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Comment by letdatboicook | Hacker News Reader

I've been coining a term in my local circles called "Data Terrorism"

Before I dropped out of Georgia Tech, I was going to publish a research paper explaining my reasoning for "Data Terrorism".

This article didn't touch on my points, I'm focused on weaponizing personal information. Atlanta is split between two counties, and one of them (DeKalb) used to have a website which published booking information. This allowed private websites to crawl the data and setup "ransom"-esque business models (pay us to delete your entry form our site).

I guess if you're ignorant, you would say "oh, well that's only for criminals"...but no. They're doing the same thing for all public records.

I recently found out that my 1st grade teacher filed for bankruptcy and foreclosed on her home around 2010....and her mortgage was around 250k. This came off a simple Google search of her name.

There is no reason that I should have ever known that.

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> There is no reason that I should have ever known that.

Take into account this is largely a cultural opinion. It is well know that in Norway, your salary and taxes are public. So you mosty know how much everyone is making.

It is possible that something unthinkable today is tomorrow cultural norm.

In the US for most persons paid by the public sector or by assorted non-profits, the salary is public information. That's accepted as a given. So I wouldn't be surprised to be able learn the 1st-grade teacher's salary, if she is still working. But the details of her mortgage troubles?

Even if that wasn't up on the site, it would appear at the top of any basic credit report.

I think data terrorism is a good term. I say that particularly because, from personal experience, collateral damage is a part of the phenomenon.

Recently, some bloggers from one polar end of the American political spectrum mistook me for a blogger from the opposite polar end (we have somewhat similar names). They proceeded to dox me (email and physical addresses, phone number, the works) and I had a simply terrible week. Reminded me of the part in the Terminator where Arnie starts going through the Sarah Connors in the phone book, line by line.

Home values and bankruptcy have been public record for a long time. There is a public interest in being able to see all transactions and history on property, and it’s important for debitors to be able to know when people have declared bankruptcy. Part of filing things in court is that it becomes public record.

> Home values and bankruptcy have been public record for a long time. There is a public interest in being able to see all transactions and history on property, and it’s important for debitors to be able to know when people have declared bankruptcy. Part of filing things in court is that it becomes public record.

But it's important to note that information was never this easy to access.

It's one thing to be able to find out such information on someone in the context of in important financial transaction, it's quite another to be able to easily and casually find out such information for no reason besides curiosity.

I think the traditional difficultly in accessing "public records" was an important feature of having them "public." Now that they're so easy to access, we should perhaps re-think how public they really should be.

<<no reason besides curiosity.>>

What's wrong about this?

Our society is full of people who aren't mature enough to handle the information properly.

There's a bunch of busybodies who have noting better to do than screw over people's present and future on account of their past.

It's not a stretch to imagine the kind of person who cares whether your grass is 3/8" longer than the HOA says it should be showing up at a PTA meeting to complain about how someone who once went bankrupt or starred in an adult film is inherently not qualified to teach kindergarten.

That's not something we want to enable so that's why making stuff readily accessible to the public isn't good. If someone wants to dig then let them but digging up someone's past should be hard enough work that you don't do it on a whim and it doesn't scale.

wouldn't the world be better if data was open and easily accessible on everyone?

new morals would develop around reality rather than the fake image we are able to project. with constant surveillance i hope we enter into a more honest world.

> wouldn't the world be better if data was open and easily accessible on everyone?

> new morals would develop around reality rather than the fake image we are able to project. with constant surveillance i hope we enter into a more honest world.

No, clearly not. The mistake you're making is assuming everyone will be affected equally.

What would actually happen is some people would get burned, badly and forever, by the lack of privacy (or openness, as you call it). Everyone else will either live in fear of the possibility or go about ignorantly assuming it'll never happen to them.

There's value in being able to put your past mistakes behind you or being able to keep information from those who would do you harm.

Entities such as your employer and potential employers can know the same level of information about you by paying (or hacking) companies like Equifax for it.

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