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I am not paranoid. Why do you ask?
But I was just up at the Tom Thumb shopping center and a nice young man wanted my name, address, voter ID number, and birthdate on a petition.
I looked at the petition and started to fill it out. Then it struck me.
"Can I see some ID and some information about who you're working for?" I asked. He had none. Said he worked for a will-gather-petition-signatures-for-money company that was contracted to Crow Holdings. (All interesting enough in its own right, but that's more than a blog entry.)
"But we make a promise not to use this information for any other purpose. It goes straight to City Hall," the nice young man said. But he could not produce a single document or ID that verified his claim.
And, heck, it doesn't go right to City Hall. First, all that personal information about you gets passed around to everyone else walking by. Then to the petition-signature-gathering company. Then to Crow. Then the not-for-profit they set up for this purpose. Then maybe to City Hall.
Maybe I am paranoid, but there must be a better way. 
2 responses to this post
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imacatlover said at 7:51 p.m. on October 3, 2008, 7:51 p.m.
If you want a better way, talk to city hall. I gathered signatures for Trinity Vote, and that was the info the city required. AND then they verify a good portion of the signatures to be certain they aren't fake. This is AFTER the HQ of the collecting group verifies them (I did that too). It's a very painful process.
[anonymous] said at 9:02 p.m. on October 6, 2008, 9:02 p.m.
I'm really OK with everything, except 1) they should come up with a way that my information is not visible to everyone who comes after me, and 2) the workers should have both ID and a document indicating that this information will be kept private. Without that, any schmuck on the street can gather whatever they want.