[open-government] Examples of dates of birth being published as part of the public record?

Thu Oct 3 17:02:31 UTC 2013

Hi everyone,

Privacy and statistical secrets rules are quite seriously legally
ruled in France, and public data is explicitely defined as non-private
information. Still in some legal exceptions, personal information can
sometimes be published, here are a few late additions from that
perspective:
- list of candidates from elections usually include birth dates for
instance in the last legislative elections
<http://www.nosdonnees.fr/dataset/liste-des-candidats-aux-lections-lgislatives-2012-dans-chaque-circonscription>
- the company registry SIREN, which is only available for payment and
therefore not open but accessible as bulk to clients, includes
personal information such as professional activity and date of birth
of the companies owners (reused for instance here
<http://dirigeant.societe.com/dirigeant/Christophe.BOUTET.36270705.html>)
- the list of immatriculation of cars, also not open, but sold to car
and insurance companies include detailed info about the cars and their
owners (here is an example of the part of the data for the cars
<http://twitter.com/nicolaskb/statuses/283851324293009408>).

Conversely, even though this can hardly be qualified as private
information, surnames data are not totally made public. These data are
often released by local councils but they implement the statistical
secret law with creativity, since the decision of the commision in
charge of this topic is unclear and appears not to be public. Usually,
only surnames having been given at least a few times (usually 5) a
year are published.

Best,

Benjamin for Regards Citoyens

On Wed, Sep 4, 2013 at 12:09 PM, Jonathan Gray <jonathan.gray at okfn.org> wrote:
> Thanks Tom, thanks Chris - examples now in the doc.
>
> http://bit.ly/personalinfo-publicrecord
>
> Any others warmly welcomed (on or off list)!
>
>
> On 3 September 2013 23:27, Chris Taggart <countculture at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Of course, company directors in the UK has been the classic example of
>> this, and my date of birth can be found on public websites, because I'm a
>> company director. In fact I think getting hold of date of births is easy
>> enough (whether from the web, or otherwise, e.g. by buying it) that my
>> biggest concern is that banks etc consider your date of birth to be some
>> secret fact that verifies identity
>>
>> I'm sure it's fairly easy to reverse engineer significant size datasets
>> from social network info, and given that it's a regular question on all
>> sorts of sites that don't require it has sufficiently devalued it as a
>> 'fact'. I'm sure I'm not the only one who randomly makes up a new date when
>> it's a required field.
>>
>> Chris
>>
>>
>> On 3 September 2013 19:05, Tom Lee <tlee at sunlightfoundation.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> In the US, the Congressional Bioguide might be of interest. We use their
>>> identifiers as a hub for a lot of our legislative data work:
>>>
>>> http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=A000360
>>>
>>> There are many, many ethics disclosure systems that collect and
>>> redistribute personal information from public officials as well.
>>> California's Form 700 is an example:
>>>
>>> http://www.fppc.ca.gov/?id=500
>>>
>>> The real devil is in the unstructured disclosure fields. We've seen this
>>> recently in the FCC's political file database, which brought already-public
>>> but previously-inconvenient data into electronic form. In this case, that
>>> included not only PII but scans of checks, the account and routing numbers
>>> from which could be used fraudulently.
>>>
>>> You do occasionally see PII in structured fields -- the USASpending.gov
>>> datasets leaking SSNs from agencies that unwisely used them as award
>>> identifiers for grant recipients is one example -- but in my experience it's
>>> the bags of text where problems really crop up. PII concerns are a strong
>>> argument for mandating structured disclosure, I think.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Sep 3, 2013 at 1:18 PM, Jonathan Gray <jonathan.gray at okfn.org>
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Thanks everyone!
>>>>
>>>> I've now compiled these examples here:
>>>> http://bit.ly/personalinfo-publicrecord
>>>>
>>>> If anyone else can think of any more please let me know!
>>>>
>>>> All the best,
>>>>
>>>> Jonathan
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 2 September 2013 13:52, Jonathan Gray <jonathan.gray at okfn.org> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> I was wondering whether anyone might know of any examples of where
>>>>> personal information about living persons - such as dates of birth - have
>>>>> been published as part of the public record by public sector bodies?
>>>>>
>>>>> For example in relation to interest, lobby or political registries?
>>>>>
>>>>> While generally personal information needs to be carefully protected,
>>>>> we'd be interested to hear of examples of where there might be broader
>>>>> public interest arguments or exceptions for publishing this kind of data.
>>>>>
>>>>> All the best,
>>>>>
>>>>> Jonathan
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>>
>>>>> Jonathan Gray
>>>>>
>>>>> Director of Policy and Ideas  | @jwyg
>>>>>
>>>>> The Open Knowledge Foundation
>>>>>
>>>>> Empowering through Open Knowledge
>>>>>
>>>>> okfn.org  |  @okfn  |  OKF on Facebook  |  Blog  |  Newsletter
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>>
>>>> Jonathan Gray
>>>>
>>>> Director of Policy and Ideas  | @jwyg
>>>>
>>>> The Open Knowledge Foundation
>>>>
>>>> Empowering through Open Knowledge
>>>>
>>>> okfn.org  |  @okfn  |  OKF on Facebook  |  Blog  |  Newsletter
>>>>
>>>>
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>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> -------------------------------------------------------
>> OpenCorporates :: The Open Database of the Corporate World
>> http://opencorporates.com
>> OpenlyLocal :: Making Local Government More Transparent
>> http://openlylocal.com
>> Blog: http://countculture.wordpress.com
>> Twitter: http://twitter.com/CountCulture
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> Jonathan Gray
>
> Director of Policy and Ideas  | @jwyg
>
> The Open Knowledge Foundation
>
> Empowering through Open Knowledge
>
> okfn.org  |  @okfn  |  OKF on Facebook  |  Blog  |  Newsletter
>
>
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