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

Thu Oct 3 17:28:02 UTC 2013

Brilliant - thanks Benjamin! Now added to the doc:
http://bit.ly/personalinfo-publicrecord

On 3 October 2013 19:02, Benjamin Ooghe-Tabanou <b.ooghe at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
> >>>>>
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> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> --
> >>>>
> >>>> Jonathan Gray
> >>>>
> >>>> Director of Policy and Ideas  | @jwyg
> >>>>
> >>>> The Open Knowledge Foundation
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> >>>> Empowering through Open Knowledge
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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
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> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> >
> > Jonathan Gray
> >
> > Director of Policy and Ideas  | @jwyg
> >
> > The Open Knowledge Foundation
> >
> > Empowering through Open Knowledge
> >
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