Feds fail to take basic security steps to protect private info on Alaska voter rolls
One of the big problems with the Dunleavy administration decision to give private information on every Alaska voter to the Department of Justice is that the Trump administration has failed to take proper preparations to protect the data.
The Trump administration is trying to sweep up information on all voters in every state in advance of the 2026 elections. Most states have refused to go along with the transfer of private information, but Alaska agreed to hand over the data without security guarantees.
“The DOJ has provided no detailed assurances about how it will protect U.S. citizens’ sensitive private information and seems to be ignoring federal law that requires it to do so,” Lisa Danetz of the Brennan Center for Justice says of the federal effort.
One of the issues is that the confidential memo approved by the Dunleavy administration allows contractors with the Department of Justice to get access to the information. Data encryption plans are weak and there is no defined reporting process, she wrote.
“These cybersecurity failures exacerbate what is known as the mosaic effect. Voter registration lists include significant amounts of information about each voter — some combination of name, residential address, date of birth, driver’s license number, full or partial Social Security number, email address, telephone number, registration date, registration status, voting history, and political party. Aggregation of so much voter registration data, combined with other available information from commercial data brokers, financial leaks, and federal databases, offers an easy centralized target for bad actors,” Danetz writes.
By signing this deal, the state agreed to allow the DOJ to analyze Alaska voter records and have the federal government tell the state to remove voters that it determines should not be allowed to vote.
The security controls in the memo approved by the state are “severely deficient,” the Electronic Privacy Information Center says, and the agreement does not comply with federal law.
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