Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger confirms Anthropic’s Claude AI did access his office’s website and data hub but insists it retrieved only publicly available data and came no where near sensitive voter information.
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Raffensperger’s office says Anthropic first contacted it on Oct. 8 to alert them to the incident.
A day later, the Office says, the White House also alerted it. But the Secretary of State’s Office investigation, and later an investigation by Anthropic, showed the bot had no access into sensitive voter information like social security numbers and other personal identifiable information.
“Anthropic said…what they said in their report,” Raffensperger said Monday. “What they say is publicly available information. We did our due diligence, and I think some people though there’s nothing there, because it was publicly available. No personalized information was put out there, so elections are secure, go out and vote.”
Kennesaw State University Associate Professor of Cybersecurity Dr. Andy Green agrees with the investigations. He looked into the data hub and website and said it doesn’t appear that sensitive information was accessible.
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“So your voting record has not been compromised. My voting record has not been compromised,” Dr. Green said. “Your vote was not touched with or altered nor was mind. I think it’s really important for the public to understand, if nothing else, those two things, because I think in my estimation, those are the two more important things. Your voter registration data is safe, wasn’t tampered with, wasn’t breached or accessed, nor was your actual vote from this election cycle. Nothing to do with that data at all was touched, and both Anthropic and the Secretary of State’s Office agree with that.”
Channel 2’s Richard Elliot also spoke with Governor Brian Kemp, himself the former Secretary of State for eight years, about the incident. He’s concerned about cybersecurity but believes Georgians’ voter information is safe.
“I’m still very confident in our elections process,” Kemp said. “It doesn’t concern me as much about voting as it does just the cybersecurity part of it.”
Channel 2 Action News reached out to Anthropic for comment, but hasn’t received one yet.
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