A reply to mirroring Diebold documents and privacy concerns [priv]

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

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Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2003 07:31:34 -0800 (PST)
From: Joseph Lorenzo Hall <jhall () sims berkeley edu>
Reply-To: joehall () pobox com
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
cc: Erick Peirson <erick () anatolius ptgamer org>
Subject: Re: [Politech] Why not to mirror Diebold documents: privacy concerns
 [priv]
In-Reply-To: <6.0.0.22.2.20031104073744.02e48d58 () mail well com>

On Tue, 4 Nov 2003, Declan McCullagh wrote:

> I would advise Mr. Hall that this campaign affects more than just
> Diebold. There is a vast amount of personal information of
> employees, completely unrelated to the issue at hand, contained in
> the tarball. Civil disobedience does not necessitate the abandonment
> of morals. The publication of private phone numbers and other
> personal information is not justified by the goals that these people
> are trying to reach.

We are not ignorant of this.  However, we feel the need to keep these
documents as true to their original form (md5sum hashes, etc.) as
possible or loose legitamacy and/or data for a proper investigation.
I am a strong believer in personal privacy and actions taken to
protect such privacy, but, I would argue, the interests of the state
of our democracy in this case are too important *not* to mirror the
documents.

Now that there has been some repurcussions (the EFF suit (see previous
politech email) and the indefinite postponement of certification of
Diebold machines in California[1]) we can only hope that these memos
will not be silenced soon and that some attorneys general and
secretaries of state will be launching investigations.

It would be great to have the memos removed from public access once
the issues that they contain have been aired, precisely to protect the
privacy of Diebold employees.  I would be willing to entertain any
number of proposals... like an "erase" campaign that involved those of
us who have publicly mirrored the documents removing them from public
fora.  However, I'm not sure we can put all of the genie back into the
bottle and I apologize if anyone is caught in the cross-fire.

Joe

[1] Diebold certifications postponed indefinitely due to applying a
last-minut software patch without certification in Alameda county
(where I live and vote):

CA halts e-vote certification
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,61068,00.html

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Joseph Lorenzo Hall                    http://pobox.com/~joehall/
Graduate Student             blog: http://pobox.com/~joehall/nqb/
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