February 9, 2016 at 10:48 am
Rich Mechaber (2/9/2016)
Steve Jones - SSC Editor (2/9/2016)
Eric M Russell (2/9/2016)
...That's scary, though potentially not a problem. A number of states publish voter data as public records. A few might have restrictions on the use of that data, but the fact that the data is available means it could be used maliciously, with overburdened authorities unlikely to prosecute anyone even if they're caught...
Wow, so... will this database tell us whether a job applicant voted for Donald Trump? Not that it would necessarily bias anyone's hiring decisions but... :ermm:
That's the weird part. Could someone in HR influence the direction of a company, or of a department by using this data to screen candidates, or allow them through? What if you only saw people that voted for, or against Trump? Would you just hire one or two because that's all you saw?
What if you were looking to subtely check people's ages, and only hire people under 30? You could only allow those resumes through, claiming that information isn't on the resume, so that's the "pool" you hire. Same with women, races, etc.
These are certainly extreme, and I'd argue, not likely, but certainly possible. The more data that becomes available, who knows. How many people use recruiters? Do you know how they screen people?
Track who you voted for? Not possible: there's absolutely nothing connecting "me, the registered voter" to a completed ballot. Do ballots in your state have unique ID numbers or bar codes? Here in rural New Hampshire, they're still paper ballots, marked by pencil, counted by hand. (Fun process: town moderator calls for volunteers, you work in pairs -- one reading, one marking a tally in pencil -- then you take turns. Quaintly nineteenth century, and a good reminder for participatory democracy.)
With voting machines, that's a different story, and I would expect there'd be a clean digital divide between being registered and authorized to use the machine vs. attaching your personal info. to a specific vote. Anyone here work with the software behind those?
Rich
February 9, 2016 at 11:12 am
patrickmcginnis59 10839 (2/9/2016)
Rich Mechaber (2/9/2016)
Steve Jones - SSC Editor (2/9/2016)
Eric M Russell (2/9/2016)
...That's scary, though potentially not a problem. A number of states publish voter data as public records. A few might have restrictions on the use of that data, but the fact that the data is available means it could be used maliciously, with overburdened authorities unlikely to prosecute anyone even if they're caught...
Wow, so... will this database tell us whether a job applicant voted for Donald Trump? Not that it would necessarily bias anyone's hiring decisions but... :ermm:
That's the weird part. Could someone in HR influence the direction of a company, or of a department by using this data to screen candidates, or allow them through? What if you only saw people that voted for, or against Trump? Would you just hire one or two because that's all you saw?
What if you were looking to subtely check people's ages, and only hire people under 30? You could only allow those resumes through, claiming that information isn't on the resume, so that's the "pool" you hire. Same with women, races, etc.
These are certainly extreme, and I'd argue, not likely, but certainly possible. The more data that becomes available, who knows. How many people use recruiters? Do you know how they screen people?
Track who you voted for? Not possible: there's absolutely nothing connecting "me, the registered voter" to a completed ballot. Do ballots in your state have unique ID numbers or bar codes? Here in rural New Hampshire, they're still paper ballots, marked by pencil, counted by hand. (Fun process: town moderator calls for volunteers, you work in pairs -- one reading, one marking a tally in pencil -- then you take turns. Quaintly nineteenth century, and a good reminder for participatory democracy.)
With voting machines, that's a different story, and I would expect there'd be a clean digital divide between being registered and authorized to use the machine vs. attaching your personal info. to a specific vote. Anyone here work with the software behind those?
Rich
Thanks Patrick. You want transparent software?? http://www.lfda.org/current-trends/historic-ballot-boxes-commemorate-primary
Kidding aside, there's a case to make that a paper ballot with checkboxes, dropped through a slot into a locked box watched by moderators, is a great combination of transparent, anonymous, affordable, and secure. And no hanging chads, either.
🙂
Just don't ask about scalability... (Though there are machine readers to speed up the process.)
Rich
February 9, 2016 at 11:37 am
robert.sterbal 56890 (2/9/2016)
Aggregation is something that is easy to do if you are large institutionally, so essentially you are rewarding people for size.That isn't democratic.
Actually, aggregation can occur very cheaply in the cloud now. People are putting together millions of data points for literally pennies, or maybe dimes, per month.
That's an issue
February 9, 2016 at 11:49 am
Steve,
It sounds like you are mixing issues here. It should be cheap to figure out the people who vote. Otherwise people can't exercise their political voice.
There is a lot of data that is cheap to collect. I'm not sure why that is a problem I want to address.
412-977-3526 call/text
February 9, 2016 at 11:55 am
Robert,
You said aggregation favors the large. I disagreed. Aggregation can happen cheaply, and with individuals because of low cost computing power and remote access to records.
In terms of the politics of whether people should vote, or we should know how they vote, I'm not giving any opinion. That is a separate issue.
My point is that having some of this data, which is PII in some cases (birth dates, addresses) is a problem for me. While it can be beneficial, it can also be harmful for those people.
