Blue Mass Group

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DevalPatrick.com In Action

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I was one of the ‘lucky’ individuals who got to kick the tires on the new DevalPatrick.com web site last week before the official launch. I created an issue dealing with Chapter 70 reform because its an issue that’s been dogging Stoneham for years.  Because I created the entry, I’m now the ‘coordinator’ for the issue.  A few minutes ago I got my first email from a gentlemen out in Harvard whose concerned about the issue also.  So I guess the word to the wise is, don’t create an issue on the web site unless you really want to work on it, because the emails are going to start coming.

This is the piece of the puzzle that I’m pretty sure has been missed in the MSM articles on the new site launch.  When Deval talks about grass roots governing, he really means he wants to provide the tools for us to organize and push OUR causes, not just act as cheerleaders for the proposals he’s pushing.

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  1. I think some folks haven’t really grasped how it works. The pro-same-sex-marriage “position” that’s at the top of the hit parade actually contains some comments that are pro-“vote on marriage”. So, some clarification might be in order.

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    And also, if you support same-sex marriage, you might want to get on the site, since the anti-marriage folks have descended…

      • Alright I’m exaggerating. But I do have a huge beef with the the fact that it won’t let me use my middle name (Jim).

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        Not even my parents call me Archie!

  2. What do you all think of the information that’s made available–addresses, I gather from the news tonight. Makes me not want to participate, frankly. I can just see the folks over at RMG gathering names to flame about. Yeesh.

    • Kira,

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      I warned about the privacy issue from the beginning.  On this site  yesterday and was ridiculed by people here at BMG.  This story is the biggest screwup to date, by the Patrick Campainistration(can we tell the difference anymore?)

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      They made home addresses of every register voter easily available on a website, for anybody to look up.  It is a gold mine for stalkers, and molesters.  Janet Wu reported that she or her team was able to get the home address of a woman that has a restraining order against a stalker.

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      I’m sorry but this is not good for the governor.  It looks as if he jeapordized the safety and privacy of the people of the commonwealth for political gain. 

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      As Deval himself would say “We can all agree on that”.

      • From the site:

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        Data on this site is limited to ONLY data that is now publicly available at any number of locations, including city and town halls, and websites. The site further limited data today by eliminating specific street address numbers.

        • Too little too late.  It is symptomatic of this campainistration that they don’t think before doing.  This is his biggest mess up to date.  For Liz Morningstar to say nobody brought up the privacy issue is patently false.

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          My issue is, in this day and age, where privacy acts are being enforced, battered woman seek refuge from abusers, identity theft has run rampant, predators search the web for children.

          Why on earth am I able to type in my name and quickly retrieve my address?

          If a predator was after our children on line, would we be able to thank you for helping them locate us my simply finding out the child’s last name and general area?

          This is absolutely unacceptable.

          I have defended you in the past, for your choice of vehicles, for your wife who needs a $70,000 a year assistant. I have assumed political mudslingers will find anything and everything they can find to undermind your integrity.

          Now that I am able to see how clearly you have violated my right to privacy,and what a terrible mistake you have made by doing so, you no longer have my defense or my support.

          I support anyone who has the ability to make the government take this site down and protect my rights and the right to privacy for myself and my family.

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          I guess this person qualifies as nobody.

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          • I can’t stand the child predator fear mongering.

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            If privacy is an issue, you shouldn’t have to throw paedophiles in the argument to make your point.  There should be a Godwin’s Law extension for kiddie pervs.

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            I understand the desire for privacy, and technology has made security through obscurity less effective.  What are the odds that Liz Morningstar (or spouse) is in the phone book?

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            Look: the voter reg files are public record.  They have been for a long, long time.  My town offers them on CD in an excel file to all town government candidates, including Town Meeting candidates.  When Lamont was running against Lieberman, I called the Connecticut town where I grew up and had them email me the entire town’s voter reg file, so I could use it to find old friends and neighbors and call them.

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            Bottom line: it’s public record, and anyone can find out your name by following you home, and checking your mail before you do the next day, or any other number of ways.

            • I just posted what others did.  Also take up your complaints with Janet Wu.

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              Whether or not the information is available publicly is not the issue.  If you go to your town hall to get a CD, they know who got the CD.  If you go to DevalPatrick.com from the privacy of your own home there is a difference.

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              Step back and think if this was Mitt Romney that did this.  Would you feel the same?  My guess is no.  Although I could be wrong.

              • and you would be wrong.

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                My background is computing, and I’ve been working with voter reg files (and other public information) for a long time.

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                If you go to your town hall to get a CD, they know who got the CD.

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                Nope.  They’re in a basket by the window.  Furthermore, they don’t follow the data — anyone could get a CD from anyone else.  The information is free, available, and not containable.  Furthermore, voters can constrain the amount of data in the file (eliminate the occupation field and the telephone number field, for example).

        • Your favorite Globe reporter, Andrea Estes weighs in.

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          My prediction Liz Morningstar is the fall guy tomorrow for this.

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          Secretary of State William Galvin today criticized a new grassroots website launched by Governor Deval Patrick’s political committee that initially allowed users to access the street addresses of all Massachusetts voters by putting in their last name or phone number. After Galvin raised concerns, the website removed the house and apartment numbers, but left the street names.

