County Clerk: Unusual Moves from the Hasman Campaign
Now here’s something I haven’t seen. Usually when a challenger brings up a shortcoming of an incumbent, something happens called “Issue Uptake”, where the incumbent adopts the position of the challenger and tries to pass it off like they’ve done it all along, instead of merely being made more honest by the competition.
In what I would consider a risk for the Hasman campaign, they have researched and provided a easy solution to the problem of our Social Security numbers sitting unsecured on the clerk’s website.
Why is this risky? Because Rochester’s traditional media has been largely deferential to the incumbent clerk, and will likely ignore this initiative from the Hasman campaign. The sitting clerk can then hold a press conference in a week, similar to the one she just had where she breathlessly (and falsely) pronounced “Mission Accomplished”, and say “Look what we came up with and implemented.” The clerk will hope that the traditional media will either accidentally or willingly fail to connect the dots.
This is starting to be a theme. The Haman campaign has already helpfully provided an easy-to-use online form that you can use to request your personal info be taken off the clerk’s site.
But in this case the Hasman campaign is actually giving the solution to the Social Security Number problem that the Clerk’s office has been wrestling with. Using his expertise and contacts in the security industry, Hasman tracked down and talked to the vendor that is hosting the Clerk’s on-line documents. From their press release:
Candidate for Monroe County Clerk Tom Hasman is offering a solution to the ongoing social security problem that has plagued the Clerk’s office. At issue is ensuring that all social security numbers are removed from the Clerk’s office while allowing parties who depend on the site such as real estate and court attorneys, title and abstract companies, access to vital records that are important to their business.
Hasman contacted Landata Technologies in San Antonio, TX, the company who manages the database for the Clerk’s office, and confirmed that different types of accounts with different types of access can be created. A spokesman for the company noted that many clients use this type of system and provided the York County, Maine website as an example. The York County home page can be accessed at: http://www.york.me.us.landata.com/
It’s kinda embarassing that a county 1/4 the population of Monroe’s has their act together, and we still publish our citizen’s private data on-line.
Two separate kinds of accounts– to the eye of a recovering computer geek like me, it’s a simple, elegant solution. The question is: why didn’t the clerk already have something like this in place? Why does she repeatedly need the challenger to show the way? It seems to me there’s a fundamental lack of concern about protecting the people’s information.
Maybe if she’d spent less time politically grandstanding on DOA issues, or her staff had spent less time on-line during work hours trashing Hasman, this would already have been resolved.
Let’s see if the traditional media notices.
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Crickets. So far - silence…
I actually think it’s a gutsy move. It displays Hasman’s problem solving skills and expertise. And, really, I don’t expect Cheryl to implement the idea…wouldn’t that prove that Tom is right? Our Miss Dinolfo will never admit that.