Gigantic data leak: pretty much a national US voter database

...available online with no protection whatsoever: a data set of nearly 200 million people containing rather private and personal information. Yikes!

In what is the largest known data exposure of its kind, UpGuard’s Cyber Risk Team can now confirm that a misconfigured database containing the sensitive personal details of over 198 million American voters was left exposed to the internet by a firm working on behalf of the Republican National Committee (RNC) in their efforts to elect Donald Trump. The data, which was stored in a publicly accessible cloud server owned by Republican data firm Deep Root Analytics, included 1.1 terabytes of entirely unsecured personal information compiled by DRA and at least two other Republican contractors, TargetPoint Consulting, Inc. and Data Trust. In total, the personal information of potentially near all of America’s 200 million registered voters was exposed, including names, dates of birth, home addresses, phone numbers, and voter registration details, as well as data described as “modeled” voter ethnicities and religions.

https://www.upguard.com/breaches/the-rnc-files

I highly recommend to read the entire article. For me, one alarm bell kept going off after the other.

...well. This puts the Clinton E-mail Server furor into perspective, doesn't it?

What's the betting that no charges are brought over this clear case of security negligence?

Sigh. And they again would blame us, Russians for that.

"Stray cat abandoned her kittens - oh, Russians, what for you did it?!" (c)

Dilandu wrote:Sigh. And they again would blame us, Russians for that.

"Stray cat abandoned her kittens - oh, Russians, what for you did it?!" (c)

How the {expletive deleted} can they blame the Russians for what was obviously home-grown negligence?

Oh. Wait.

Yeah. America is the natural home of the Conspiracy Theorist...

Michael Everett wrote:

Dilandu wrote:Sigh. And they again would blame us, Russians for that.

"Stray cat abandoned her kittens - oh, Russians, what for you did it?!" (c)

How the {expletive deleted} can they blame the Russians for what was obviously home-grown negligence?

Oh. Wait.

Yeah. America is the natural home of the Conspiracy Theorist...

Hmmm I do not remember receiving any money to vote one way or the other. No Dollars or Rubles... only disgust towards both political parties for foisting two flawed people to choose between. Good people refuse to subject themselves and their families to the BS political process. Just MHO for what it is worth.

Senior Chief wrote:
Hmmm I do not remember receiving any money to vote one way or the other. No Dollars or Rubles... only disgust towards both political parties for foisting two flawed people to choose between. Good people refuse to subject themselves and their families to the BS political process. Just MHO for what it is worth.

The object of such a database is not bribing voters. It's target marketing of candidates. If you agree with a candidate on three issues out of six, you're likely to get mailers & phone calls that only emphasize those three issues. Your neighbor who disagrees with you will get marketed on those other issues.

I've long believed that the idea of marketing as a "science" has been a threat to civilization, because it's all about filtering what you see and hear, in aid of the marketer's advantage, not yours.

Senior Chief wrote:Hmmm I do not remember receiving any money to vote one way or the other. No Dollars or Rubles... only disgust towards both political parties for foisting two flawed people to choose between. Good people refuse to subject themselves and their families to the BS political process. Just MHO for what it is worth.

That's a very simplistic view of what the russians did. They didn't bribe you, or any other voter, to change their opinion. No, what they did was unleash a bunch of kompromat they've assembled over quite some time, material so compromising that news sources had to report on it.

The point is: Influencing an election is hard. Messing with the vote count takes so many resources that keeping an operation like that secret is impossible (no matter whether its paper or electronic ballots), but influencing voters so that they make the decision you want them to make out of their own free will is very much doable.

Living in the real world means accepting that our politicians aren't going to be paragons of virtue. No matter how well behaved you've been, the all-pervasive data collection that surrounds us makes it far too easy to find (or, if need be, construct) compromising material. What the russians were counting on were people like Master Chief here: People who would be inclined to vote, but are easy to turn away from a given candidate by dropping something they'd find distasteful (Not to forget the people who genuinely believe in whatever Trump says just because "he's not a politician" or "he's not politically correct": They too are a big factor. However, as we've seen in this election, all it takes for it to deliver the wanted result is for a few people in the right places to stay home in disgust).

That's how we ended up with a russian agent in the White House: Someone so thoroughly compromised (and compromisable), that it doesn't take much work at all to make him do what you want him to do (Which, in case it wasn't clear, is 1. discrediting US foreign policy, 2. derail US domestic policy, 3. possibly lift existing sanctions on Russia).

