Comment by wodenokoto 3 days ago
Usually you don’t have access to “everything”. It might even be illegal to cross reference certain data, e.g., the same person or department might not even be allowed to have access to two databases.
I don’t know if the cross reference is true for the US, but it is for other countries.
Course theres something wrong with it. When the frik did Americans, and American techies - get so blasé about personal information security! America fought against the idea of biometric ID cards. People on HN have railed against giving more information to the government forever.
What the hell? Like this shit didn’t happen back home in INDIA, and that’s a nation which is comfortable with a stronger state.
It’s NOT OK, and you can very well acknowledge that fact because you can just imagine what eviscerating a legacy code base without a replacement looks like. It looks like the disaster you wish on your worst enemy while you quit the firm and look for a new job.
This isn’t beyond the project execution and technical ability of most people here to grasp.
ask yourself how many consecutive miracles would it take for this to go off without a hitch. Then ask yourself if you are that lucky.
>They only touch personal data incidentally, and no doubt sanitise and anonymise it whenever possible.
Come now. Good faith is earned. They MAY be doing it correctly. But show the damn receipts. This is the basic ask when someone comes to any firm and promises to fix everything and then runs away once the project fails.
And if they ARENT showing the receipts - then make a noise about it.
>the last thing anyone at DOGE wants is for personal data to leak
Theres a great article which was shared here:
"Why is it so hard to buy things that work" https://danluu.com/nothing-works/
The idea here is that since its the right thing to do, firms will do the right thing.
or: "markets enforce efficiency, so it's not possible that a company can have some major inefficiency and survive"
> Although it's possible to find people who don't do shoddy work, it's generally difficult for someone who isn't an expert in the field to determine if someone is going to do shoddy work in the field.
and
> More generally, in many markets, consumers are uninformed and it's fairly difficult to figure out which products are even half decent, let alone good.
> What makes you think DOGE is being blasé with personal data?
Why should a government agency run by a random unelected tech ceo even have the option to be blasé with personal data? Like I thought this website was pretty vehemently against things like the Patriot Act giving the NSA granular personal data and backdoors into communication, that at least had the guise of "national security" backstopping it. Giving a new department personal data access for no reason other than "government efficiency" (no actionable goals given by the department btw) is significantly more tenuous than "national security".
>What makes you think DOGE is being blasé with personal data?
Their site was hacked? And given the overconfidence that some of the people involved seem to display, I think it's reasonable to ask for at least checking of what's happening... which isn't occurring.
They’ve got a 19 year old engineer with some clear links to the cybercrime world seemingly plugging in to things, for one. https://www.wired.com/story/edward-coristine-tesla-sexy-path...
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