Technocreep by Thomas P. Keenan Read Free Book Online Page A

reviewed the 2010 Mayoral Election results in Edmonton, AB, in which one candidate won by a sizable margin. In fact, some of his challengers received zero votes in some of the voting stations, such as the “City Wide Hospital Vote.” Let’s hope that there was no one in the hospital at the time that he knows personally who claimed they voted for him, because the public record shows otherwise.
    In general, when very small numbers are involved, good statistical reporting systems are supposed to report “not significant” instead of giving out information that would allow inferences about specific cases.
    Of course, some candidates may be interested to know if they got three or seven or zero votes, so these results are still generally reported as exact numbers. However, in an election where thousands of votes are cast, voter privacy should probably trump candidate narcissism.
    While making political contributions (and even voting, except in some places such as Australia) is optional, every property owner pays taxes. The associated database provides a powerful example of the balance between privacy and fairness in the world of governmental Open Data.
    To ensure you are being treated fairly where taxes are based on property assessment, you need some information. What is your neighbor’s assessment? What is it based on? Does the house next door have a fireplace? A two-car garage?
    Historically, this information was made available in hard copy format. In Calgary, AB, for example, the property tax rolls were made available for about a month every year around the time when owners were allowed to appeal their annual assessments.
    The tax data was printed out on paper and taken to community centers around town, where eagle-eyed staffers kept watch over them. You were free to make notes on what you saw, but not to take the book away or even photocopy it. Digital cameras and smartphones with cameras were not an issue back then.
    Calgary now has a system which allows anyone to view anyone’s tax assessment, at any time, 24/7, 365 days a year. Though a great improvement from the consumer’s point of view, this system inevitably created problems.
    Newspaper reporters went through the data to find the mansions with the highest property valuations and snapped photos of them. The owners of the “Priciest Houses in Town” objected to this attention, fearing kooks and burglars. They were told the data was a matter of public record.
    Soon after the system, known as “Fairshare,” was launched, everyone who cared and bothered to look knew the tax value (which mirrors market value in Calgary) of their ex-wife’s home, their boss’s mansion, and even their garbage collector’s house. People grumbled about the invasion of their privacy, but the municipal government persevered.
    Then, an unexpected “second-order” problem arose.
    Companies who specialized in the business of tax appeals started to write detailed letters to individual taxpayers along the lines of “we see your property is assessed at X dollars. Did you know your next-door neighbors are at only Y and Z dollars? Hire us to get your assessment lowered.”
    Spooked by this new, derivative use of their information, the City of Calgary closed the system for a period of time, bringing it back in a much more privacy-friendly manner. You can still find the ­dollar figure for any property simply by keying in the address. You even see whole neighborhoods on a map. However, to get the juicier property data you need to create an account with a password. Your usage can be monitored, and is limited to a certain number of properties per day, in an attempt to thwart the wholesale downloading of data. The City also tracks the Internet address used to make queries and posted a legal disclaimer explicitly banning commercial use of the information.
    The new system isn’t perfect. Any good computer science student can probably