An Example of Aristotle/Integrity Lack Of Security In Handling Data

For Sale: The American Voter
Kim Zetter
12.11.03 | 2:00 AM

One of the nation's largest commercial distributors of voter data sold voter-registration lists featuring detailed personal information without verifying the identity or intent of buyers.

Aristotle International used a website to sell the lists, which contain details about registered voters from nearly every state. The data includes birth dates, home addresses, phone numbers, race, income levels, ethnic backgrounds and, in some cases, religious affiliations.

Although voter-registration data is a matter of public record, 22 states have laws restricting the purchase or use of voter lists. Yet Aristotle, based in Washington, D.C., sold lists online to anyone who wanted to buy them.

The company said it was not aware that its site was selling lists without verification.

Spokesman Michael Colopy said the site had procedures to verify buyers before they could order online. However, they were not in place when a Wired News reporter purchased two voter lists earlier this month and again this week after Aristotle said it had fixed the problem.

As long as the company did not sell lists from states that prohibit online sales of voter data -- such as Arizona -- the company did not do anything illegal. And as long as the site included a notice informing buyers of permissible uses for the data, the onus for adhering to usage laws was up to buyers.

But the security slip-up underscores what many critics of voter-list sales argue -- that the simple act of registering to vote can open voters to unintentional privacy intrusions as long as states make it legal to distribute voter data to secondary parties.

Colopy told Wired News that the company went to great lengths to make sure that it complied with state laws in offering the data online and ensuring that only authorized buyers purchased it.

"We have a full-time officer whose job it is to make sure that data we have is used only and exclusively in the context of what the law in that jurisdiction requires," he said. "There are very complex and important rules that restrict the use of the data, and we're very scrupulous about that."

To that end, Aristotle employees verified every client to make certain they were who they said they were, he said. And buyers had to sign a written contract stating their knowledge of restricted uses on the data.

"It's basic due diligence," Colopy said.

But in reality, Aristotle's site allowed anyone to register and purchase lists under a phony name and address. The site asked only for a name, the state where the buyer resided, an e-mail address and a phone number. Fields for mailing address and company name were optional.

By registering first as Condoleezza Rice and then as Britney Spears, a Wired News reporter purchased two lists containing data on about 1,700 California voters and 900 South Carolina voters.

Although the name on the credit card used to purchase the lists did not match the names on the Aristotle accounts, the transactions went through anyway. The site never requested a reason for purchasing the data but did require the buyer to click a user agreement stating the data could not be used for commercial purposes.

The site's user agreement for California, however, mistakenly cited nonexistent election laws. Aristotle said the citations came from the California Election Code, but the citation numbers and text it listed didn't match the code.

"This was accidentally mislabeled at the Aristotle site as the Elections Code," Colopy explained in an e-mail. "Nonetheless, it is an accurate representation of the applicable law, actually from the implementing regulations referred to in California Elections Code 2194 (a)(2)."

It's unclear how long Aristotle's site was processing unverified transactions. Colopy said the company launched the site three years ago to make it easier for clients to purchase their data in an automated fashion. But only authenticated clients were supposed to make purchases.

Three days after an initial discussion, the company still had not determined the source of the problem.

Colopy said the company temporarily disabled the automated feature to prevent further unauthorized sales. Any new buyers visiting the site would have to deal with a live person before completing a transaction, he said.

But two days later, Wired News again was able to purchase lists on the site using a phony name.

Besides a name, address, phone number and birth date, the lists included each voter's registration date, political affiliation, income range, occupation and whether he or she owned a home or had children.

Ethnic codes identified voters as black or white (nine states ask voters to declare their race; three of them require it) and other codes identified Scots-Irish, French, Arab, Jewish or Catholic voters. A phone survey of voters who were identified as Arab on the list, however, indicated the data was incorrect.

Aristotle also listed information about each voter's participation in past elections, as well as campaign and charitable contributions taken from Federal Election Commission records. Charitable contributions were divided into religious, environmental, animal-rights and domestic-abuse categories.

Although Colopy insisted that Aristotle never added information from market research to its voter files, the files included a category indicating whether voters had purchased merchandise through mail-order catalogs.

Sylvia Levy, a South Carolina voter whose data appeared on a list purchased by Wired News, said she was surprised to learn about the transaction.

