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Invading Privacy for School Credit
Posted by
timothy
on Wed May 18, 2005 11:06 AM
from the and-for-a-good-cause dept.
from the and-for-a-good-cause dept.
veryloco writes "Students in Prof. Avi Rubin's Security and Privacy course at the Johns Hopkins University completed a project where they gathered as much public data on residents of Baltimore City as possible. One interesting fact was that 50 deceased persons voted in the last election. Read on to find out what other interesting tidbits were discovered."
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50 deceased persons voted in the last election? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:50 deceased persons voted in the last election? (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:50 deceased persons voted in the last election? (Score:5, Funny)
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hey (Score:5, Funny)
Graaainnnnsss, GRAIINNSssss
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How about Chicago? (Score:5, Informative)
Seriously, Chicago does have this problem and every attempt to cleanse the voting roles of dead voters is shot down as being discriminatory against minorities.
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Re:How about Chicago? (Score:5, Funny)
I guess you've never heard of the dead as "The Silent Majority" then...
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Re:How about Chicago? (Score:5, Insightful)
See, someone who owns a home, rarely moves or changes address, and has a steady job is fairly easy to verify as "yep, we know who this person is, and they're a legit voter."
Someone who moves frequently, doesn't necessarilly have a lease in their own name, works a series of small jobs, doesn't have or doesn't know their social security number, is harder to verify. Some of these "registered voters" are probably illegal immigrants. But some are citizens--many homeless or urban poor. It's extremely difficult to seperate the wheat from the chaff here.
So, the net is we get a pool of "hard to verify" voters. Some legit, some not.
The reason this is a political football is because (again) these tend to be minorities, and minorities in urban areas tend (again, just statistics here) to vote Democratic. So, counting all these "who knows?" voters gives a slight edge to Democrats.
Which is why Republicans shout "Fraud! Throw the votes out!" and Democrats shout "Disenfranchisement! You can't turn away a single legitimate voter! And attempting to fix the system in any way is a blow to democracy!"
I'm sure if the voting record was pro-Republican from this demographic, the positions would be reversed.
Anyways, Chicago's an overwhelmingly Democratic (in the political party sense) town. So don't bet on seeing this any time soon.
This was the major issue with party "challengers" stationed at key poling places in swing states in the last election, and the concept of "provisional ballots" for voters that you heard so much about last November (if you happen to follow US news...)
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Re:How about Chicago? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:50 deceased persons voted in the last election? (Score:5, Funny)
Hmm... brainless, concerned only with consuming, attack anyone who isn't like them... anyone else willing to bet that they voted Bush?
(Aww, c'mon, it's just a harmless joke... *ducks the "troll" mod's*)
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Re:50 deceased persons voted in the last election? (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04296/399788.stm [post-gazette.com]
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Re:50 deceased persons voted in the last election? (Score:5, Informative)
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About those 50... (Score:5, Funny)
But how many of them are still posting to Slashdot?
When did they die? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, but did they die right around election time. Could they have sent in an absentee ballot before they died? Or did they die on election day after they voted? Not having all the info can lead to misleading ideas in our overactive imaginations.
Or, it could be like the earlier post... zombies or ghosts.
How is public data considered private? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How is public data considered private? (Score:5, Insightful)
Consider this metaphor: Someone is talking very quietly on their cellphone in a public park. If someone sits on the bench beside me and intently starts listening in on my conversation, at what point does that person's actions become an invasion of my privacy?
You're getting caught up in the semantic differences between "public data" and "privacy". "Public data" is simply defined as information that can be obtained legally and freely. "Privacy" though means different things in the literal, personal, and legal senses. And then we wonder about exactly what it means to "invade" one's privacy. Regardless of whether the data about me is public or not, if someone learns something about me I don't want them to know, I can consider that an "invasion of privacy".
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1500 dead people were registered to vote (Score:5, Insightful)
It was over long ago (Score:5, Insightful)
So what is the solution? Just prepare for your identity theft now, keep good records and generally don't be a jerk to those you post about and email. Because its all out there.
Necromancy (Score:5, Interesting)
We need election laws that guarantee the margin of victory is larger than the sampling error. In fact, we need a law that requires the office get at least a simple majority (50%) of the eligible voters, or it goes unfilled. With so few eligible voters actually voting, that would force districts to hold runoffs, and parties to get out the vote. Or just get outnumbered by the representatives from districts which do turn out. Put a little competition into our rotten voting system, and cut out the deadwood.
Misleading Title (Score:4, Informative)
and the primary focus of the article is on how easy it is to steal identities on line using legal methods and less than $50.
The slashdot title implies that a college course was used to invade the privacy of Baltimore individuals. This is most misleading. While this is nothing new to most readers here, the significant thing is that this article is in a mainstream media publication and may help to strengthen some of the right to privacy laws that are currently under the gun.
Engineering (Score:5, Funny)
once again proves that geek security is compromized by cleavage or the promise that someone likes you.
Invasion of privacy? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd say that the opposite is true - this information is in the public domain, and the students were able to demonstrate how easy it is to access and collate, thus stimulating debate (look, we're having a real debate, on Slashdot!).
Invasions of privacy, in my mind, constitute one of two things. 1) Attempting to make someone reveal personal information about themselves that they may not want to, or 2) revealing data on someone else that you have not been given permission to reveal.
While some of the original sources of the data that the students used could have invaded privacy to get the data, by using data already in the public domain the students weren't invading privacy.
If they'd acted illegally or persuaded someone to breach someone else's privacy as part of the project, that would be another thing, but the students weren't allowed to do that as part of this project.
It's all there - taxes, political contributions (Score:5, Insightful)
Where I live now, anyone and their mom's dog can look up the tax records of my property. This database is searchable by either name or address and returns how much a given property has been accessed for (plus the five year history), how much the current taxes are, a picture of the property (which is often the front of the house), and sometimes the floorplan of the house. Not only would I never provide this information to any of my friends (much less a stranger), but I'd consider it rude if they were to ask.
Another invasive database, which has been mentioned several times here on Slashdot, is Fundrace. I work very hard to make sure that my political views are not know at the workplace. However Fundrace allows anyone to search by name or address who gave how much to a given political candidate or party. I understand the value of tracking political donations, I really do. Should my employees or peers have the capability to track me specifically? It somewhat defeats the point of the secret ballot. I'd love to contribute money to those candidates which I support, but I won't.
My colleagues don't need to know how much I make, pay in taxes, or contribute to a given political organization. At best the information simply satisfies some misplaced curiosity, but more likely this information is used to judge (often incorrectly) without any opportunity for a rebuttal or explanation on my part.
Re:OT: Article formatting (Score:4, Interesting)
I regularly point to it as an example of excellent corporate webdesign, but I don't think it gets NEARLY enough credit. It's a fantastic website.
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Re:OK, I'll start the flame war.... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:OK, I'll start the flame war.... (Score:4, Funny)
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