Birthday is an included item. That's definitely private as it is often used to confirm identity.
"almost public" is meaningless. One data item, like credit card number, or birthday, can make this a dangerous leak.
https://www.dmv.org/public-records/
That it's used to confirm identity shows how weak identity-theft protections are at most institutions, not what's public information. (For that matter, mother's maiden name is basically public information as well: you can get it from genealogical records.)
Edit: spelling
Also, "reselling government data" implies that the government explicitly gave permission to a business selling your data. I doubt that's true. More likely, these entities gathered data from whatever entities they could, probably various private companies from which you've made online purchases.
There's no perfect identifier. That's why we need security. This is a major lapse.
Pretty sneaky of the comment above yours to try to pass dmv.org as a government website.
I've never "consented" to "releasing" my address publicly, but real estate records are public information thus the real estate I own is easily queried from my town's website and the real estate transaction was published in all the local newspapers. You can even look up my property tax bills from the towns website and my payment history of said taxes. If you're feeling generous you can also pay my property taxes online too.
Is the list of doctors you visit private? I could probably discover such information, but it is considered private.
Your address is usually public unless you go to lengths to obfuscate it. You can go to Hollywood and get a map of where all the movie stars live. And, the white pages list your phone number unless you opt out.
Birthday has never been publicly available until this voter data leak. Not good.
Yes, this is explicitly protected by law.
>I could probably discover such information
No you can't get this information, and certainly not legally.
>Your address is usually public
Exactly but I never "gave my consent to release my address," it just is.
>Birthday has never been publicly available until this voter data leak.
Open up a newspaper or open up yourlocalpaper.com There's a whole birth announcements section!
How do you think the RNC got this information in the first place? Public records. The RNC is NOT the government.
I imagine they used campaign dollars to buy the information from private companies with whom you've done business. Maybe legally, maybe not.
The RNC certainly isn't offering up such information as to where they sourced the data they leaked.
Too bad. The government doesn't care about you consenting to things. In fact, making you do things without your consent is literally the entire point of organized government, even if we usually overlook that because it's for a good purpose (for example, taxation to pay for health care or national defense).
I don't care if you think paying for health care or national security is important or not. That's an unrelated issue to whether or not Birthday is private or public data.
If it's true that that information is out in the wild now, then I expect government to tighten their tech security procedures.
How do you think the RNC got birthdays for 200 million Americans in the first place? Public records. 200 million Americans are NOT affiliated with the RNC.
As I replied elsewhere, there is a market for reselling your information on the internet. In some cases that is legal, and in many it's probably not. As a tech person you should know this.
The solution to all of this data privacy hysteria is to change our approach. The possession of common facts about a person should not be sufficient to masquerade as that person.
I think the solution is better security. We'll only ever have basic facts to uniquely identify people. Biometrics can be hacked/copied too.
> DMV.org is a privately owned website that is not owned or operated by any state government agency.
> "Note: Residence address and SSN are confidential except when the requester is authorized by law to receive it."
>Confidential information is not considered public record. This includes certain DMV personnel matters, physical/mental information, residence address, social security number (SSN), incomplete findings from research, results of ongoing investigations, operation plans, and electronic data security controls.
DOB is listed on ID and not considered confidential information.
Nowhere does it say that. If you think they mean that by omission, I highly doubt it.
You cited California DMV which does not give up that information. They won't even give you someone's address unless you're legally entitled, like the police.
If there are websites out there sharing that private information, they're doing it without my consent.
Is your daily schedule, when you go to work,drop off your kids, what route you take to work protected legally? No, but you probably wouldn't want to share that information publicly either. Yet, in the future, a data breach could reveal such information, and a business could seek to resell it.
> "According to the webmaster, there is a class action lawsuit that is trying to have the site shut down"
The article also argues that many types of workers ought to seek removal of their name from this list in the interest of personal security.
The story is making the case that this should be considered private information.
Lots of things that are actually not private data are used to confirm identity; “it is used to confirm identity” is not a disproof that a piece of information is public information.
I wouldn't. Therefore it is private.
http://www.dc.state.fl.us/activeinmates/detail.asp?Bookmark=...
This is a random guy. His named ERNEST BELL JR and his birthdate is 10/05/1959.
Not sure why you're replying for someone else..
> This is a random guy. His named ERNEST BELL JR and his birthdate is 10/05/1959. Inmates obviously lose some rights when convicted. Data security is minor compared to losing the freedom of movement.
Also doesn't surprise me that Florida would make all information on its inmates public.
mylife.com publicly posts birthdays so apparently not
Just because some skeezy website shares all my personal information does not make it public information. It's private to me and I'd rather it remain undistributed, where possible.
Overall point being, this US voter data leak is bad. That appears to have released information on all of us that we consider private.
I kinda think it does mean exactly that. Just because you don't want something to be public doesn't mean that it isn't public.
Nothing about the definition of public or private restrict either to being protected by the government. I can consider some information private without it being protected in the legal sense.
That said, I expect that any government entity that released my birthday would be held responsible for a data leak.
Nope. What's your point?
> "Just because you don't want something to be public doesn't mean that it isn't public."
In the future, your location data could be tracked, shared/hacked, analyzed to produce more information, and breached just like this RNC dataset.
My point is, something private doesn't become public when a criminal exposes it. It's still private to you.
If in the future it is no longer public, then I won't consider it private. I may not be happy about it, but that doesn't change the fact that it is public at that point.
So it is with birthdays. There isn't any government organization who will distribute that information.
If all credit card numbers were stolen and distributed, we would still have considered them private before that.
The same is true for these birthdays. They were private, then stolen and made public. That they are now public doesn't retroactively make the theft okay. Theft is theft.
The lesson here is to tighten security, increase security education and awareness, and increase investigation into the most egregious of these crimes so that violators can be brought to justice.