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Data Engineer role covers many technologies like- Hadoop, Hive, Spark, SQL etc. Some of the most popular Data Engineer interview questions are as follows:What are the four Vs of Big Data?What is the difference between Structured and Unstructured Big Data?What are the main components of a Hadoop Application?What is the core concept behind Apache Hadoop framework?What is Hadoop Streaming?What is the difference between NameNode, Backup Node and Checkpoint NameNode in HDFS?What is the optimum hardware configuration to run Apache Hadoop?What do you know about Block and Block scanner in HDFS?What are the default port numbers on which Name Node, Job Tracker and Task Tracker run in Hadoop?How will you disable a Block Scanner on HDFS DataNode?How will you get the distance between two nodes in Apache Hadoop?Why do we use commodity hardware in Hadoop?How does inter cluster data copying works in Hadoop?How can we update a file at an arbitrary location in HDFS?What is Replication factor in HDFS, and how can we set it?What is the difference between NAS and DAS in Hadoop cluster?What are the two messages that NameNode receives from DataNode in Hadoop?How does indexing work in Hadoop?What data is stored in a HDFS NameNode?What would happen if NameNode crashes in a HDFS cluster?What are the main functions of Secondary NameNode?What happens if HDFS file is set with replication factor of 1 and DataNode crashes?What is the meaning of Rack Awareness in Hadoop?If we set Replication factor 3 for a file, does it mean any computation will also take place 3 times?How will you check if a file exists in HDFS?Why do we use fsck command in HDFS?What will happen when NameNode is down and a user submits a new job?What are the core methods of a Reducer in Hadoop?What are the primary phases of a Reducer in Hadoop?What is the use of Context object in Hadoop?How does partitioning work in Hadoop?What is a Combiner in Hadoop?What is the default replication factor in HDFS?How much storage is allocated by HDFS for storing a file of 25 MB size?Why does HDFS store data in Block structure?How will you create a custom Partitioner in a Hadoop job?What are the differences between RDBMS and HBase data model?What is a Checkpoint node in HDFS?What is a Backup Node in HDFS?What is the meaning of term Data Locality in Hadoop?What is the difference between Data science, Big Data and Hadoop?What is a Balancer in HDFS?What are the important points a NameNode considers before selecting the DataNode for placing a data block?What is Safemode in HDFS?How will you replace HDFS data volume before shutting down a DataNode?What are the important configuration files in Hadoop?How will you monitor memory used in a Hadoop cluster?Why do we need Serialization in Hadoop map reduce methods?What is the use of Distributed Cache in Hadoop?How will you synchronize the changes made to a file in Distributed Cache in Hadoop?How will you improve the performance of a program in Hive?Can we use Hive for Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) systems?How will you change the data type of a column in Hive?What is Metastore in Hive?What is SerDe in Hive?What are the components in Hive data model?What are the different modes in which we can run Hive?What are the main components of Hive?What is the use of Hive in Hadoop eco-system?What Collection/Complex data types are supported by Hive?What is the use of .hiverc file in Hive?How will you run Unix commands from Hive?What is the purpose of USE command in Hive?What is the precedence order in Hive configuration?How will you display header row with the results of a Hive query?Can we create multiple tables in Hive for a data file?How does CONCAT function work in Hive?How will you change settings of a Hive session?How will you rename a table in Hive without using ALTER command?What is the difference between SORT BY and ORDER BY in Hive?What is the use of strict mode in Hive?What is the use of IF EXISTS clause in Hive statements?What is the use of PURGE in DROP statement of Hive?What are the main limitations of Apache Hive?What is the difference between HBase and Hive?What is ObjectInspector in Hive?What are the main components of Query Processor in Apache Hive?How will you resolve an out of memory error while running a JOIN query?What are the different SerDe implementations in Hive?What is the use of HCatalog?What is the Data Model of HCatalog?What is RLIKE operator in Hive?Can we use same name for a TABLE and VIEW in Hive?How will you load data into a VIEW in Hive?What is Bucketing in Hive?What are the pros and cons of archiving a partition in Hive?What are the table generating functions in Hive?How can we specify in Hive to load an HDFS file in LOAD DATA?What is a Skewed table in Hive?What is the use of CLUSTERED BY clause during table creation in Hive?What is a Managed table in Hive?How will you prevent data to be dropped or queried from a partition in Hive?What is the use of TOUCH in ALTER statement?How does OVERWRITE clause work in CREATE TABLE statement in Hive?What are the options to connect an application to a Hive server?How TRIM and RPAD functions work in Hive?How will you recursively access sub-directories in Hive?What is the optimization that can be done in SELECT * query in Hive?What is the use of ORC format tables