Latest Post | Last 10 Posts | Archives
Previous Post: Get The Facts On The Illinois Prescription Drug Board
Next Post: CTBA recommends increasing state support of evidence-based funding by $200 million per year (Updated)
Posted in:
* Background is here if you need it. But of course…
I reached out to the AG’s office last night, but haven’t yet heard back.
…Adding… From the AG’s office…
Opposing counsel has informed our office that their client made the changes to comply with the order, and we are reviewing them.
As noted in comments, full birthdates and street addresses have been partially removed.
posted by Rich Miller
Tuesday, May 14, 24 @ 2:16 am
Previous Post: Get The Facts On The Illinois Prescription Drug Board
Next Post: CTBA recommends increasing state support of evidence-based funding by $200 million per year (Updated)
WordPress Mobile Edition available at alexking.org.
powered by WordPress.
Playing by the rules . . .
Comment by Henry Francis Tuesday, May 14, 24 @ 8:10 am
And they likely would have gotten away with it if they hadn’t foolishly included people’s voting status.
– MrJM
Comment by @misterjayem Tuesday, May 14, 24 @ 8:11 am
Flouting court orders is becoming a far-too-common occurrence in cases with a political component. I hope the judge takes this personally.
Comment by vern Tuesday, May 14, 24 @ 8:17 am
I dont understand why they would do this in the first place. What is the purpose?
Comment by low level Tuesday, May 14, 24 @ 8:24 am
It looks like they’ve removed the full dates of birth, and left the birth year. Still this is all a big yikes.
Comment by poet Tuesday, May 14, 24 @ 8:31 am
There was a four-time failed candidate on the NW Side of Chicago who was threatening to do this on FB not too long ago. They are trying to shame people who share their ideology but don’t vote. They think they can turn Chicago and Illinois red if the “silent masses” turn out.
Comment by Big Dipper Tuesday, May 14, 24 @ 8:34 am
It’s gross. Now talk about capturing IP addresses and using them during conversations.
Comment by Torco Sign Tuesday, May 14, 24 @ 8:52 am
“I dont understand why they would do this in the first place. What is the purpose?”
First time meeting a bully?
It’s almost funny if you’ve had the misfortune to be in a room with Dan Proft. There’s a reason he does this stuff from Florida and it’s not taxes or ideology.
Comment by Larry Bowa Jr. Tuesday, May 14, 24 @ 8:59 am
As poet said, full birth date has been changed to birth year. Also, street house number has been omitted. (123 Fake St becomes just Fake St).
Comment by WCCC Tuesday, May 14, 24 @ 9:17 am
There is so much I would like to say, but I enjoy this site, so I’ll just say, what a bunch of jerks
Comment by Someone you shoudl know Tuesday, May 14, 24 @ 9:18 am
“What is the purpose”
Speculation:
These sites, especially on the backend, use all sorts of tricks to game the SEO process. They’ve done scraping of local news to post on their own site, but posted in links only accessible through a sitemap crawler link in the robots.txt file but not easily accessible to the public. This could potentially makes them seem to be even more relevant for a certain search string than the original publishers. For awhile, their robots file was packed full of thousands of individual URL paths with a granularity of locations down to the level of specific neighborhoods and subdivision names.
What they appear to be doing here, is providing the content of thousands of individual names all related to certain geographical areas, specifically in areas where their already SEO-stuffed fake papers are running. From an SEO standpoint, this solidifies their ‘ranking’ for a certain geographical area even more even for unrelated searches.
To me, their sites have always seemed like a full on and deliberate SEO-manipulation process first, and the actual public content second.
Comment by TheInvisibleMan Tuesday, May 14, 24 @ 9:33 am
They may have complied with the order in a narrow legalistic manner - I looked for my city - the info included the voter’s name - birth year and just the street name - but not the specific address
From WBEZ
“The publisher of a chain of Republican-favoring websites derided as “pink slime” has agreed to remove specific street addresses and birthdates for “hundreds of thousands” of Illinois voters after being sued by Democratic Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul”
https://www.wbez.org/stories/a-lake-county-judge-orders-a-chain-of-websites-to-remove-voters-personal-information/6d5cf746-76ee-4836-93a1-bf81cd696053
Comment by Donnie Elgin Tuesday, May 14, 24 @ 9:45 am
> I dont understand why they would do this in the first place. What is the purpose?
If I had to guess, they want bully and put fear into people’s minds about voting blue. There are some places, even in IL, where voting blue will make you a social outcast (at best).
Comment by That Guy Tuesday, May 14, 24 @ 9:45 am
I dont understand why they would do this in the first place. What is the purpose?
Well, I know that I have civic-minded neighbors. On my street out of 91 registered voters, -80 did.
Comment by Donnie Elgin Tuesday, May 14, 24 @ 10:19 am
Looking one of these papers for the first time. I get the impression that they decide to do a “story” on something based on easily accessed data, someone sets up a quick template and lets a computer do the rest (it does not not even appear to be AI). The voter roll thing seems to be another one of those template stories.
Comment by Pot calling kettle Tuesday, May 14, 24 @ 10:33 am
It’s good that the Board of Elections and Raoul could work to safeguard voters personal information to some degree.
Now how about they go after the overdue fine owed by Senate President Harmon’s Illinois Supreme Court PAC? $100k is real money. Proft’s PAC too.
Comment by Pedro Grifol Guy Tuesday, May 14, 24 @ 12:54 pm
I thought the problem was that these fake newspapers even *HAD* the voter information at all since LGIS is not a registered political committee.
Removing the the street number and the birth date but leaving year is not enough of a fix. How’d they get the information in the first place?
Why should they get to keep printing registered voter information at all? The data should be purged.
political committees registered with the State Board of Elections are entitled to purchase the election authority’s voter data file for “bona fide political purposes,” but they are prohibited from using the data for other business purposes.
Comment by skeptical 1 Tuesday, May 14, 24 @ 2:45 pm
===political committees registered with the State Board of Elections are entitled to purchase the election authority’s voter data file for “bona fide political purposes,” but they are prohibited from using the data for other business purposes.
Are you suggesting Dan Proft and Timpone are not entirely trustworthy actors? How dare you sir.
Comment by ArchPundit Tuesday, May 14, 24 @ 3:00 pm
>>> Removing the the street number and the birth date but leaving year is not enough of a fix. How’d they get the information in the first place? Why should they get to keep printing registered voter information at all? The data should be purged.
I believe this was just a temporary order while the initial lawsuit from Raoul goes forward.
Comment by WCCC Wednesday, May 15, 24 @ 11:21 am