Trump’s Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity requested all 50 states to turn over voter information including names, the last four digits of their social security numbers, addresses, birth dates, political affiliation, felony convictions and voting histories.
With four digits of a valid SSN, connected birth date, name, and address, any marginally capable hacker can recreate the full SSN number from various sources already available; legally and not — and then track their voter history.
But who needs hackers; Trump’s people have access to the Social Security Administration. Can you spell tracking those opposition voters; or for that matter, anyone you don’t happen to like.
Before you Trump voters get all exercised over conspiracy theories look closely. Your own voting data will now be tracked at a federal level for the first time. I thought conservatives were big on state’s rights and privacy, not federal intervention. How times have changed.
No conspiracy, no “fake news”, just a real life view of the use private connected information can be put to. Wake up.
This Trump request is as personally invasive as the NSA and Silicon Valley. And the Russians can easily hack into it courtesy of the lack of security. Perhaps an outsource provider of Trump 2020 race election work?
This massive total America voter list will also be a godsend to the Republican National Committee; and a sword held over them. Make no mistake; Trump will keep them in line for 2018 and 2020 by dangling the “The Lists”.
So what happens if the Democrats gain control in 2018 (Congress) or 2020 (President). All you Trump voters will have your SSN, birth date, name, address in a database available to Democrats or an Independent; courtesy of Trump. Like that?
Also, any such lists would be the highest value hacking target in the World. Even to Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft. American health care institutions, banks, credit card operators, retails, telecom firms, can’t keep the Russians out; and the NSA and the DOD seems to be no match for them.
So Trump and Kris are going to keep hackers out? In fact, Kobach asked the states to send their lists by UN-encrypted, totally hack-able email.
Enough of this Republican/conservative apologetic media brazenness that Trump isn’t a politician, and he’s all new at this. Any business CEO, of any stripe, knows all about government and politics — and how to buy, sell and manipulate government and Congress. They use the same tactics in their corporations 24/7/365. If they don’t know all about it, then they are simply incompetent and unfit to be a CEO.
Donald Trump is a minority president, pure and simple. That 117,000 votes in a “one-person, one-vote” system can “Trump” 3 million votes of the opposition is not the mark of a healthy democracy. Far from it. The deeply flawed Electoral College doesn’t make it right or better.
The old adage that if it “walks and talks like a duck, it’s a duck”, applies. This Voter Commission walks, talks, looks and acts like a process to build a national voter affiliation tracking database.
It has more extended logical purposes also. The lists can be extended to cataloging personal online actions, credit, financial and banking activity in either government or private hands. No dictator could do better.
It will also have the direct affect of suppressing voting, nationally. Colorado is already experiencing large numbers who are cancelling their voter registrations with Trump’s requests for lists. People are not stupid. They get it; they know what this is about.
Trump says “what are they hiding”? They are protecting their state’s voter’s most sensitive information just like they were promised.
Trump believes he has an inalienable right to own everyone’s/anyone’s personal information — after all, he’s the president and they are not.
What an enormous bit of blatant deception and tyranny — that is contrary to the very American freedoms from government or private intrusion. That applies to conservatives, liberals, Republicans, Democrats and Independent voters alike.
Making a tracking list of American voters, with not a hint of assessing the consequences, is hardly a stretch of the imagination or out of character for a Trump agenda.
• Anselm Staack is a retired CPA and attorney with an extensive working background in auditing, fraud and forensic investigation, IT, personal finance, governmental budgeting and politics at the executive and legislative level. He resides in Juneau.