in Hive?What are the main use cases for using Hive?What is STREAMTABLE in Hive?What are the main features of Apache Spark?What is a Resilient Distribution Dataset in Apache Spark?What is a Transformation in Apache Spark?What are security options in Apache Spark?How will you monitor Apache Spark?What are the main libraries of Apache Spark?What are the main functions of Spark Core in Apache Spark?How will you do memory tuning in Spark?What are the two ways to create RDD in Spark?What are the main operations that can be done on a RDD in Apache Spark?What are the common Transformations in Apache Spark?What are the common Actions in Apache Spark?What is a Shuffle operation in Spark?What are the operations that can cause a shuffle in Spark?What is purpose of Spark SQL?What is a DataFrame in Spark SQL?What is a Parquet file in Spark?What is the difference between Apache Spark and Apache Hadoop MapReduce?What are the main languages supported by Apache Spark?What are the file systems supported by Spark?What is a Spark Driver?What is an RDD Lineage?What are the two main types of Vector in Spark?What are the different deployment modes of Apache Spark?What is lazy evaluation in Apache Spark?What are the core components of a distributed application in Apache Spark?What is the difference in cache() and persist() methods in Apache Spark?How will you remove data from cache in Apache Spark?What is the use of SparkContext in Apache Spark?Do we need HDFS for running Spark application?What is Spark Streaming?How does Spark Streaming work internally?What is a Pipeline in Apache Spark?How does Pipeline work in Apache Spark?What is the difference between Transformer and Estimator in Apache Spark?What are the different types of Cluster Managers in Apache Spark?How will you minimize data transfer while working with Apache Spark?What is the main use of MLib in Apache Spark?What is the Checkpointing in Apache Spark?What is an Accumulator in Apache Spark?What is a Broadcast variable in Apache Spark?What is Structured Streaming in Apache Spark?How will you pass functions to Apache Spark?What is a Property Graph?What is Neighborhood Aggregation in Spark?What are different Persistence levels in Apache Spark?How will you select the storage level in Apache Spark?What are the options in Spark to create a Graph?What are the basic Graph operators in Spark?What is the partitioning approach used in GraphX of Apache Spark?Write SQL query to get the second highest salary among all Employees?How can we retrieve alternate records from a table in Oracle?Write a SQL Query to find Max salary and Department name from each department.Write a SQL query to find records in Table A that are not in Table B without using NOT IN operator.What is the result of following query?Write SQL Query to find employees that have same name and email.Write a SQL Query to find Max salary from each department.Write SQL query to get the nth highest salary among all Employees.How can you find 10 employees with Odd number as Employee ID?Write a SQL Query to get the names of employees whose date of birth is between 01/01/1990 to 31/12/2000.Write a SQL Query to get the Quarter from date.Write Query to find employees with duplicate email.Is it safe to use ROWID to locate a record in Oracle SQL queries?What is a Pseudocolumn?What are the reasons for de-normalizing the data?What is the feature in SQL for writing If/Else statements?What is the difference between DELETE and TRUNCATE in SQL?What is the difference between DDL and DML commands in SQL?Why do we use Escape characters in SQL queries?What is the difference between Primary key and Unique key in SQL?What is the difference between INNER join and OUTER join in SQL?What is the difference between Left OUTER Join and Right OUTER Join?What is the datatype of ROWID?What is the difference between where clause and having clause?How will you calculate the number of days between two dates in MySQL?What are the different types of Triggers in MySQL?What are the differences between Heap table and temporary table in MySQL?What is a Heap table in MySQL?What is the difference between BLOB and TEXT data type in MySQL?What will happen when AUTO_INCREMENT on an INTEGER column reaches MAX_VALUE in MySQL?What are the advantages of MySQL as compared with Oracle DB?What are the disadvantages of MySQL?What is the difference between CHAR and VARCHAR datatype in MySQL?What is the use of 'i_am_a_dummy flag' in MySQL?How can we get current date and time in MySQL?What is the difference between timestamp in Unix and MySQL?How will you limit a MySQL query to display only top 10 rows?What is automatic initialization and updating for TIMESTAMP in a MySQL table?How can we get the list of all the indexes on a table?What is SAVEPOINT in MySQL?What is the difference between ROLLBACK TO SAVEPOINT and RELEASE SAVEPOINT?How will you search for a String in MySQL column?How can we find the version of the MySQL server and the name of the current database by SELECT query?What is the use of IFNULL() operator in MySQL?How will you check if a table exists in MySQL?How will you see the structure of a table in MySQL?What are the objects that can be created by CREATE statement in MySQL?How will you see the current user logged into MySQL connection?How can you copy the structure of a table into another table without copying the data?What is the difference between Batch and Interactive modes of MySQL?How can we get a random number between 1 and 100 in MySQL?Reference: Top 200 Data Engineer Interview Questions & AnswersFollow me at Gautam Gupta to learn more about Data Engineer interview topics.