"If I knew this, I would never have registered," she said. "This is very disturbing, and I'm very disappointed in the system."

Levy said she was particularly concerned that someone who might want to harm her could obtain her address this way.

Alan Cohen, a California voter, was less concerned that his information was accessible in this way.

"I'm a psychiatrist. I deal with paranoia every day," he said, laughing. "You'll have to do better than that."

He added that voting records were just one way to collect personal data.

"More of people's information gets out when they make purchases and fill out warranty information," he said. "It's a Pandora's box that's too late to close."

Aristotle, like other data collectors, obtains voter lists from county and state election offices around the country. Many states restrict the sale of lists to political parties, candidates and nonprofit organizations that work on ballot initiatives.

But data collectors that cater to political entities can buy them as well. They often enhance the lists with additional public records and marketing data before selling them to their clients.

Aristotle boasts more than 157 million voter records and sells them online for $25 per 1,000 names, or $80 per 1,000 names for highly prized New Hampshire voters.

The company sells them to several thousand clients, including a majority of congressional representatives, its website says.

Most states do not warn voters that their registration data may be sold to third parties, according to a recent nationwide study of voter-registration practices by the California Voter Foundation.

"The simple act of signing up to register to vote leads to this chain of data that goes to a lot of places you're not aware of," said Keith Mills, who helped conduct the research. "They're not necessarily bad or sinister places, just places that you're not aware of."

But critics say the fact that states don't tell voters how their data will be used violates voters' privacy.

"In most areas we're seeing a general practice of disclosure about how information is used, and in other areas people are being given the choice of opting out," said Mills. "But not in the case of voter data."

Some states try to limit the exposure of voter data by requiring buyers like data collectors and political candidates to apply for lists in writing and sign an oath stating their intended use. But if a buyer resells or gives away the data, those precautions are less effective.

To prevent data from falling into the wrong hands, some data collectors seed their lists with decoy addresses to help determine if someone resells them or uses the data improperly.

Penalties for misusing voter data vary among states. California fines users 50 cents per voter record. South Carolina caps the fine at $500, with up to a year in prison for violators.

However, states do not generally police the use of voter lists.

Nathan Barakin, spokesman for the California attorney general, said cases involving the misuse of voter files are prosecuted by the district attorney in the state where the violation occurs.

As far as he knew, no such cases had been filed in California.

To read Wired News' complete coverage of e-voting, visit the Machine Politics section.

http://www.wired.com/print/politics/security/news/2003/12/61543

The Lowdown on Aristotle:

Aristotle combines its voter data with supplemental information purchased from other data vendors. The result is an Orwellian blend of personal profiles that would make the savviest of marketers blush. Data fields include the typical name, age, gender stuff, along with not-so-typical info on car makes and models owned, estimated income, party affiliation and voting history, employer and occupation, home ownership status, and whether or not the individual has an "ethnic surname." But that's simply not suitable for the insatiable folks at Aristotle. Now they're panning for real gold: data that's been garnered through cookies online.

According the NY Times piece, "In the last year, Microsoft and America Online backed away from proposals by Aristotle to mesh its voter data with information Internet users give to Microsoft and America Online when registering to go online." These Aristotle guys are dead set on improving their online targeting capabilities, especially when it comes to aiming pop-up political ads. Earlier this year, the company charged John McCain's campaign about $5,000.00 to target banners to registered Virginia Republicans. Evidently, Mr. Campaign Finance Reform has dropped about $30,000.00 on Aristotle data. He's not the only fine, upstanding politician (pardon the oxymoron) who's purchased Aristotle lists. Even the hypocritical anti-Hollywood/entertainment industry supported, Vice Presidential candidate running for a Connecticut Senate seat, Joe Lieberman, is an Aristotle customer.

It all sounds so slimy, kind of like running for Senate and VP at the same time, you know? Well, not only is all this data matching questionable, the sale of Federal Election Commission data is also illegal when used for commercial purposes. And if this dollar-driven political system isn't commercial, I don't know what is. On the other hand, Aristotle International is going public soon, and since when do people consider best practices as litmus tests for stock purchases, anyway?

http://www.lowbrowlowdown.com/9.14.shtml 9about 1/3 down the page

This is just one of the reasons I love Wired News

I wonder if they'd be willing to do a more contemporary bit of research on this company? I know that I frequently see news items about Second Life there, so perhaps I can hope that they are already working on a story?



