Tag: ACLU

Breach of privacy at DevalPatrick.com

After reading about Secretary of State Bill Galvin’s concern (Globe story here; Herald story here) that DevalPatrick.com was not sufficiently protecting users’ privacy, I decided to experiment by starting the process of becoming a registered user.

First I was asked to enter my name or phone number. I entered “Dan Kennedy,” along with my town. No go. So then I entered just “Kennedy,” again along with my town.

Whoa! I got 78 names along with the streets they live on. The list consisted of everyone in my town named “Kennedy,” “Kenneth” or, oddly enough, “Kent,” “Kondo” or “Kimby.” Yes, Mrs. Media Nation and I were among the 78.

What’s weird about this is that the names are listed apparently for the sole purpose of your being able to verify that one of them is you. But you get the complete list without actually having to complete the registration process. So I can enter “Chen” and “Wellesley” and get another nice long list of names and streets, or, say, “Purcell” and “Weston.” Oh, look! There’s Pat Purcell, publisher of the Boston Herald.

I have no idea why this is necessary. Certainly I can’t think of another Web site for which I’ve registered that requires me to choose from a list of names. I enter my name, and away I go. I suppose the DevalPatrick.com scheme makes it easier to avoid the problem of someone posting nutty comments under a pseudonym. But can’t an intern at this campaign-contribution-funded site intercept those comments? Surely that would be better than violating everyone’s privacy.

The site carries with it this disclaimer: “www.devalpatrick.com believes strongly in protecting people’s privacy. Data on this site is limited to ONLY data that is now publicly available at any number of locations, including city and town halls, and websites. The site further limited data today by eliminating specific street address numbers.”

Is that right? Can any of Media Nation’s readers find a single Web site that displays entire lists of people along with the streets that they live on? (If you can, I’ll post it.) Yes, you can always get stuff like this by going to your town or city clerk’s office. But the hassle of having to do that is in itself a guarantee of a certain degree of privacy.

I’m with John Reinstein of the ACLU of Massachusetts, who tells the Globe’s Andrea Estes, “I’m puzzled by the whole thing.” And, unfortunately, I have to agree with the Herald’s Casey Ross, who calls this “yet another embarrassing misstep” for the governor.

And no, I didn’t complete the registration process.

Even worse: I just tried registering by entering my phone number, and up popped the Media Nation family. Unlike the registration-by-name feature, you don’t have to enter a city or town when you enter a phone number. So DevalPatrick.com also works as a very nice reverse phonebook, using data you were required to provide to the state and paid for by a partisan political-campaign committee.

The Pentagon’s spies

For some time now, the ACLU has been trying to determine the extent to which the Pentagon has spied on antiwar groups. For instance, in my annual Muzzle Awards roundup for the Phoenix last Fourth of July, I noted that ACLU chapters in Maine and Rhode Island had joined efforts to force the Defense Department to turn over records under the Freedom of Information Act.

Well, yesterday we learned a whole lot more. Bloomberg reports that 2,821 organizations or events involving Americans were logged into a database of terrorist threats, known as TALON, as of December 2005 — and that 186 of those involved antiwar protests organized by the Quakers and other groups.

The ACLU observes:

The Pentagon’s misuse of the TALON database must be viewed in the wider context of increased government surveillance of U.S. citizens. With the help of phone companies, the National Security Agency has been tapping phones and reading email without a warrant. The FBI has gathered information about peace activists, and recruited confidential informants inside groups like Greenpeace and PETA. All of these actions are part of a broad pattern of the executive branch using “national security” as an excuse for encroaching on the privacy and free speech rights of Americans without adequate oversight.

You can read the ACLU press release here, and the full report (in PDF) here.

Ironically, the ACLU news comes at the same time that we learn the Bush administration has worked out a deal with the FISA court over the NSA’s wiretapping program. Don’t you feel better?