Personal Data of All 6.5 Million Israeli Voters Is Exposed

The risk seems much greater than the article describes or the app maker claims. For one thing, that amount and refinement of personal data could be used, I think, by terrorists to more accurately target individuals or groups thereof, or by Israel’s enemies to more easily identify and manipulate Israeli soldiers and POWs and, thus put not only those individuals in greater danger, but their country as a whole as well. How irresponsible to put candidate, campaign, or political party convenience ahead of the life, limbs, and souls of their soldiers, police, and secret service and intelligence agents, and ahead of the security of the nation as a whole. And if the law says the political parties must keep the information confidential and secure, does it say anything allowing those parties to share it with whomever they want and for any purpose? Does the law place any restrictions on when, whom, and how the data is shared with 3rd parties? Does it require certain vetting processes and outcomes of those 3rd parties with whom it’s shared, of their products and services, and of how those 3rd parties store, share (perhaps with sub-contractors? Are they duly vetted?) and wipe or dispose of the data? Did no one consider any of this?

Wow! Israelis should know better than to trust an app with or to do anything important. And Netanyahu always presents himself as such a hawk, trading on his brother’s legacy and others’ pain and fear. This exposure, at the hands of Bibi’s campaign, in its astonishing breadth and depth of information, could seriously endanger tens of thousands of Israeli soldiers and police, active duty and reservists alike. So much for Netanyahu’s national security cred. What a massive balagan.

This "mistake" is inexcusable. Israel has some of the best hackers on the planet.

Yet another reason to remove Netanyahu from office.

When we lose our right to vote our conscience, I guess people will become truly concerned about having no privacy / no voice. Elections will be useless and the idea of voting outside the will of the one in power will be controlled through fear of retribution. Does "retribution" sound familiar?

Netanyahu is not only a crook; he's stupid.

One should read carefully the articles published by the NYT as part of the Privacy Project: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/opinion/internet-privacy-project.html One should simply accept the fact that one's basic information is out there for the taking, whether through ineptitude of companies, governments etc. or through the skills of sophisticated hackers, thieves (often also governments and intelligence agencies and companies. One day skilled, one day inept). As for the present hack, my name and address are no secret and to get anything here anytime it is necessary to list my ID number. I do so a dozen times a day. Big secret. If one does anything on a computer/internet/(smart or otherwise) phone there is no privacy.

Trump can pick up the names and get 6.5 million sure votes. Not even a question of patriotism there.

Russia, are you listening?

Iowa Democratic Party, eat your heart out.

I happened to search for the address of an old friend last week and her name, address and phone number freely came up labeled as Utah Voters Registration. Israel is not alone.

Administrator usernames and passwords hard-coded in the HTML source of a voter-registration database webpage?? This is not incompetence or malpractice. It is stupidity on a scale that is unimaginable. Israeli citizens have every right to be outraged and demand to know "doesn't anyone around here know how to play this game?" (Attributed to Casey Stengel during spring-training for the 1962 Mets.) Twenty-five years ago when I was a very junior tenure-track faculty member I set up websites for my courses. Though I was a rank amateur (and website coding techniques were much simpler back then), I distributed my course materials with greater security precautions than described here for the Israeli voter database. My students had user credentials that were not deducible from any publicly viewable information on the website. "Anon-FTP" was prohibited. All downloads were logged, as were page-view stats (incoming IP#s were logged as well). The webpages were protected from outside editing/defacing through judicious use of permissions. Yes, my task was easier. The web was a smaller & more benign place than it is today. The number of anticipated users I anticipated was very small. I didn't have to worry about systematic penetration attempts. But still — "doesn't anyone around here know how to play this game?"

My first thought when this happens is "here do these political leaders find these developers?" But in reality all software is functioning on digital duct tape and a wish. Technology is great, but online voting is doomed to be a disaster.

So the Iowa Democratic Party and the Likud in Israel, one on the left and one on the right, are both capable of using incompetent programmers. It seems to me that leaving the entire list of all Israeli voters accessible is apprciably more consequential than messing up the transmission of raw voting data, with existing paper backup data, as occurred in Iowa. People who love Bibi and the Likud should not throw rocks, because they live in a glass house.