          “We go to great lengths to protect the confidentiality of voting lists from vendors and sales people and we’re concerned there is information out there that shouldn’t be — for instance police officers’ residential addresses, deceased voters, apartment numbers of elderly voters,” Galvin said. “I’m told there are people who have restraining orders on the list with their residential address.”

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          Can’t you just see the Herald front page.  “Muffy Was Right; Deval Endangers Women”

          • “We go to great lengths to protect the confidentiality of voting lists from vendors and sales people and we’re concerned there is information out there that shouldn’t be — for instance police officers’ residential addresses, deceased voters, apartment numbers of elderly voters,” Galvin said. “I’m told there are people who have restraining orders on the list with their residential address.”

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            Voter reg files are public record.  How can they keep the information out?  What’s the justification?

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            P.S.  You can leave “occupation” blank on the census, and you can also get away with leaving your apartment number blank.  The state should be purging deceased voters (hint: Galvin!).  Restraining orders?  That’s tougher, but a very rare edge case.  If somebody was looking for a person, he could easily get the voter reg files for towns himself — he doesn’t need Deval to do it for him.  Excel has a search function too.

      • I did post that Barbara Johnson, former candidate for Governor, who is a public figure, did post to DevalPatrick.com

    • It’s suspicious that this is suddenly an issue now, but wasn’t last year all through the campaign: I was already a member of the new site when I tried to sign up, it’s the same voter database that was used last year in the community tool to build up supporter list and to get phone numbers for phone banking.

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      I understand why they might take off the phone numbers now, since the purpose of the database isn’t phone banking at this point, but there was no indication this was anything but public information all through 2006. The media today just likes to attack the governor on anything they can.

      • You know what, Deval Patrick didn’t hold a press conference to tell the residents of the Commonwealth to check back in on his website during the campaign.  And he didn’t have the weight of the Governorship and the campaignistration behind him.

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        This site raises a ton of ethical questions, with how it is paid for, for example it would not be allowed by FEC regulations and house ethics rules. Which prohibit campaign funds for performing official activities.  This is allowed under state law however.  But the line between the campaign and the administration is being blurred giving us a campaignistration.

        • It was quite well known as a tool. Anyone, and I’m betting lots of opponant operatives, could get into the community tool. Now, higher levels of access were granted to coordinators and the like, but that said, it was still a public tool for all intents and purposes.

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          And it’s not that hard to get your mitts on that information in plenty of other ways, either. And do whatever you want with it.

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          It’s called “registering to vote.”

          • You, and the other Patrick people knew about it.  John Q. public did not know the specifics of the “net-roots” effort.  Governor Patrick in a quasi-official appearance on Saturday asked the populace to check back in.  The universe expanded.  That’s why others took notice.

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            Was anybody walking up to the old DevalPatrick.com site able to get personal information without registering?  I would think not.  Maybe so.

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            Campaigning involves a select group of us that are very commited.  Governing involves the rest of the populace.

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            This is not going away.

            • in the second paragraph, yes.  If anything, the campaign tool was more open, as sco at .08 explains.

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              And it is going away, your contrary wishes notwithstanding.  They will address the issues — they already are doing so, as the Janet Wu article notes.

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              “Now when you choose to log onto the site, you have to indicate not just what your first name is, your last name is, your home city or town but you also have to include the name of the street you live on,” said Liz Morningstar, of the Deval Patrick Committee. Morningstar also said by the end of Tuesday, the feature that allows users to type in a telephone number instead of name will be eliminated.

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              Nothing to see here.  Move along.

              • That is how it should have worked from the beginning.  And Deval not taking ownership is disgusting.  He is the “committee”.

                • They rolled it out.  There were some problems.  They fixed them.  That’s how every website rollout in the history of the internet has worked.  This one rolled out to more fanfare than most, so the process got a lot of attention.  But if the site is now operating to your satisfaction, seems to me your issue is resolved.  You don’t like the way Deval handled it?  I’m not surprised — you don’t like anything else about him either.

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                  Like I said, nothing to see here.

                • and it’s of his own, not my making. 

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                  Liz Morningstar outright lied to the media when she said, no-one has complained yesterday.  Because they had.  She tried damage control and it failed.

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                  Yes it seems as if the issues are now resolved.  But you know what that’s what the beta testing was for.  This should have been caught.

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                  If you read Begala and Carville’s book you will see the correct way to respond to problems.  And the first rule is to admit you have a problem, immediately.

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                  The media hates this guy.  You don’t start your campaign by telling the media “you don’t get it.”  Not a very constructive start.

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                  So David, you seem to have Deval Patrick’s ear.  I would suggest you confront him and tell him to change his ways, before it’s too late. Because going into budget season he has zero if not negative political capital left.

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                  If you opened your eyes, you’d see there is plenty to see. But I guess we’ll have to wait for the next poll numbers to come out.  It will be interesting to see who has worse poll numbers in Massachusetts, Patrick or George Bush.

