Comment by fuckcensorship | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fuckcensorship | Hacker News Reader

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I have similar hesitations about registering to vote in my state (North Carolina) because it makes voter record data available to “Any person upon request and for a fee. Free lists are provided upon request to political parties.” [1]. My name, address, etc. ended up on dozens of sketchy websites after registering to vote previously. Privacy conscious legislation can’t come soon enough.

[1]: https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/access...

I feel the same way about donating to political campaigns. It’s just not worth it considering that that information is then public record and could be used against you in all sorts of ways. Perhaps I will feel different when I’m older and of I’ve enough money that I no longer need to worry about damaging my job prospects.

Maybe it would make it ok to donate if you also found a likable person on the other side to give money to at the same time.

I'm like this with magazine subscriptions. Seeing my junkmail double after subscribing to one not-cheap literary quarterly was enough to convince me never to subscribe to any sort of periodical again. God knows who else they sold my info to.

This is a bit of a catch-22. On the one hand, I very much want to know to whom the politicians owe their allegiance to. But, like you, I don't necessarily want the world to know whom I choose to donate to.

I believe small, cash-only donations are anonymous. So that might be a good way.

When I updated my address for voter registration a couple of years ago, I noticed my phone number was wrong so I updated it too. Huge mistake. I rarely received spam texts or telemarketer calls and now I receive both constantly. It started just a couple of months after the change. Even without those two annoyances, the political spam texts are nightmarish. They're basically DDOS attacks because the lists are distributed to large numbers of volunteers using their own phones to send out texts. It doesn't matter how many numbers you block, the next day there are dozens more text from dozens of other numbers. And since they're political campaign texts, they are legal due to the exemption politicians gave themselves to the anti-spam laws. Right now we're in a lull between elections so the number of political texts is small but as we get close to the midterms, it will become an all day affair. In 2020 it peaked at over 80 political texts in a single day. Not sure why they think this is effective in making anyone like them but they keep at it.

> Not sure why they think this is effective in making anyone like them but they keep at it.

It could be the other party trying to make you hate their opponent (a "False Flag" operation).

> Even without those two annoyances, the political spam texts are nightmarish.

This was one of the biggest shocks I had moving to California. I eventually got fed up and actually replied telling them never to text me again and someone actually replied. That was when I learned that real people are on the other end of these things. It made it even creepier that my phone number was handed out, not to a machine, but to a real person.

Some data have to be public for them to be audited by multiple independent parties. It is absolutely necessary for democracy to function. I don't see what harm can be done by someone knowing your name and address.

spoken like a person with a common name and/or no mortal enemies

Heh if you think that's bad check out FL

If the government knows it, the same data should be available to all citizens. Traffic camera feeds, voter data, medicare claims, everything. With minor, very narrow restrictions for the very latest military secrets.

I see you’ve never been stalked harassed threatened or dealt with people trying to make your life hell.

The government goons are some of the worst stalkers and harassers, which is exactly why they should never be allowed to collect this data in the first place. Our Founders understood this, but unfortunately, humans generally never learn anything from history.

The Constitution calls for a census (Enumeration) every ten years. https://www.census.gov/history/pdf/Article_1_Section_2.pdf

You don't see any practical issues with that approach..? Do you know how much personal information is in a medicare claim?

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