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 “Yet four Supreme Court justices still think birth dates — which are routinely disclosed by state agencies, including courts — are secrets akin to bank accounts or medical records.”
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There is one contested office on the Roanoke ballot, though; one that might confuse many voters because it’s for an office we rarely hear about. (Same, too, for voters in Montgomery County.) Just what is this Soil and Water Conservation Board, anyway? And why is there a three-way race for two seats in both localities? The answer to the first question takes us back to the early 1900s, which saw the rise of “scientific agriculture.
The Roanoke Times
Protecting people from identity theft is important. But that’s not accomplished by obscuring birth dates on public records. In 2017, Washington state saw 7,360 reports of identity theft, according to the Federal Trade Commission. That’s 0.1% of the population. More people are victims of fraud, mostly by scam phone calls. If it took only birth dates to steal identity and credit, theft rates would be far higher, since birth dates are widely available. Voter birthdays in Washington are public records, for instance. This minimal information sharing is an innocuous trade-off made to have accountable self governance. Yet four Supreme Court justices still think birth dates — which are routinely disclosed by state agencies, including courts — are secrets akin to bank accounts or medical records and dissented from last week’s ruling. They didn’t cite a single case of birth dates alone being used to perpetrate fraud or identity theft. Instead, the dissent invoked data breaches and shadowy thieves — “Whether by buying or hacking, cybercriminals can access our personal information to wreak havoc” — but those are very different threats.
The Seattle Times
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