laws so that no one can legally take advantage of these loopholes, no matter how much money or resources they have. Ie, it's better to fail-fast and fix the underlying bug, than to put up a bunch of hacks and fail silently.
- romwell 8y ago>Perhaps that's better than nothing Arguably, it's worse than nothing for the reasons you described. It's the state-level equivalent of literally shoving things under the rug.
- crunchlibrarian 8y agoThe technology hasn't leveled the playing field at all, it just tilted all the power towards large organizations with lots of technologists sitting around.
- jeremyjh 8y agoWhat kind of technology department do you need to make a mail merge out of an excel file?
- dwaltrip 8y agoGreat comment. I think this is an underappreciated trend. Technology is enabling actions that were previously unfathomable, due to limited resources and circumstantial practicalities. Modern systems are much more powerful (in certain ways), enabling potential injustices that no one ever considered possible, and thus of course made no effort to protect against. We are only beginning to consider all of the ramifications of these new systems, what new abuses are available, what the impacts could may be, and how to properly account for new abuses. We have to work hard to make sure our systems don't enable large-scale automated injustice.
- reilly3000 8y agoI just got a $136 ticket from a stoplight camera for failing to Completely Stop at an intersection where there were no other cars for at least 1 mile in any direction, and made a right turn on red at about 3mph. It is serviced by a company 6 states away. Automated injustice is very alive today.
- colek42 8y agoI am waiting for these devices to be declared unconstitutional. Many states already have.
- rangibaby 8y agoSo you ran a red light? Everyone has a justification for their own behavior
- markrages 8y agoYou just might be an authoritarian. https://www.theauthoritarians.org https://www.theauthoritarians.org
- gallopingcomp 8y agoThat's not quite the same as running a red light. In many places in the US, it is legal to make a right turn when the traffic light is right, provided that you slow down to a complete stop first. In practice, if there aren't any cars or pedestrians around, many people just slow down to ~3mph and keep going (a "rolling" stop, which is not quite legal).
- ams6110 8y agoWe are also way more sensitive about our personal information than we used to be for some reason. When I was a boy, the local newspaper published the previous day's hospital admissions and discharges every day. At some point they stopped doing it, and now we have HIPAA which would probably result in huge fines for doing the same thing.
- krrrh 8y agoIt’s hard to remember, but the telephone book used to contain the street address for almost every adult by default.
- iambateman 8y agoYes, but that was everyone and organized in alphabetical order. This is organized by reason for not being at your ballot box. Beyond that, it just seems sketchy.
- forapurpose 8y ago> We are also way more sensitive about our personal information than we used to be That's not the typical narrative. I think people share far more than they ever did before, and when asked about privacy they express much less interest than previously (though that is changing a little now): People share things on social media that were never public before; they allow corporations and government to monitor and record their activities at scales that are orders of magnitude beyond what was done before. The threat of big brother and totalitarian government used to be a widespread concern (the book 1984 being an obvious example); now that it's happening, few seem to be bothered.
- psergeant 8y agoAll this. It’s surveillance where your observation comes into its own tho.
- curt15 8y ago>Many people seem to think that the solution to such flare-ups is to introduce more friction, so that the average person can no longer afford to take advantage of the situation. The philosophy seems similar to that behind the "right to be forgotten". Certain phrases are still permitted to be published for the world to read but not allowed to be discovered in a efficient manner.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]