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Privacy The Internet Politics

Voted In America? VoteRef Probably Doxed You (404media.co) 83

Posted by BeauHD from the PSA dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: If you voted in the U.S. presidential election yesterday in which Donald Trump won comfortably, or a previous election, a website powered by a right-wing group is probably doxing you. VoteRef makes it trivial for anyone to search the name, physical address, age, party affiliation, and whether someone voted that year for people living in most states instantly and for free. This can include ordinary citizens, celebrities, domestic abuse survivors, and many other people. Voting rolls are public records, and ways to more readily access them are not new. But during a time of intense division, political violence, or even the broader threat of data being used to dox or harass anyone, sites like VoteRef turn a vital part of the democratic process -- simply voting -- into a security and privacy threat. [...]

The Voter Reference Foundation, which runs VoteRef, is a right wing organization helmed by a former Trump campaign official, ProPublica previously reported. The goal for that organization was to find irregularities in the number of voters and the number of ballots cast, but state election officials said their findings were "fundamentally incorrect," ProPublica added. In an interview with NPR, the ProPublica reporter said that the Voter Reference Foundation insinuated (falsely) that the 2020 election of Joe Biden was fraudulent in some way. 404 Media has found people on social media using VoteRef's data to spread voting conspiracies too. VoteRef has steadily been adding more states' records to the VoteRef website. At the time of writing, it has records for all states that legally allow publication. Some exceptions include California, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. ProPublica reported that VoteRef removed the Pennsylvania data after being contacted by an attorney for Pennsylvania's Department of State. "Digitizing and aggregating data meaningfully changes the privacy context and the risks to people. Your municipal government storing your marriage certificate and voter information in some basement office filing cabinet is not even remotely the same as a private company digitizing all the data, labeling it, piling it all together, making it searchable," said Justin Sherman, a Duke professor who studies data brokers.

"Policymakers need to get with the times and recognize that data brokers digitizing, aggregating, and selling data based on public records -- which are usually considered 'publicly available information' and exempted from privacy laws -- has fueled decades of stalking and gendered violence, harassment, doxing, and even murder," Sherman said. "Protecting citizens of all political stripes, targets and survivors of gendered violence, public servants who are targets for doxing and death threats, military service members, and everyone in between depends on reframing how we think about public records privacy and the mass aggregation and sale of our data."

Voted In America? VoteRef Probably Doxed You More | Reply

Voted In America? VoteRef Probably Doxed You

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  • Ah, there lies the rub. Privacy protection from aggregating in the past was provided by the volume of data and the cost. Now it is less expensive. I favor a constitutional amendment to protect against it. Especially with respect to advertising, politics, and medical.
    • Voter registration is a State issue regulated by law. Why would a constitutional amendment be useful?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by msk ( 6205 )

        Voter registration is a State issue regulated by law. Why would a constitutional amendment be useful?

        An amendment could change that.

        Unfortunately, Congress has little will to act to protect the people most vulnerable, so enabling legislation is likely to be weak, or slanted to favor the oligarchs.

        • Voter registration is a State issue not a federal issue. There are laws in each State concerning voter registration and this is how some States went full-in for 'motor voter' registrations. Advocating for a federal constitutional amendment is living in fiction. If you want a change, the place to do it is the office of your State legislature.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by Entrope ( 68843 )

            "Motor voter" [wikipedia.org] is a federal law, passed under Congress's constitutional authority to regulate the elections of Senators and Representatives. Six states are exempt, but the other 44 must comply with it.

            When you say "some States went full-in for 'motor voter' registrations", what do you mean?

            • In past 4-6 years, some States went all-in by not just offering voter registration at DMV, but auto-registering voters with no way to be removed from voter lists (where I lived it was possible to get my automatic voter registration set to inactive, but my info remains on the voter lists). These State changes were in recent years. If you want secret voter registration lists the place to attempt that is State law. But then some people would more easily be able to vote in every state.

