It's the mother of all data leaks: The voter registration records of 191 million people in the U.S. were somehow exposed in a database, including a trove of private information, accessible to anyone in the world with the expertise of digging it out.
From Forbes' Thomas Fox-Brewster: "A whitehat hacker has uncovered a database sitting on the Web containing various pieces of personal information related to 191 million American citizens registered to vote. On top of the concomitant problems of disclosing such a significant leak to that many people, no one knows who is actually responsible for the misconfiguration that left the data open to anyone."
"Researcher Chris Vickery, who this month found myriad databases left open to all and sundry, told FORBES he has his hands on all 300GB of voter data, which includes names, home addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, party affiliations, and logs of whether or not they had voted in primary or general elections. The data appears to date back to 2000. It does not contain financial data or social security numbers."
"Vickery looked up his own information in the database table covering Texas and confirmed it was all accurate. Reporters from CSO and DataBreaches.net did the same. Vickery also looked up several police officers in his city and confirmed the information was correct."
Millions of trees are being slowly killed in California's drought, yet another after-effect of a historic dry spell that is heading into its fifth year.
From the Chronicle's Kurtis Alexander: "Beneath the canopy of snow that recently blanketed California’s mountainsides are vast swaths of forest struggling to survive the drought."
"A study released Monday by the Carnegie Institution for Science counts as many as 58 million trees statewide experiencing severe water loss, whose ruin would not only turn massive stands of pristine green to ugly brown but upset vital watersheds and wildlife."
"The research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, follows a U.S. Forest Service report last spring that identified 12 million trees killed by drought but left questions about how many more might wither."
It's been quite a year in Sacramento, a year of intense political activity and tense anticipation for the future.
Capitol Weekly's Chuck McFadden takes a look: "It was, as always, a mixture of hope and disappointment, deals made and unmade, the bizarre and the mundane. For the Capitol community, 2015 was also a year of anticipation."
"That’s because California voters will go to the polls in 2016 for a June primary and a November general election, where they will choose among hundreds of candidates and what is shaping up to be the biggest crowd of ballot measures in recent memory. And while they were calculating, 2015 zipped along, full of the happenings that make politics in California endlessly entertaining."
"Initiative creators were busy in 2015. The latest available figures tell us that 63 initiatives and referenda have been cleared for circulation by the Secretary of State’s office. Not all of them will make it to the Nov. 8 ballot, but four have already, including a proposal to overturn the state’s ban on plastic bags. Voters may also face competing initiatives to toughen the death penalty or do away with it."
Speaking of next year's ballot, a plan to add a tax to expensive homes and use the money to help the poor is drawing some serious financial support.
The Bee's Jim Miller has the story: "Major money has begun to flow into the effort to qualify a ballot measure that would impose a property tax surcharge on expensive homes to pay for anti-poverty programs."
"On Christmas Eve, the Making Poverty History campaign committee reported a $700,000 donation from the Daughters of Charity Foundation. The money brought to $900,000 the total contributed by the Los Angeles-based group, a Christian organization dedicated to serving the poor."
"Other major donors to the measure are Los Angeles entrepreneur Joseph Sanberg, who has given $150,000; St. John’s Well Child and Family Center and the Youth Policy Institute, Inc., which each donated $50,000."
Gov. Jerry Brown, continuing to court the national media, says he is going back to his roots, a dusty, windy, sprawling spread west of Colusa that was settled by his ancestors in the 19th century.
The NYT's Adam Nagourney tells the tale: "This is Rancho Venada, and for all its isolation and ostensible inhospitality, it is the place that this state’s governor, Jerry Brown, is gravitating to as he approaches the end of his 50-year career in politics. These 2,514 wind-swept acres have been owned by the Brown family for almost 150 years, since the governor’s great-grandfather August Schuckman, a German immigrant, traveled to central California on a wagon train."
"For the past year, Mr. Brown, 77, and his wife, Anne Gust Brown, have adopted this land as something of a mission. They sleep in the tiny cabin many weekends, rebuilding barns piled with garbage and pockmarked with bullet holes, organizing family reunions and laying plans to create a library here documenting the history of the ranch and this politically storied family. They may even live here after his term ends in 2019."
“Nobody likes this place except me,” Mr. Brown said recently."
And now, from our Spirit of Giving file, comes word of an effort in Colorado to help the homeless -- by giving them marijuana.
"Volunteers with a Denver nonprofit took to the streets Christmas Eve to give the homeless some unusual gifts -- free marijuana cigarettes."
"Nick Dicenzo, founder of the Cannabis Can nonprofit, said he and his volunteers handed out thousands of pre-rolled joints Christmas Eve to homeless adults and other bystanders interested in a toking token as part of their ongoing efforts to raise awareness of homelessness in the city."
"Dicenzo, who said he legally grew all of the marijuana used in the giveaway, said the event raised awareness of the group's efforts to raise money to buy RVs that would provide restrooms and showers to the city's homeless."
One toke over the line, as they used to say ...
