198 million Americans hit by "largest ever" voter records leak

[Jim Dandy]

This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by muriel_volestrangler (a host of the Latest Breaking News forum).

Source: zdnet.com

A huge trove of voter data, including personal information and voter profiling data on what's thought to be every registered US voter dating back more than a decade, has been found on an exposed and unsecured server, ZDNet has learned.

It's believed to be the largest ever known exposure of voter information to date. The various databases containing 198 million records on American voters from all political parties were found stored on an open Amazon S3 storage server owned by a Republican data analytics firm, Deep Root Analytics.

UpGuard cyber risk analyst Chris Vickery, who found the exposed server, verified the data. Through his responsible disclosure, the server was secured late last week, and prior to publication.

This leak shines a spotlight on the Republicans' multi-million dollar effort to better target potential voters by utilizing big data. The move largely a response to the successes of the Barack Obama campaign in 2008, thought to have been the first data-driven campaign.

Read more: http://www.zdnet.com/article/security-lapse-exposes-198-million-united-states-voter-records/

[ResistantAmerican17]

1. What?????!!!??? A Republican Outfit??? Lax Security?????

Who are these ZDNet busybodies anyway. That voter pot-o-gold was supposed to be for Russian Patriots to find!!!!

[Tobin S.]

2. Well, well, well.

And some people are worried about securing their identities online. It's all already out there. It's just a matter of how much attention you get at this point.

[blm]

3. I doubt it was accident - more like, purposely left open for PutinzBoyz

.

[dalton99a]

5. Yep.

[Dawson Leery]

12. You bet it was.

Fucking Thugs!

[ToxMarz]

20. Oopsy Doopsy

[TheBlackAdder]

29. The FBI should investigate the IP addresses that accessed that server for foreign actors.

[MosheFeingold]

32. What the heck would they do with it?

It's a list of voters and who they are likely to vote for.

Valuable information if you are running for office or (probably) selling things.

Not sure what Putin would do with it.

It's a serious blow to the RNC. We can use this data to target our voters.

[Ligyron]

4. Oh, Republicans are responsible?

That's OK then, no big deal...

[Generic Other]

6. It's so unbelieveable

I wish it was fake news.

[Shell_Seas]

7. Each record lists...

... voter's name, date of birth, home address, phone number, and voter registration details, such as which political party a person is registered with. The data also includes "profiling" information, voter ethnicities and religions, and various other kinds of information pertinent to a voter's political persuasions and preferences, as modeled by the firms' data scientists, in order to better target political advertising.

Question:

Who would this leaked data be valuable to? And what would they use it for?

[Qutzupalotl]

16. A: Russia and microtargeting propaganda. n/t

[Bernardo de La Paz]

18. Data very useful for driving social media bots targetted at Sanders/Green/undecided voters.

Bot social media posts and reposts and tweets and retweets about emails and Clinton Foundation and emails and Benghazi and emails and child prostitution and emails and ....

[Sunlei]

21. 198 million people need compensation from those sellers of personal information.

tracking cookies, ad trackers should be illegal too. Or people should be PAID and agree to be tracked.

[Sunlei]

22. direct value is in dumping people off voter registration rolls by the thousands for any small reason

Like Republicans have done in many counties.

[SergeStorms]

26. It could be used.....

by a despotic ruler to identify opposition party members for "re-education" or "removal". Worst case scenario, but we have to expect anything now with President Clownshoes in office. We're in uncharted territory now.

[Shell_Seas]

27. Very Orwellian.

[dalton99a]

8. "We do not believe that our systems have been hacked"

Why bother, when their server was exposed and unsecured!

[Javaman]

9. someone that wants to hold the america public hostage. I can only think of one nation at the moment.

[mahina]

10. That's 70 million more people than voted in the 2008 election by 70.

Way more than voted in 2016. That's all of us.

Agreed with the point upthread that this was on purpose.

Take back the our states election systems and demand paper ballots and hack-proof systems.

[tblue37]

11. A Republican data analytics firm--of course. nt

[blm]

13. Making it far easier for Republican SoS in swing states to choose their Crosscheck victims

for 'accidental' removal due to 'similar names', of course.

[awesomerwb1]

14. Meh. Just coinncidence.

Expect Prince Bogawa from Nigeria to contact you directly about a lot of free money.

Or your right to vote to be compromised because someone used your data to register in a different state.

Could become a clustermess.

[sinkingfeeling]

15. Lock them up! Lock them Up! They used an unsecured server!

[Bernardo de La Paz]

17. Bannon/Breitbart funded by Mercer billionaires who have a different analytical company

Those data records are much more than registrations. Up to 48 pieces of info about likes and preferences and political activities.

Maybe DATA LAUNDERING of Cambridge Analytica data (Republican Mercers, Robert and Rebekah)?

And maybe Republican collusion: LIHOP Let It Happen On Purpose maybe to let the Russians just "happen" to stumble on it.

A tweeter says he has info that Republican Steve Bannon is "shitting diamonds" over this whole issue. He has obtained legal counsel & NOT Republican Trump's lawyer.

[erronis]

23. The Russkis aren't stumbling into this - they helped cook it up

Or at least influenced its conception and execution.

Don't play a strategic game involving knocking of key assets with a russian (e.g. chess). I know, I tried.

Part of the problem with our so-called democratic and "open" state is that external actors have much more access to the knowledge pipelines. I don't want to lose sunshine in our processes but we need to be far more diligent than we have been.

People like the GOoPers should not be allowed to touch information with any real information, let alone personal identifiers. Lordy knows they don't need real information to make their decisions.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

25. Yes, but by "accidentally" leaving the database exposed, the US companies try to have a cover story.

[SHRED]

19. "But her emails"

[Amimnoch]

24. Bigger question for me.. Does the Democratic Party have access

to this same data?

If so, how is it that the parties know who voted, and how they voted, yet can't seem to get the actual voting numbers accurate???

How does a political party go about getting access to this info?

[Retrograde]

28. Some of the information is public record

Voter name, address, party affiliation if applicable, whether or not they voted in previous elections - that can be obtained from county registrars. Who they voted for isn't. What's unusual is the scope of the date: 100million+ records is just about every voter in the country, as well as attempts to correlated them with Facebook and similar postings.

How does a party get the data? In my county the party goes down to the registrar's office and asks for it.
Then they can look at it and try to deduce patterns, if any. The registrars control the voting process and tally the results, which get rolled up to the state.

[Thor_MN]

30. They don't know how they voted.

Just saying.

[IronLionZion]

31. But her emails!

[muriel_volestrangler]

33. Locking - duplicate thread

of https://www.democraticunderground.com/10141802809 . Please continue discussion there. Thank you.