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Re:Hack of 251 Law Enforcement Websites Exposes Personal Dat... by av_engr on Wednesday July 15, 2020 @12:48PM (#23847869)
Including address and phone number? Doesn't that also enable public workers to be target of harassment?
Re:Hack of 251 Law Enforcement Websites Exposes Personal Dat... by thephyber on Wednesday July 15, 2020 @04:21PM (#23851149)
If you get direct mailers or telemarketing phone calls, your address and phone number are not private.

California already has laws that require some transparency of who works for the government (I'm not exactly sure which data points), but allows a few classes of workers (eg. police, judges) to opt out for security reasons. For anyone who gets a phone, you have to pay to opt out of your contact info being publicly sold.

Modern society doesn't make it easy to avoid leaving a trail of contact info with lots of different vendors. This is exactly the same reason BlueLeaks was possible -- a fusion center vendor collected too much info and didn't bother to sufficiently secure it.

Re:Hack of 251 Law Enforcement Websites Exposes Personal Dat... by opwieurposiu on Wednesday July 15, 2020 @02:04PM (#23849125)
Could this be a problem? Yes, naturally. But the good of preventing government corruption outweighs the bad in this case. There are existing laws against harassment that provide recourse.
Re:Hack of 251 Law Enforcement Websites Exposes Personal Dat... by mc32 on Wednesday July 15, 2020 @02:27PM (#23849482)
So whenever there is a federal statute that criminalizes something means states shouldn’t have redundant laws doing the same?
Re:Hack of 251 Law Enforcement Websites Exposes Personal Dat... by thephyber on Wednesday July 15, 2020 @04:25PM (#23851196)
I would argue we are already way too far down the road of "redundant statutes".

According to the book "3 Felonies a Day", there are well over 300,000 crimes in US jurisdictions, which is far beyond what any person could read, know, understand, and internalize. At this point, if you're not a convicted felon, it's simply because the government isn't efficient at prosecuting, not because you haven't broken a law.

Re:Hack of 251 Law Enforcement Websites Exposes Personal Dat... by mc32 on Wednesday July 15, 2020 @05:05PM (#23851809)
There should be periodic de duplication of laws. And also removal of laws are are now archaic —like being able to sue a spouse for abandonment or laws that impinge on civil liberties but aren’t enforced.

For every new law they should remove one or two that are redundant or archaic.

Theft is illegal but then they have other provisions to make sure it really is illegal. Once is enough.

Re:Hack of 251 Law Enforcement Websites Exposes Personal Dat... by thephyber on Wednesday July 15, 2020 @06:04PM (#23852719)
I agree. There needs to be more maintenance effort to reduce the "technical debt" of accumulated laws.

Sadly I think it's not done because there is no incentive. Voters don't vote out incumbents who add too many news statutes or who don't remove outdated/irrelevant/unconstitutional ones. I think it's a lot like refactoring code without the ability to write unit tests or know if the change had any secondary side effects for years or decades after.

Re:Hack of 251 Law Enforcement Websites Exposes Personal Dat... by mindslight on Wednesday July 15, 2020 @02:57PM (#23849950)
Real Name -> Address is already public information, due to the combination of real estate deeds, campaign finance reports, etc.

Real Name -> Phone number is nearly public information, being easily looked up in commercial surveillance databases. I've gotten phone calls from businesses on a associated numbers that I don't even consider mine due to this.

Framing a list of public servants as "doxing" is just a thinly-veiled power play to prevent accountability over the rest of the contents.