COMELEC Posts Voter Info Online, Invades Privacy

I agree with Markku Seguerra. This is too important to pass up:

The Commission on Elections (COMELEC) has just committed a complete privacy blunder. Remember how people used to complain about voter registration and their precinct assignments and all that? They devised a not-so-brilliant solution: prepare a list of registered voters and post it online. Complete names, birthdates, and addresses included.

You can browse a partial list of voters in the Metro Manila area here. Each link opens a PDF file. I know it won’t help to spread the link around through blogging, but I trust you guys won’t take advantage of the information contained in it. Link removed. (Oddly enough, I’m not on the list, even if I had registered last December.)

I wouldn’t mind the COMELEC website getting a Denial of Service (DoS) or some other attack just so that page goes down.

Update (03/16/07 10:42 PM): It seems there’s another fork in the road on this issue. The voter list was also posted on the website ComelecNCR.com, a joined effort between San Miguel Corporation and the election body “in pursuit of transparency to the end that the stakeholders in our election will trust the COMELEC more.” (Via Red Kinoko)

Update (03/18/07 10:03 AM): ISAW (Internet Security and Warfare) wrote about the issue after I linked to them: “A turkish hacker volunteered to lead the attack on www.comelecncr.com ;)”

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