    • Re:aggregating data (Score:4, Insightful)

      by mysidia ( 191772 ) on Thursday November 07, 2024 @08:06PM (#64929329)

      hm.. My thinking is "aggregating" data offline in reasonable amounts should be fine.

      However your voter registration details ought not be public. Public records should be information about government operations NOT citizens' personal details.

      In addition public records should NOT mean that private corporations are allowed to conduct mass aggregation. I will give an example: land ownership records. They are and should be public records, but retrieving and saving copies of the records en mass for properties that you are not connected with and have no specific business with ought to be illegal.

      Finally; the largest issue is placing it online on servers connected to the internet in a manner that makes personally-identifiable info on people searchable by others Or opens the possibility to exposure in a data breach.

      I would honestly say this concept of a "data broker" who collects and resells information to members of the public indiscriminately or for trivial purposes such as marketing should be Illegal.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        hm.. My thinking is "aggregating" data offline in reasonable amounts should be fine.

        However your voter registration details ought not be public. Public records should be information about government operations NOT citizens' personal details.

        I'd like to see the same thinking applied to all records about an individual, including personal addresses used for registering a business or nonprofit, DBAs, etc. The government should have them, but they should not be considered public records that can be obtained except in conjunction with a court order, because the alternative is just inviting harassment.

        Speaking of which,

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by dgatwood ( 11270 )

          Speaking of which,

          Sorry, didn't finish that. Speaking of which, I wonder if any of these organizations have any "public records" that might be interesting to the public.

        • The states maintain business records so that, among other things, lawsuits can be properly served. As soon as McDonalds is willing to accept default judgments in cases where a franchisee's assistant manager was served, I'll support removing business information from public view.

          If this were actually a big deal, there's a simple solution: form your entity in Delaware. Ain't nobody idly paying the fees those guys demand for basic information.
      • Land records must be public as long as there are property taxes to challenge - need to know the comparables for the county protest form. You may consider starting smaller, like disallowing DMVs from selling car ownership records to data brokers and private investigators.
    • Constitutional amendments to create laws that can be handled individually by states (or even at the federal level) is always a bad idea.
    • More than ten million zombies voted for Joe (81 million) and then went back to their graves, so Kam lost (69 million). Voter ID is essential to keep them from crawling out again in future elections.

  • Most states have privacy protections for certain crime victims and certain other high-risk individuals such as judges and police officers. https://www.eac.gov/election-o... [eac.gov] has details.

  • Terms of service (Score:5, Funny)

    by Kwelstr ( 114389 ) on Thursday November 07, 2024 @07:26PM (#64929275)
    I tried to read their terms of service but to do so I get a prompt to agree to the terms of service. I can't read them if I don't agree first \_()_/

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by dgatwood ( 11270 )

      I tried to read their terms of service but to do so I get a prompt to agree to the terms of service. I can't read them if I don't agree first \_()_/

      Pretty sure that renders any agreement inherently null and void. Personally, I'd create a screen recording of that fact, followed by me clicking it, and then try to find as many creative ways to violate it as I could, just for the entertainment value of seeing their lawyers' faces when I sent them that video in response to any complaints, but that's just me. :-D

      • Pretty sure that renders any agreement inherently null and void. Personally, I'd create a screen recording of that fact, followed by me clicking it, and then try to find as many creative ways to violate it as I could, just for the entertainment value of seeing their lawyers' faces when I sent them that video in response to any complaints, but that's just me. :-D

        Just wondering... Are you employed, like with a job?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dgatwood ( 11270 )

          Pretty sure that renders any agreement inherently null and void. Personally, I'd create a screen recording of that fact, followed by me clicking it, and then try to find as many creative ways to violate it as I could, just for the entertainment value of seeing their lawyers' faces when I sent them that video in response to any complaints, but that's just me. :-D

          Just wondering... Are you employed, like with a job?

