Following up on my last post.
The Boston Herald reports that a spokesman for Patrick’s committee says:
We have taken that extra step to ensure peoples’ privacy,” spokesman Steve Crawford said. “We go further than any city or town to protect this information, which is in the public record.”
Notably, the Secretary of State’s office goes further. The whole point of Gov. Patrick’s website is to seek public opinion on state policy. It is not the right answer to say ‘it’s okay for us to do, because everyone else is doing it, too.’
This was the chance for Patrick to take a stand on digital issues. Yes, devalpatrick.com uses a creative commons license and encourages participation by its users. But it’s not nearly enough to merely look cool or caring, or even state that you “believe[] strongly in protecting people’s privacy.” It must be demonstrated. We deserve the right answers and the right actions, too.
devalpatrick.com says that Patrick will create an innovation economy. For those not in the know, Massachusetts is suffering from a bit of a brain drain these days, losing skilled, educated workers to states with less onerous living expenses.
Problem is, the innovation economy needs those skilled, educated workers. And those skilled, educated workers probably care about digital technology issues like privacy, in addition to issues like the high cost of housing here in the Bay State. The talent pool that creates the economy of tomorrow expects our government - and the politicians that work for us – to respect privacy, and maybe, just maybe, push the envelope towards creating laws that respect citizens’ personal information.
Massachusetts has always been a leader in creating and protecting personal liberties. This is an opportunity to create new state law and lead the nation in how states regulate (yes, I used the R word) how this sort of information can be used. I’m hoping that Deval Patrick and his committee will change his mind and decide that civic engagement, listening to constituents, and working for the citizens of Massachusetts is the right thing to do.
By the way, I do believe that the Committee/Patrick was originally trying to do an okay thing: restricting the conversation about state politics to state voters. But I can think of a better technological solution. Namely, a site registration, a declaration that the user is a registered Massachusetts voter, and then a check of the website database on a backend containing the voter rolls that isn’t internet accessible. Even omitting the display of street addresses doesn’t solve this problem - the database, I’m sure, can easily be hacked.
