How quickly I descend into the dark murky corners of a world that touts unlimited global information for all. After flipping through a few amusing articles of hacktivists laying waste to government and corporate websites and staring with bewildering amazement at Snooki’s no makeup photo, I discover that Florida is getting ready to start early voting for the GOP primaries tomorrow. Oh exciting. I figure I should start my morning off with a simple exercise of civic duty, making sure I am registered to vote. After all, if you cannot vote, what is the point of being a citizen, of being an American. It just ain’t right not to vote! Sorry, getting carried away, let’s move on.
I jump onto the Florida Division of Elections website and quickly find the electronic registration page. Enter your first name, last name and birthday, easy enough. That is when I run into my first problem. Well, I’m not from Florida, I don’t even know anyone in Florida. I don’t even know what I’m doing on this page. My web browsing patterns at times looks like a squirrel in a peanut factory. But, what I do notice on the page is a bright little box that says something along the lines of, “don’t use this unless you are who you say you are,” and other stuff that is probably going to be important in my criminal trial later. It really got me thinking, what exactly does this page show you?
So I decide, what the hey, I have been down this road before, lets do this. Now, I do know someone in Washington state, so I scamper through Google and find the Washington Secretary of State website for voter elections. But, the page doesn’t load… BAH! Collateral damage from yesterday’s hacking spree. That is what I get for snickering at the FBI and DOJ this morning. But fortunately (or unfortunately), it only takes one more search on his city to find the county he resides in. Easily enough, I am at the county election registration page. Again, I only need to know a name and a birth date. To my surprise, this site does not have any warnings about pretending to be someone else or using another person’s information. Now I don’t feel so yucky and I convince myself I am once again doing my civic duty, this time, for a friend.
I am not expecting to see a personal biography of my friend, a CIA Factbook about his life, or a big picture of his dog. But, I am amazed and surprised just how easy it is to get a person’s home address. Nothing else of interest really shows up except voting district information, precinct stuff, and election office phone numbers, but who cares about voting. I don’t know about you, but the first thing I do when I get an address, is Google Street View it. And voila, what do you know… I can see his dog. I can also see his car parked out in front of his house and his vehicle license number. That will be handy for when I frame him for that broken bottle of pickles at Target (I knew running would buy me some time).
So as I sit there and stare into his life, I begin to wonder what all good friends wonder. Does he make more money than I do and how much was that house? The same nice county website that gave me his address also gives me this thing called a parcel search. When I get to their mapping page, I put in the house number and street name just like the voter registration told me and wind up on a page with things like parcel numbers, aerial plot views of his land, and property reports. Nice, this is like secret agent stuff. Just in case I accidently had the wrong person, the property report confirms his full legal name and also his wife’s. I can see his house was built in 1957, their property tax is almost as much as my cable bill, and that lady who sold them the house did pretty darn well with her ten year 150% increase in investment. Not too shabby, especially since this “quit claim deed” thingy says her husband no longer has any ownership since the divorce. Too bad the same can not be said for my friend who bought at the peak of the real estate bubble and lost, *gulp*. Never mind.
Now I feel dirty. Once again internet, you have brought me to a dark place. After closing everything up I decide to get back to doing something less intrusive into personal lives, something that won’t spark up unhealthy curiosity, has less of a stalker feeling and is more accepted by general society. I get on Facebook.
