Comment Re:It's not privacy, it's obscurity (Score 1) 142
someone would have to actually be part of your social circle to learn about you. That is no longer true, but we still have not quite caught up with that new reality.
It's not new. Here in Oregon (and in most states) voter registration is public record. Got a name? They'll look it up for you on the phone for free. DMV records are public, too: it's a bit spendy to buy them one at a time but surprisingly cheap to buy them all in machine readable formats. (Wonder how that mechanic knows you have a Honda to send you the "We specialize in Honda repairs!" flier? They bought a list from the DMV of all registered Honda owners...)
The local county will gladly sell a list of all properties, their assessed and real values, owners, square footage, number of bedrooms/baths, year built, etc.
None of this is new: it goes back for decades -- it's just easier to sort through now.
Yes, it seems problematic for privacy: on the flip side, when CA changed it's laws after Rebecca Schaeffer was killed (a stalker found her home address through DMV records), a lawyer friend of mine complained about how hard it was to find people in CA to send notifications of recovered property. The DMV would no longer give out addresses, so they had to jump through hoops to demonstrate a compelling legal need for that information.
Voter registration is public because of a need to verify the validity of the election rolls: think you have fraudulent voters in your district, you're empowered to wade through the data and look. (And not to mention every party wants to be able to get the a list of the self-selected members... if you claim to be a Democrat, the Democrats want to add you to their literature and 'get out the vote' drives...)
Nothing new at all... only the correlation of data is new, and that's not all that new: there was a guy busted here 20 years ago because he combined the list of "cars owned by women" with voter registrations looking for single women to send mail to. He was only busted because he happened to also work for a politician and didn't pay for the lists.