          Yeah, and no, it's not as a lawyer. But I do recall from the law-related classes I have taken over the years that a contract requires a meeting of the minds, and it is therefore fundamentally impossible to form a contract if one side of the contract is prohibited from reading it by the other side, because no such meeting of the minds can possibly occur without some reasonable awareness of what you're agreeing to.

          Ergo, if you could show that it appears to be impossible to actually read the terms of service

  • Confused (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 07, 2024 @07:27PM (#64929277)

    Does anyone know why VoteRef doxxed me 107 times? Do they perform a separate doxing operation for each vote I cast this year?

  • That's not what doxing means (Score:4, Insightful)

    by russotto ( 537200 ) on Thursday November 07, 2024 @07:55PM (#64929311) Journal

    This site doesn't have me, but if it did, so what? If you've made any political contributions, you can look that up at various sites, but since they're either left-wing or apparently bipartisan (OpenSecrets), nobody bats an eye.

    If they somehow linked my pseudonymous slashdot handle with my name, THAT would be doxing. (Except my slashdot handle isn't pseudonymous anyway)

    • It's for better security (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Okian Warrior ( 537106 ) on Thursday November 07, 2024 @09:27PM (#64929465) Homepage Journal

      This site doesn't have me, but if it did, so what? If you've made any political contributions, you can look that up at various sites, but since they're either left-wing or apparently bipartisan (OpenSecrets), nobody bats an eye.

      If they somehow linked my pseudonymous slashdot handle with my name, THAT would be doxing. (Except my slashdot handle isn't pseudonymous anyway)

      Suppose I didn't vote, but VoteRef shows that I did. That indicates voting fraud, someone entered an absentee vote in my name.

      Suppose the lot across from me is vacant, and VoteRef shows that several people registered and voted using that address.

      VoteRef is useful for identifying and combatting voter fraud. Lots and lots of theories on how vote fraud could occur, having the data open and available for everyone can lower the temperature, and reassure people that the voting process is secure.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by dirk ( 87083 )

        In some nice world that we don't live in, that could be true. In the world we actually live in, that is not at all what is happening. They are not some nice website that is out there to help reassure people the voting process is secure. They have made insinuations that the 2020 election was stolen (it wasn't). They have taken normal discrepancies and used them to imply fraud is occurring (it isn't on any meaningful level). They have raised the temperature not lowered it, and that is their goal.

  • That's OK (Score:1, Troll)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 )
    18m Americans couldn't vote because of long waits (7+ hours), especially in swing states. So all we need to do is keep that up and by 2028 Votref won't have any data.

    • We covered this the last time you posted it. Repeating it won't make it true when you try again on another article.

      Democrats have had roughly 65 million votes in the last several elections. Except for 2020 where they had 80 million. Then it dropped back to the normal 65 million in 2024.

      What is more likely... 15 *million* people somehow couldn't vote this time and 80 million is the new Democrat standard or something "odd" occurred in the one year where the numbers didn't match the pattern and the one year

    • Aside from the fact that some MAGA idiot was across the street filming the polling place for his dumb TikTok channel (yea, I saw the video of myself, no, I'm not going to link to it), my partner and I had no difficulties with early voting in Florida.

      Granted, it didn't result in the outcome we'd hoped for, but living in Florida we're used to it by now.

    • Despite the long line-ups, ten million fewer voted this time than last time. Kam lost (70 million) because Joeâ(TM)s (81 million) zombie voters mostly stayed in their graves. You either need ID for the dead, or for the living voters, but keeping track of the living is easier.

  • Oh no, doxxed by a right wing group! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Thursday November 07, 2024 @08:11PM (#64929335)

    It's perfectly fine if I get doxxed by a left wing group, I guess...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by CRC'99 ( 96526 )

      It's perfectly fine if I get doxxed by a left wing group, I guess...

      America doesn't have left wing groups.

      Your politics are right wing, and extreme right wing.

