What’s Up With All the Craziness in the Clerk’s Race?
The news is coming so fast, it’s hard to digest. So let’s back up a little here.
- First, our current county clerk has known for over a year that there were unsecured Social Security numbers on the clerk’s website.
- Did nothing about it, but spent hundreds of thousands re-launching the site (and generating election-year PR about it) earlier this year. The numbers were still there for the stealing.
- Later this summer, a news story broke that the numbers were still there, but the clerk’s office was “working on it”.
- Hours after the news broke, the website was still up, the numbers were still there, and when challenger Tom Hasman held a presser asking why the heck the site was still up, and would the clerk please take it down while they were “working on it”, the clerk accuses him of “playing politics”.
- A couple weeks ago, NEWS10 even had a top story on how identity theft is a growing problem (and conveniently “forgot” to mention the huge risk of SS #’s on the clerk’s website.)
- Monday, the clerk held a big press conference, inviting all the media, and declared that they’d “removed all Social Security numbers”. Hasman showed the media shortly after that SS numbers were still easily found within a 2 minute search. (WROC’s of the story has a good, and unintentionally hilarious video of the story.)
Why would she have a hurried press conference to announce “Mission Accomplished” when it was so obviously not? It reminds me of another politician…now who was that? Have to think about it…
Oh yeah, that guy. This is pretty embarassing for the clerk’s office. But it gets better (or worse).
I’m wondering if the clerk’s haste on Monday was because she’d been contacted about the story that came out Tuesday, about her direct assistant in charge of the DMV (and also part of her paid re-election campaign staff), campaigning for the clerk’s re-election on the taxpayer dime. Or maybe to try to take the wind out of the sails of the County Leg Dems’ proposal to prohibit SS numbers from being published on the county website– the vote for that was last night.
Either way, all this craziness just seems like sloppy, desperate politicking on the part of the clerk. And what does all this say about her ability to control her people and our personal info?
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And what does all this say about her ability to control her people and our personal info?
It says “Vote Hasman!”
you got that right bizbo. it also says take a lawn sign, make a phone call, knock on a neighbors. this could be a huge surprise on election day. remember the look on the russian captains face in lake placid when the usa won? that could be cheryl