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omg...

anyone fancy to submit their personal info so it could be sold to anyone with ur rl contacts, billing, credit info, income, religion or if u have pets?
let alone with ur drivers licence or passport info....


i`ll skip the crap and quit if sl is going to be age verified across the grid, wonder how they want to deal with european legislation regarding privacy violations

quick, every 1 sue them so sl can`t force soon to be adult flagged island residents lol?

Wow, this Aristotle Integrity system doesn't sound very secure or safe at all. Unbelievable that they seem to be so shoddy... and that anybody would consider using them given their track record. Maybe LL should consider a more reliable third party to work with?

Lindens are on damage control about these guys, I posted some thing about them on the blog, my posts got "edited" -- not deleted -- .. Yay for censorship. I'd rather have my posts deleted than edited out to sound like how the Linden wanted it to sound.

Seriously, Lindens, how can I trust you with my personal and private information when you are all this childish.

Isn't it your policy to delete rather than edit?

Could you post what you origionally posted in the blog? I'm curious to see what was so bad that couldn't be said.

This just royally sucks even worse after seeing that. How can LL even consider this co.? Don't they do any homework at all? Again they have provided no proof that Aristotle will not store our info, they just said they won't share or sell our info. Not very comforting, we could still get tons of junk mail from them.

Musicteacher, I was polite and to the point in every one of my posts, I asked in one post why he (Linden) kept deleting my posts regarding "age verification", when the thread on it has been locked at 100 posts. I had pointed to an example of the horrors of giving personal data in an this age by pointing to a current news article (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070505/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/tsa_missing_data). Apparently the Linden did not like this, he kept childishly deleting my threads at first.

Then he deleted a whole paragraph where I ask him to kindly explain why he's deleting these and telling us to go back to a thread that's been locked. He edited that entire post of mine and made it fit whatever guidelines that would make him/company look good.

I didn't feel like posting any more due to this reason you can see most of what happend in (http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/05/07/second-life-speech-gestures-contest-postponed/).

Heretic Linden just seems very Childish, and I'm now very concerned about giving any personal information to a this group of people and the 3rd party company.

Edit: Oh he has deleted more posts from me but you can see Usagi talking to me regarding censorship (deletion vs editing for PoV). The PoV edited post of mine is still there, I had 3 posts before that and one pointing out about it (see Usagi # 23, 24 ..)

This will not be good thats all I can say. Are they trying to wreck SL as it is?? The economy is fragile enough. They are lucky there isn't a comparable competitor, YET.

If you can credit SL for anything, it's giving potential competitors a nice detailed list of what to do and what not to do.

One could make an incredibly snide remark about how they try to maintain a consistent level of quality in their offerings...

but I won't.

I don't get it, of all the companies that provide this sort of service why did the Lindens have to get into bed with one with this sort of shoddy record and whose main business is selling personal data?

Didn't anyone at Linden labs actually think about these issues before their announcement? Damage control after the fact is all very nice but why not make a good decision in the first place?

The basis for picking this company seems to be that its verification system is used by Budweiser beer's web site, but as numerous people have demonstrated that verification is a complete joke and very easily circumvented. It is no barrier at all to minors getting access. Is the whole point of this exercise simply as some sort of legal ass-cover for LL so they can say they had verification even if doesnt actually work

If they pick a system like the bud-tv one which is known to be completely insecure then it won't offer them any legal protection at all. I resent the idea that I am supposed to hand over my passport details to be verified by a system that in fact offers no barrier at all to minors gaining access.

I also doubt that this company could do anything with my passport details, aside from steal them, there is no public access to a list of my country's passports, they have nothing to compare with.

What do you think will happen when only what could be considered a handful of people go ahead and get verified compared to the masses that won't? Will they then make it mandatory even though this it is another in a long list of wrong decissions that they have come up with.

same here, no legal way to obtain my data from a goverment list or something. (goes for driver license too. it´s simply illegal here to trade this kind of data)

"I don't get it, of all the companies that provide this sort of service why did the Lindens have to get into bed with one with this sort of shoddy record and whose main business is selling personal data?"

My wild guess is that they would do it for free. Getting your data is worth something to them, so I doubt they charge LL much for it, if at all.

