Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Um, No.


Don't get me wrong, I'm appreciative that campaign finance reports are now online. But my instinct is not to trust Allegheny County with "unrestricted access to my computer". Was it that complicated to put a spreadsheet online? What should I do?

5 comments:

  1. Call up the County Executives office and complain? Or call 311. Every 311 complaint gets handled with kid glove care in record time.

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  3. I guess the original documents are scanned, Filenet (owned by IBM) is the company that does the scanning (software) and the interface to the web (I think), and Thawte is the company that specifies the connection is secure (I think, I have some connection the Thawte at work). I didn't see that message myself, but maye you went somewhere I didn't. Maybe I am too willing to trust technology, but I don't see any danger in that message. I kind of doubt that the County people are clever enough to take over our computers. The Diebold people, now that is a different matter.

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  4. With all due respect, I would click "Don't Trust". I see you're using a Mac (which is good re security), but I would not trust the software.

    If you grant the permission, and a Microsoft Excel macro turns into MalWare, you've just given up your computer.

    If you can't see the file without giving up security controls on your computer, they haven't really made the info available, have they?

    One shabby alternative is to use a work computer. But we'd never do that. Cheers, Vannevar

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