The E wrote:
That's a very simplistic view of what the russians did. They didn't bribe you, or any other voter, to change their opinion. No, what they did was unleash a bunch of kompromat they've assembled over quite some time, material so compromising that news sources had to report on it.

The point is: Influencing an election is hard. Messing with the vote count takes so many resources that keeping an operation like that secret is impossible (no matter whether its paper or electronic ballots), but influencing voters so that they make the decision you want them to make out of their own free will is very much doable.

Living in the real world means accepting that our politicians aren't going to be paragons of virtue. No matter how well behaved you've been, the all-pervasive data collection that surrounds us makes it far too easy to find (or, if need be, construct) compromising material. What the russians were counting on were people like Master Chief here: People who would be inclined to vote, but are easy to turn away from a given candidate by dropping something they'd find distasteful (Not to forget the people who genuinely believe in whatever Trump says just because "he's not a politician" or "he's not politically correct": They too are a big factor. However, as we've seen in this election, all it takes for it to deliver the wanted result is for a few people in the right places to stay home in disgust).

That's how we ended up with a russian agent in the White House: Someone so thoroughly compromised (and compromisable), that it doesn't take much work at all to make him do what you want him to do (Which, in case it wasn't clear, is 1. discrediting US foreign policy, 2. derail US domestic policy, 3. possibly lift existing sanctions on Russia).

I.e. what we just did was just revealing the truth about some candidate dirty deeds.

So, how does it feel to be the recieving end of "noble truth, that must not be covered for the sake of liberty and peoples rights?"

Err - Dilandu.

The issue I have with the Russian intervention in the US election is not so much that compromising details about Hillary Clinton got made public.

The issue is 1) how those details were aquired (by hacking) and 2)that they were launched only against one candidate but not both.

If your government and press had just talked about and made their opinions and preferances about the candidates clear based on legally available information that would be perfectly understandable in my opinion.

I am one of the people who happen to think that Clinton on a certain level deserved what she got, the way the Democratic Establishment and the Clinton campaign did everything to keep the more popular candidate - Sanders - out of the race.
BUT ...

... hacking in order to get compromising details, then launching them on a target shortly before an election to get a desired result is NOT ok. It is a hostile act.

Dilandu wrote:

The E wrote:
That's a very simplistic view of what the russians did. They didn't bribe you, or any other voter, to change their opinion. No, what they did was unleash a bunch of kompromat they've assembled over quite some time, material so compromising that news sources had to report on it.

The point is: Influencing an election is hard. Messing with the vote count takes so many resources that keeping an operation like that secret is impossible (no matter whether its paper or electronic ballots), but influencing voters so that they make the decision you want them to make out of their own free will is very much doable.

Living in the real world means accepting that our politicians aren't going to be paragons of virtue. No matter how well behaved you've been, the all-pervasive data collection that surrounds us makes it far too easy to find (or, if need be, construct) compromising material. What the russians were counting on were people like Master Chief here: People who would be inclined to vote, but are easy to turn away from a given candidate by dropping something they'd find distasteful (Not to forget the people who genuinely believe in whatever Trump says just because "he's not a politician" or "he's not politically correct": They too are a big factor. However, as we've seen in this election, all it takes for it to deliver the wanted result is for a few people in the right places to stay home in disgust).

That's how we ended up with a russian agent in the White House: Someone so thoroughly compromised (and compromisable), that it doesn't take much work at all to make him do what you want him to do (Which, in case it wasn't clear, is 1. discrediting US foreign policy, 2. derail US domestic policy, 3. possibly lift existing sanctions on Russia).

I.e. what we just did was just revealing the truth about some candidate dirty deeds.

So, how does it feel to be the recieving end of "noble truth, that must not be covered for the sake of liberty and peoples rights?"

I not sure who did what to whom trying to influence the latest (2016) U.S. election cycle. I do know that what the media is trying to claim against Russia is exactly what the U.S. routinely does to other nations, e.g., influence their elections to help U.S. national interests. It is time for the American public to grow up and realize the nations do not have friends, they have national interests.

My private suspicions is that Putin was just returning the favor for what the U.S. did in the Ukraine when it helped that country to get rid of an oligarch that favored Russia. I don't think Putin thought that 45 would win, but was just placing a marker down. That doesn't mean that I don't think he is unhappy at having a second international political novice in a row living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. (Not that I think that the Democratic candidate was any smarter internationally based on her less than stellar performance in four years as SecState. Flying a gazillion miles doesn't mean you accomplished anything.)