Original question:What is the goal of Trump's voter fraud task force?The presidential election integrity commission was established by executive order in May to investigate Trump’s claims of rampant voter fraud. As this item starts to occupy more and more headlines - I find it all very confusing, what is the goal and are they going about it the right way?The main goals, based on the past and present behavior and actions of Trump, seem to be:Voter intimidation.Voter suppression & voter restriction.Disenfranchising Voters.To ice his bruised ego (he lost the popular vote).Examples that back up the above goals I listed:Intimidation:Trump asked his base to be “election observers”: [1]Go down to certain areas and watch and study and make sure other people don’t come in and vote five times……The only way they can beat it in my opinion, and I mean this 100 percent, is if in certain sections of the state they cheat, okay? So I hope you people can sort of not just vote on the 8th — go around and look and watch other polling places and make sure that it’s 100 percent fine.Trump’s campaign website also added a “sign up” page for “election observers”:Appeal to motive in the below tweet:Numerous states are refusing to give information to the very distinguished VOTER FRAUD PANEL. What are they trying to hide?— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 1, 2017Voter Suppression & Restriction: [2]Voter purges:The letter doesn’t ask whether states are complying with the parts of the law that expand opportunities to register. Instead it focuses on the sections related to maintaining the lists. That’s a prelude to voter purging.Usually the Justice Department would ask only a single state for data if it had evidence the state wasn’t complying with Motor-Voter. But a blanket request to every state covered under that law is virtually unprecedented...These parallel efforts show us exactly how the Trump administration will undertake its enormous voter suppression campaign: through voter purges. The voter rolls are the key. Registration is one of the main gateways to political participation. It is the difference between a small base of voters pursuing a narrow agenda and an electorate that looks like America.Will affect minority voters disproportionately:Here’s how the government will use voters’ data. It will create a national database to try to find things like double-voters. But the commission won’t be able to tell two people with the same name and birthday apart. Such errors will hit communities of color the hardest. Census data shows that minorities are overrepresented in 85 of the 100 most common last names.Purging voters is part of a larger malicious pattern that states have employed across the country. Georgia and Ohio are being sued for carrying out early versions of what we can expect from the Trump administration.Disenfranchising Voters: [3]The Voter Commission’s data request resulted in some people withdrawing their voter registration:Three thousand, three hundred and ninety-four Coloradans have withdrawn their voter registrations as of July 13, following the Trump administration’s request for voter data as part of the Commission on Election Integrity. An additional 182 citizens in the state have filed as confidential voters.Several other states have reported a similar uptick in citizens moving to keep their information out of the federal government’s hands.Bruised Ego:Trump cannot accept that he lost the popular vote:In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2016Quick look at “voter fraud” claims: [4]The 1960 presidential election:…reports of deceased and other unregistered voters in largely African American districts in Illinois or cases of malfeasance throughout Texas were believed to have rigged John F. Kennedy’s victory over Richard Nixon.Former Attorney General John Ashcroft:Formed the “Ballot Access and Voting Integrity Initiative” under George W. Bush’s presidencyDespite his coordination of the U.S. attorney offices with local election officials, only 24 people were convicted of improper or illegal voting and 14 non-citizens were found to be illegally voting in federal elections between 2002 and 2005.Claims of Voter Fraud in New Jersey:There were reports in 2004 that 4,755 deceased voters cast ballots in New Jersey. After careful comparison between voter rolls and death records, there were no official accounts of voter fraud.Claims of voter fraud in New York:In New York in both 2002 and 2004, 2,600 deceased voters allegedly voted, only to be removed from the register after an investigation revealed clerical errors and not malfeasance.Paranoia over “voter fraud” leads to voter suppression.North Carolina:Supreme Court rejected an appeal to reinstate North Carolina’s stringent voter identification laws that were found to discriminate against African Americans “with almost surgical precision.”Within days following this ruling, the court also found that two of North Carolina’s congressional redistricting maps resulted from unconstitutional racial gerrymandering. The decision—even