The senators' information

The site CIPER Chile has published our senators’ asset declarations, something the Senate has refused to do. This information is public; it’s just that to get it you have to go to Valparaíso and request it. So CIPER Chile’s move shows that if our authorities don’t want transparency, society can build that transparency itself.

But the journalists at CIPER surprise me with their lack of grasp of some very basic computing concepts. They decided to black out certain data in the declarations, such as car license plates and part of the address of the declared properties, yet they don’t black out more important codes, like the property’s ROL (the tax roll number) or people’s RUT (the national ID number).

I don’t get it. Why black out that information, when with the property’s ROL I’ve been able to get the exact address of several of our senators’ houses, and even look at a satellite photo of where they live?

Information doesn’t live alone or disconnected. A code like the ROL or the RUT makes it possible to link information across several databases, and since our country is so “advanced” in terms of e-government, you can get all the information about a property on the site of the SII, the tax service. With the RUT and the ROL I can get even more information and track each senator’s tax situation, and from there to pulling up a satellite photo of the house is a trivial step.

With the RUT I could look up even more information at the Civil Registry, and what’s worse, it’s not only possible to obtain information: we can also take actions that block all sorts of paperwork for anyone.

In Chile, once you have a person’s RUT you can complicate their life in very concrete ways. We can keep them from writing a check, or block one of their documents, for example. How would a senator feel if INTERPOL wouldn’t let him board at the airport because his passport was blocked? (I wonder whether that would ever actually happen to a senator.)

You don’t have to be a “hacker” to do all this; the truth is it takes no effort at all.

I don’t know what CIPER was trying to do by blacking out certain data. I suppose sparing the honorable gentlemen some trouble, or sparing themselves some. They would have done better to black out the RUTs and the property ROLs.

Hopefully nothing will happen, but I hope the senators consider improving our data protection laws, because we really are in very bad shape on these matters