They call it a data “breach” but it was really more of a data “blunder.” Nobody hacked into the Secretary of State’s computers, nobody shoulder-surfed your personal information while you were registering to vote. Somebody in the Secretary of State’s office is getting blamed (and has been fired) for accidentally adding personal information to what’s publicly available in every voter file on all 6.2 million of us registered Georgia voters.
And then sending that information out to folks like the AJC, Georgia GunOwner Magazine, the Democratic Party of Georgia, and Peach Pundit.
But Secretary Kemp is done with letting things slip out of his office, and is now not even releasing publicly available documents: From Kristina Torres in the AJC: “The Georgia Secretary of State’s Office has refused to release public documents that likely detail how a massive data breach in the office happened and exactly how outside groups handled more than 6 million voters’ personal information.
Under state law, they’re allowed to keep those things confidential until the investigation is complete -but this should be the quickest investigation into anything in Georgia history, one in which the investigators say: “Tell us what happened,” and Secretary of State Kemp says: “We tagged private information into a public file, put it on CDs, and sent ’em out.”
That’s what happened. The only part that’s not known is how the discs were retrieved, or how their destruction prior to any further release of personal information has actually been verified.
Kemp’s Republican colleagues have been deafeningly silent on his screw-up, but Democrats have been making as much political hay out of this as possible, especially State Rep. Scott Holcomb, D-Atlanta. “Didn’t the Secretary of State’s Office complete its investigation before it terminated an employee? And didn’t the Secretary of State publicly state that everything has been corrected? If so, what’s the hold up?”
Valid questions, even in a partisan environment.
Hassinger is correct and totally on point.
WHAT IS THE WORLD COMING TO, PEOPLE??!?!
Up in down. Right is left. I agree with Hassinger on something.
I am not sure what world this is or if I want to continue living in it!
The universe must stay in balance, so somewhere an electron just changed to a positron.
Brian Kemp is a construction worker. A politically connected, born with a silver spoon in his mouth, construction worker.
Not elected to the office of Secretary of State, but appointed by then Governor “Go Fish” Perdue.
We reap what we sow.
Even if you are a staunch no-one-from-our-side-is-ever-at-fault Republican, surely you can understand why it is not ok for this guy to hide from the press and obfuscate. This isn’t even the first time his office has divulged voter’s personal information and he got away with covering up the first time. Don’t allow it to happen again. In the long run it is not good for your party but more important to me it is not good for our state.
Oh, and didn’t he release tons of “evidence” last year while still investigating the alleged rampant “fraudulent” voter registrations? Didn’t he make himself available at that time to the press in a manner that would have even embarrassed The Ox™?
I smell another payout coming up, a la ethics commission last year:
http://www.ajc.com/news/news/state-regional-govt-politics/exclusive-fired-kemp-worker-says-he-is-a-scapegoat/npbBC/
With this article from Ms. Torres we find out from the scapegoat more info not given by the SoS. Your voter data is actually controlled by an outside vendor chosen by the SoS.