      If you actually had left wing representation, you might have a properly working healthcare system etc...

  • Glad to know only right wing groups collect data (Score:4, Funny)

    by iAmWaySmarterThanYou ( 10095012 ) on Thursday November 07, 2024 @08:28PM (#64929373)

    Because left wing groups and companies fully respect your privacy.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by caseih ( 160668 )

      Sure but it's one party in particular that has been making a lot of noise about voter fraud. They are the ones who are doing a lot of data collection. Somewhat ironically, given the majority vote that went to trump there also must be a certain, tiny amount of voter fraud in his favor, statistically. As always it is never enough that would alter the outcome.

      As to your signature, no, she said simply that the country will survive him, which is correct, even in a worst case scenario. That linked article is d

    • "Both hyenas and gazelles have eyes. Therefore, pay no attention to the glowing orbs full of hate and hunger staring at you from the tall grass." -You, if you were capable of poetry.

      • I had a 6 month long real time conversation with a gf back in the day entirely in Haiku.

        I'm sure you're a better poet, however. Because reasons. Good ones. Such as, you don't like me. You win!

        • Your story was plausible until it involved you having a gf.

          I'm not a poet. I just thought what I happened to write sounded pretty cool.

          • Glad I read to the end of the thread before responding to that jackass. Of course, it might actually be funny if a bunch of us responded basically the same way you did. I have no doubt he'd be a one-man population explosion if his hand could get pregnant.

  • I hope you didn't look yourself up on them. (Score:3)

    by Eunomion ( 8640039 ) on Thursday November 07, 2024 @08:32PM (#64929385)
    Because if you did, they have you now.
  • Has anyone looked into this source?
  • The first step for almost any political campaign is to get a list of registered voters. How do you think they get your address for all those mailings? These are public records available to anyone. I know some states place restrictions on how the lists are used, usually limiting them to election related activities. But there is nothing sinister about someone putting together a master database of voters. There are plenty of organizations that not only have the list but have connected it to donations and resp

  • Um, why is this a surprise? (Score:3)

    by tiqui ( 1024021 ) on Thursday November 07, 2024 @10:18PM (#64929541)

    Traditionally, things like driver's license info and voter registration info is either just another public record which is accessible to everybody, or in some places it's sort of a quasi-public record.

    In places like Florida, for instance, driver's license data is a public record anybody can get, which makes it easier for you to have your lawyer track somebody down and serve papers on them [if needed] after something like an accident. In California, driver's license data used to be a public record, but the laws were changed after a stalker used that data to track down a young actress and murder her; now you must make a special application [and pay a fee, IIRC] to get such records from the CA DMV. In other words, they're still sort of public records, but access is controlled enough that the state can be on the lookout for stalkers and such trying to use it, and the hurdles are high enough to discourage the non-serious from bothering.

    Most places do not make voter data directly available to any clown who wants it, but all government agencies, political candidates, and political orgs can get it [so they can do their mass-mailings, get-out-the-vote activities, etc] as can academics, journalists, and even businesses [but I think these entities need to go through an application process in most areas]. The trick is, the politicians can ALWAYS be counted upon to act in their self-interest... so the laws governing this stuff always seem to have a particular loophole: no matter how restrictive initial access to these databases is, there's rarely any control on what an entity that obtains the data does with it - including a lack of restrictions on them forwarding it to other entities.

  • Digitization and aggregation fundamentally change privacy and our laws have not kept up with the times which has put all people at risk.

  • ... risks to people.

    Correction: Changes the risk of stalking, to people.

    After the fascist US government has eliminated; reproductive rights, employee's rights, education, healthcare subsidies (medi-care/medi-aid), and possibly, pensions, the next step is eliminating politicians who criticize press releases from the Ministry of Truth.

    A fascist/totalitarian government may turn a blind eye to the assault or murder of 'non-persons' (Eg. Homosexual men in Russia.) but it's the dissenters or not 'normal' people in government, t

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