>The OPEN Government Data Act requires all non-sensitive government data to be made available in open and machine-readable formats by default.
That sounds pretty awesome (and expensive)!
That sounds pretty awesome (and expensive)!
I'd argue that keeping those public is also a net good for society.
Of all the comments I've made that should have been down voted, the one I made above was it. HN gods are having mercy on me it seems.
Countries with sham elections tend to be open ballot, as the voters need to show they support the current ruler. This is why the selected candidate wins with 98% of the vote or some such.
You can't even get 70% of people to agree on which direction the sun rises.
A secret ballot is necessary for free elections.
Of course one could argue that all primaries should be non-partisan. Or that governments shouldn't spend money on running partisan primaries on behalf of political parties which are private organizations.
I just don't understand why which party I voted for needs to be "public" record. I don't believe that companies & the general public need to know. I've used campaign software that shows how incredibly easy it is to select a list of people & market towards those who voted one way or another in the primary.
Laws about this vary from state to state.
I just don't understand why that needs to be "public" record. I don't believe that companies & the general public need to know that in 2018 I chose to be part of the Pastafarian party. Maybe I want to avoid all the noodle marketing that comes with that affiliation.
Even more funny are when specifications for engines for weapon systems (tanks, aircraft, not the guns/missiles, etc) are tightly guarded secrets domestically but considered public information overseas.
I'm just pointing this out because I'd like to see a movement towards actually more open government.
Source? How were they able to do that?
If you include year, birth dates carry an awful lot of information.
The 87% paper is https://dataprivacylab.org/projects/identifiability/paper1.p.... It says:
”It was found that 87% (216 million of 248 million) of the population in the United States had reported characteristics that likely made them unique based only on {5-digit ZIP, gender, date of birth}. About half of the U.S. population (132 million of 248 million or 53%) are likely to be uniquely identified by only {place, gender, date of birth}, where place is basically the city, town, or municipality in which the person resides. And even at the county level, {county, gender, date of birth} are likely to uniquely identify 18% of the U.S. population. In general, few characteristics are needed to uniquely identify a person.”
More info likely available via http://latanyasweeney.org/work/identifiability.html (discussed in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2942967)
Kind of depends on what they say is "sensitive". Probably not much of a facility for appealing that designation either.
I sorta look at it like the "First Step" prison reform act, it's only the start.
Baby steps.
I have been working for two years with a group trying to add Michigan to the list. Tomorrow I am publishing an open letter to our governor asking her to support our efforts. I will post a link on HN.