February 9, 2016 at 12:01 pm
It favors the large in that the process still requires significant capital in addition to just having the aggregated data to actually do something with the data at scale.
412-977-3526 call/text
February 9, 2016 at 12:07 pm
I'd still disagree. There are more and more tools available that allow small groups and organizations to do lots with data.
February 9, 2016 at 12:19 pm
And you want to discourage that?
412-977-3526 call/text
February 9, 2016 at 12:21 pm
Steve Jones - SSC Editor (2/9/2016)
I'd still disagree. There are more and more tools available that allow small groups and organizations to do lots with data.
Steve,
I understand what you are saying about privacy. However, the fact the small groups and organizations having access and capabilities to work with this data is a good thing.
The best example I can give is that of an independent candidate. They usually have a very small group of people who helping them with their campaign. However, in states like Ohio where this data is made available for free. They can use this data and Power BI for example to place address points on a map to determine where they have the best chance to campaign.
So I think there is a great value in Democratizing data. However, how do we do it and ensure privacy?
For example, at what point do we loose our privacy. Is it when we show how a household votes, a neighborhood votes or a city votes. At what point is the data to granular that it jeopardizes our privacy?
February 9, 2016 at 12:23 pm
Have you ever wondered how much an IT staff member working for Department of Homeland Security earns?
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
February 9, 2016 at 1:16 pm
Rich Mechaber (2/9/2016)
... Kidding aside, there's a case to make that a paper ballot with checkboxes, dropped through a slot into a locked box watched by moderators, is a great combination of transparent, anonymous, affordable, and secure. And no hanging chads, either.🙂
Just don't ask about scalability... (Though there are machine readers to speed up the process.)
Actually I think it scales fairly well. Precincts report their results to the city or county, which reports to the Secretary of State, which reports it to the Feds. It takes longer on Federal election days, which makes me an advocate of either making Election Day a Federal holiday so it's easier to go and vote, or formally open the voting window to a week. We already have early and mail/absentee voting, so why not formalize it?
I heard that New Mexico is dumping their electronic voting machines, which normally are only used in primary or local elections. General elections were always mark/sense cards where you fill in the circle for your candidate, it's then fed in to a scanning machine that's also a lockbox. I'm not sure if the ballots are double-counted when the election is closed to verify against the receipt.
It's a fairly secure tech that allows for recounts, something that electronic voting machines totally failed at.
The sad thing about our election system is Former President Jimmy Carter. He goes around the world with a team inspecting elections and determining if the outcomes are fair. He was asked once if he would consider doing such a thing in the USA, and he said no. The transparency isn't here, and with the rush to electronic voting machines to combat alleged voter fraud, and to enrich Diebold and a few other companies, we don't have the ability to audit the code running on these machines and they don't have much of an audit, not to mention some models being very adept at crashing and losing previously entered results.
There was an incident in, I believe, a local election where they had the results of a precinct and a representative of the voting machine manufacturer was allowed in the counting room while everyone else was removed. After he left, the result of one race was flipped to the other candidate. No audit, and no witnesses.
And we're supposed to be the epitome of democracy and free elections? (Yes, there is voter fraud, but it is no where near as rampant as some of our politicians would like us to believe.)
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[font="Arial"]Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves or we know where we can find information upon it. --Samuel Johnson[/font]
February 9, 2016 at 1:32 pm
Rich Mechaber (2/9/2016)
David.Poole (2/9/2016)
I heard a story that an analysis of coin composition revealed the state of a nation's armament capability.Data is like fissile material. Once it gains critical mass it's a nightmare
Do you have a link to that story, David? I'd be curious to read it.
Rich
I'll hunt it down. I remember it being an intriguing example of dark data but couldn't find it with a cursory search
February 9, 2016 at 1:46 pm
Steve Jones - SSC Editor (2/9/2016)
I'd still disagree. There are more and more tools available that allow small groups and organizations to do lots with data.
Moneysupermarket started off in a terraced house in the village of Harwarden. It has grown to the point where it is in purpose built premises in Wales and a sizable London office. The hardware requirements were surprisingly modest because the original builders put quite a bit of thought into the design of the aggregation framework.
You can use cloud infrastructure to throw hardware at a problem provided you pockets are deep. For on-premise infrastructure throwing hardware at the problem is constrained by bricks and mortar
February 9, 2016 at 1:47 pm
David.Poole (2/9/2016)
I heard a story that an analysis of coin composition revealed the state of a nation's armament capability.Data is like fissile material. Once it gains critical mass it's a nightmare
When the DOD starts ramping up production of copper plated (aka: full metal jacket) bullets, the US mint switches to stamping zinc pennies.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
February 9, 2016 at 2:50 pm
eccentricDBA (2/9/2016)
So I think there is a great value in Democratizing data. However, how do we do it and ensure privacy?
For example, at what point do we loose our privacy. Is it when we show how a household votes, a neighborhood votes or a city votes. At what point is the data to granular that it jeopardizes our privacy?
I haven't the faintest idea. My concern is no one thinks about this, which means for every good use of data, we might get more than a few malicious uses.
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