--- Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2003 07:31:34 -0800 (PST) From: Joseph Lorenzo Hall <jhall@private> Reply-To: joehall@private To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private> cc: Erick Peirson <erick@private> Subject: Re: [Politech] Why not to mirror Diebold documents: privacy concerns [priv] In-Reply-To: <6.0.0.22.2.20031104073744.02e48d58@private> 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 ----------------------------------------------------------------- Joseph Lorenzo Hall http://pobox.com/~joehall/ Graduate Student blog: http://pobox.com/~joehall/nqb/ _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
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