[LINK] ABS could find out how you vote.

[Jim Birch]

It would be relatively easy to produce identifiable voting papers via
individual micro variations in the printing without obvious barcodes*.

See, eg, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_steganography   AFAIK there
are commerical systems available (and used by governments) that do this
sort of encoding to identify individual printed copies of secure documents
that might be leaked.

Your protection is due to cultural factors, not because it is
technologically infeasible.

Jim

* That is, if someone at the ABS actually had a reason to do it,  and could
quietly assemble a small team to do it, and were willing to take the risk
that the required conspiracy wouldn't leak, which it very likely would.
And could be bothered.

On 29 September 2017 at 19:59, Forename Surname <AbbottabadGuy at outlook.com>
wrote:

> https://marriagesurvey.abs.gov.au/privacy-policy#barcodes
>
> The ABS says of the vertical barcodes on your survey formS:
> "...The 'sequence number' also enables the insertion machine to identify
> and group together the correct instruction letter and survey form to be put
> in an individual envelope for each eligible Australian..."
> I. e.  your survey form and the form with your name and address are linked
> together by this barcode.  Thus anyone with access to the original forms
> could very easily see which ballot paper belongs to whom.
> Someone  m i g h t  also be able to use the big barcode at the bottom of
> your survey to figure out who you are, but I suppose the A. B. S. has
> probably made this quite a bit harder.
>
> Credit due to Paul Templeton from the  E. F. A. Privacy mailing-list
> (though any erroneous theories or crack-pot conspiracies are entirely my
> own concoction).
> Privacy at lists.efa.org.au
> http://lists.efa.org.au/mailman/listinfo/privacy
>
> Sorry all for not saying much you probably didn't already know,
> Reubs Newbs.
>
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