                • Even Rudy’s website had major security problems which could have compromised extremely sensitive information. They fixed it, they moved on. Same thing with Deval. And hey, they even made a disclaimer that this is not the website for the government at the bottom, so that “unenlightened” folk won’t confuse the two websites. It seems to me they’re actually paying attention.

                • I meant to say that Rudy “Security” Guiliani also had security concerns on his website. He fixed them, moved on.

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                  And hey, they even make a disclaimer that this is not a government website. Seems to me that they’re listening.

        • it’s absurd to say that the campaign’s website wasn’t “publicized.”  The internet was a HUGE deal in the campaign; everybody who was paying any attention to the race knew it.  I mean, Galvin certainly was aware of it; why didn’t he run his concerns up the flagpole then?  And yes, it was the same tool then as the site uses now (except that now street addresses have been removed).

  3. Bill Galvin today called on Deval Patrick to take down DevalPatrick.com because of privacy concerns.  Galvin feels the site endangers the elderly.

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    Janet Wu at WCVB 5 Reports

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    p>  Gov. Deval Patrick launched a new page on his political Web site this weekend to organize supporters behind his issues, but Secretary of State William Galvin Monday asked the governor to take it down, fearing the identity of voters may be compromised.

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    p>  Team 5 Investigates Janet Wu discovered that when people register to participate, it discloses their home address as listed in the Massachusetts voter database. Wu found that anyone could enter a name and a town and find the street address for any registered voter. For some searches, unpublished phone numbers were revealed.

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    p>  Team 5 Investigates entered the name of a woman with a restraining order against a stalker. Her full address popped up on the Patrick campaign Web site.

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    This issue isn’t going away, and in typical Deval Patrick team fashion Liz Morningstar, Executive Director of the Deval Patrick Committee sees nothing wrong.

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    p>  “It’s information that’s publicly available from your city, your city hall, your local voter registration, ” said Liz Morningstar of the Deval Patrick Committee.

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    p>  But Galvin said he believes this is the only Web site where every Massachusetts voter’s name is publicly available on one database. The database was purchased by the Patrick committee from a private vendor.

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    p>  “We don’t want this to have a chilling effect on people registering to vote,” said Galvin.

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    p>  Morningstar said if anyone has a complaint to lodge, she welcomes them to go online and register their concerns, but she said the campaign has no intention of taking down the new page.

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    This is more than the drapes, more than the caddy, more than the helocopter rides.  This is about endangering the lives of women and other vulnerable people for political gain.

      • “Register” by phone number and it lists the identity of the person with that number, along with his/her address.

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        It is a pretty good reverse phone directory.

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        I am at a loss to explain why all of this is necessary for “civic engagement” which is beginning to sound like rationalization for the governor’s blunders.

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        Regardless of whether anyone can get this by visiting City Hall, the inconvenience of doing so ensures that it cannot be done at scale.  There is exactly zero reason to change that.

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        I am now beginning to get more than a bit PO’ed at this Gang That Can’t Shoot Straight.

        • But if you have no target, the shot is irrelevant.  Give the grassroots something to engage with, and they may engage. 

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          But you see the results (so far) on the website: gay marriage, anti-gay marriage top the chart.

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          Then of course, there’s the tax rollback. Irony lives.

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          Surely there are more pressing issues in the State aside from marriage. But the Governor (IMHO) has set no priority, no singular goal. 

          • that we have a budding Carter Administration here?

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            Uh oh.  You may have something there.

    • Just because no one else has centralized the database, doesn’t mean tomorrow, I couldn’t go to my city hall, gain this information, and publish all over the web. I could.

      • To promote your website?  The issue here is whether or not the information is available publicly.  The issue is whether or not the Governor, knowing the problems with identity theft and domestic violence(after all we learned Diane Patrick was a victim of domestic violence just two short weeks ago) should have made the information available.  Like it or not he is, and should be, held to a higher standard.

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          • …germane to the topic at hand, but we knew about Mrs. Patrick’s history with domestic violence back during the pre-primary campaign.

            • The site can still be used by a batterer to find out where the person s/he battered lives.  It gives only a street sure.  But a street is a much bigger start. 

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              You may have known, but I would guess if you polled 300 people, only 25%-35% would know even now about the issue.

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              Deval Patrick should have known better, as sco says at 0.08 Acres

  4. Auto insurance “reform”.  As the last state in the union Mass regulates auto insurance rates.  The industry itself hates, loathes,despises much like any five year old, not getting their way in the face of astronomical easily had profits.

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    Remember who paid for Deval’s inaugural ball.
    Think back, remember the astroturf “grassroots organization” Fairness for Good Drivers.

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    The auto insurance industry wants to sell you “Bob’s” crappy insurance.  They want to sell it to you with absolutely zero government “meddling”. 

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    The added benefit of all this is that they also get the “right” to examine your entire life’s history.  anything they can dig up on you in the data-mined Orwell world being rapidly created.  You will pay higher insurance rates because you were late paying your Mastercard back in 1973!

  5. What in fact is going on in the governors office? Who the heck is in charge and what are they thinking. This has got to stop. Even from a partisan or non partisan point of view, the citizens of the commonwealth are aboard a ship that has lost it’s rudder.

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