Tuesday, December 29, 2015

First Breach Doctrine

Security researchers

have discovered
that more than 191 million

US voter records

containing voter names and addresses
voter ID numbers
phone numbers

birth dates
and political parties

are now visible
to the public.

Most states currently already allow
access to some of this information

as a matter
of public record

though in South Dakota
for example

access comes with stipulations
against selling the data.

The breach appears
to have been caused

by a third-party firm
that bought the data
from software company Nation Builder

owned by venture capitalist 
Ben Horowitz

and Napster co-founder
and Facebook's first president
Sean Parker

then sold it
at a lower cost

to political campaigns.

Mama don't let

your voter records
grow up to be

data breaches.

(As if the emails
from the DNC

weren't incredibly personal
date invitations

from the president already.)

This poem © 2015 Emily Cooper.