Monday, March 26, 2007

Another Deval Debacle

OMG, the fun just never stops!

WCVB, The Boston Channel reports
Gov. Deval Patrick launched a new page on his political Web site this weekend to organize supporters behind his issues, but Secretary of State William Galvin Monday asked the governor to take it down, fearing the identity of voters may be compromised.
Team 5 Investigates Janet Wu discovered that when people register to participate, it discloses their home address as listed in the Massachusetts voter database. Wu found that anyone could enter a name and a town and find the street address for any registered voter. For some searches, unpublished phone numbers were revealed
.

Janet Wu posed this concern.
"I think we're all concerned about people's private information getting public. Just to be clear, this information did not come from my office," said Galvin. "We know elderly voters in particular (are) concerned about people finding their address, what apartment they're in."

The response form Ms. Morningstar on his behalf is stunning.
"It's information that's publicly available from your city, your city hall, your local voter registration, " said Liz Morningstar of the Deval Patrick Committee.

Team 5 Investigates entered the name of a woman with a restraining order against a stalker. Her full address popped up on the Patrick campaign Web site.
Morningstar said if anyone has a complaint to lodge, she welcomes them to go online and register their concerns, but she said the campaign has no intention of taking down the new page.

So, I go and sign up to say I agree with the people who want the website taken down.

This is being discussed on several blogs that do a better job than I do. Hub Politics, DevalPatrickWatch, New England Republican, and RedMass Group.

If you lilve in Massachusetts, go to MyIssue.DevalPatrick.com and register and join in protesting this violation of our privacy.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Liz Morningstar sees no issue with handing out private adddresses? I went onto DevalPatrick.com and got Liz Morningstar's address right there. She and her husband Tim live at Hilary Street, Boston, MA. Send her a letter. Tell her how much you appreciate sexual predators and stalkers having acces to private address data.

Tom