No way I'm going to provide my name, address, d.o.b., and SSN to play a video game. This will be a permanent goodbye for me. Only total addicts are going to be left. I'm going to spend my summer outside and forget this stupid world that had so much potential, but like other worlds before it, got terribly mismanaged into a mess I want nothing to do with. So I'll take a few more pics ("this is what I looked like those six months I played SL", make love to my friends one more time, cash out my lindens, and pull the plug.

Thats what makes me wonder whether they are telling LL the truth. They say on their website that they can do verification in 152 countries but here (Australia) there are very strict privacy protections for data like drivers licence, electoral roll and passport lists, a commercial company simply cannot access them to do a comparison.

The most they could do to verify me is check the Australian telephone white pages to see if a person of my name is listed with a phone number at this address (which wouldnt work in my case since my number is unlisted) and look at the passport number to see if it has the right amount of digits and country code. Neither of which proves I am an adult (I had my first passport when I was a child) and is trivially easy to avoid by a minor.

None of that offers LL greater protection than what they already have via my credit card details.

Aside from all that the privacy commission here would probably have a fit if they found out SL was asking people to provide passport information. Maybe I should drop them a line and get them onto it.

I think commercial data miners are soulless unethical scum, but I have to say this doesn't surprise me at all. What would surprise me is if there's a similar service available from a company that's any more ethical. I don't think people realize how prevalent and common this kind of thing is. Do you use a supermarket bonus card? Or one from your drugstore? Their primary function is to mine data so they can give you targeted coupons and sell their databases to third parties. The US government has even used data from supermarket bonus card databases to try and build a profile of terrorists based on grocery shopping habits. I love hummus. I'm probably on a list at the Pentagon somwhere. The motor vehicle administrations in many states sell personal information to third parties as a source of income for the state. Do you use speedpay for tolls? A GPS service like OnStar? They know where you go, and when. For a price marketers can find out what websites you surf, what brand of deoderant you use, how much junk food you eat, and just about anything else. The day will soon come when your insurance company might deny you a claim because you eat too much junk food. Unless you live like a hermit and shun modern conveniences chances are that Aristotle isn't going to be finding anything out about you that isn't already known and available for a price.

The hermit idea sounds better every year.

I think realisitically all they need is your name and address and they can do a preliminary age check.

There are already name/alias/age/hometown information publically availble on those information sites.

And thats just the teaser free info - I never looked at the pay service since i dont want or need to spy on people.

They have my age off by one year when I look myself up - but its pretty scary.

yes big brother is already here and has been for some time. Again I think people really need to kinda not worry about this stuff its like worrying about natural disasters and bombings and other things. If we all worried about all that stuff that we have a possibility of encountering (fire, flood hurricanes theft bombing selling your marketting information out) people would be well... you think things are insane now?


the only way we survive is to become for lack of a better way desensitized to this stuff otherwise no one would be able to function. I also trully believe that a lot of this alarmist stuff and a 4 year old new article is not really fair to people out there reading this stuff. Okay we had a couple of information threads but this hammering away getting more and more worried about something which is inevitable and likely already happened to you but you dont already know it well its not worth it nor do i think it serves any purpose.

its sad and scary all at the same time but we can't stop it because its already happened

Oddly enough, except for international travel, where a passport is needed, I am pretty much offf the digital data miners. I never use store loyalty cards, and usually pay cash everywhere I go shopping.

So yes, to me, not only would giving such a level of personal information be an un-necessary security risk in terms of identity theft, it would also expose me to junk mail in a way I am not presntly exposed.

I wish I could say the same about the US.

I guess that there is no point in worrying about giving away my personal information to get verified - I'm a US citizen and they already know more about me than I do myself ... what's left for anyone to steal?

Look "Identity theft" up on Google and you will see there are a lot people out there who just would love to get their hands on your personal data... the more confidential, the better.

Morwen.

wow...um...were there supposed to be comments in that blog link? Because there are no comments and comments are closed. If there were comments and he deleted them all and closed comments then, wow...talk about censorship. Report him to Jeska or Robin. [email]Jeska@lindenlab.com[/email], [email]Robin@lindenlab.com[/email]

Hard to believe that professionals act that way.

Yup - definitely won'te be verifying. Aristotle appears to be like swiss cheese!