supported by the more conservative Justice Clarence Thomas—found that African Americans were unfairly packed in two concentrated black districts, thereby minimizing their political influence in major elections.Wisconsin:Wisconsin’s efforts mirrored those in North Carolina where advocates purported that nearly 300,000 people lacked the proper ID to participate in the 2016 presidential election, even after parts of the state’s law were deemed unconstitutional upon appeal.Florida:In Florida, 1.5 million people were disenfranchised by a law that disqualifies ex-felons from voting, resulting in one in every four African American residents unable to vote in 2016.The 10 members in Trump’s “Commission on Election Integrity”:The above chart is based on information from a Washington Post article. [5]Mike Pence said that the “Commission on Election Integrity” will: [6]…Initiate a full evaluation of voting rolls in the country and the overall integrity of our voting system in the wake of this past election.Closer look into Kris Kobach:On November 9th, 2016, Kobach emailed a Trump transition team member about amending the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA): [7] [8]Kobach wants to amend the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA). Passed in 1993, the NVRA aims to increase voter registration: Its provisions include requiring that motor vehicle and public assistance agencies provide voter registration opportunities, and allows for registration by mail.“Interstate Crosscheck System”: [9]The “Interstate Crosscheck System” is faulty at stopping voter fraud and is conducted by Kansas election authorities:States participating in the program, known as the Interstate Crosscheck System, send their voter registration files to Kansas…Each participating state receives back a list of their voter registrations that match the first name, last name and date of birth of a voter in another state. Crosscheck provides some guidelines for purging voter registrations from the rolls.The “Interstate Crosscheck Program” is inherently flawed:In theory, the program is supposed to detect possible cases of people voting in multiple locations. But academics and states that use the program have found that its results are overrun with false positives, creating a high risk of disenfranchising legal voters…For every one illegitimate vote, “Interstate Crosscheck Program” would eliminate 200 legitimate votes:A statistical analysis of the program published earlier this year by researchers at Stanford, Harvard, University of Pennsylvania and Microsoft, for instance, found that Crosscheck “would eliminate about 200 registrations used to cast legitimate votes for every one registration used to cast a double vote.”Why the “Interstate Crosscheck Program” gets it so wrong:Factors for “matches” - birthdays and names:Crosscheck bases its “matches” primarily on just two factors: people's first and last names and their birth date. But in a country of 139 million voters, you're guaranteed to have tens of thousands of individuals who share both names and birthdays.For instance, in a 2007 paper, elections experts Michael McDonald and Justin Levitt examined voter files from New Jersey's 2014 elections. In those elections, the most common names — William Smith, Maria Rodriguez, etc. — showed up hundreds of times, reflecting their prevalence in the general population.Shared birthdays are even more common — statistically speaking if you have a group of just 23 people, there's a greater than 50 percent chance that at least two of them will share the same birthday.At 180 people, according to McDonald and Levitt, there's a 50 percent chance that two of them will share the same birth date — month, day and year.So if you have 282 William Smiths, as in New Jersey's voter rolls in 2004, you'd expect four of them to share the exact same birthday. Those four William Smiths would be flagged as potentially fraudulent voters by Kobach's Crosscheck system.Disorganized Voter files:…Voter files are notoriously messy and often incomplete. Among the 3.6 million New Jersey voters McDonnell and Levitt analyzed, for instance, nearly 1 million were missing a birth date completely. Ten thousand were listed with a birth date of Jan. 1, 1753, and another 20,000 listed as Jan. 1, 1800 — likely placeholder values that were never updated.Multiply those figures up to the national level, and you can see how a system that naively matches names and birth dates is going to return a lot of noise — and very, very little in the way of people actually trying to game the voting system.There's no question that incomplete voter data is a problem. But comparing incomplete data sets against each other isn't likely to solve that problem.Data on someone registering and voting in two states:Boiling it all down, out of the 240,000 paired registrations that Crosscheck sent to Iowa, there were only six cases where it appeared that the same person registered and voted in two different states.In other words, well over 99 percent of the 'matches' sent to Iowa were unlikely to have anything to do with even attempted voter fraud.Incidentally, that's in line with Kobach's prosecution record on Crosscheck cases: a grand total of nine successful convictions so far, “mostly older Republican males,” according to local media reports.Crosscheck’s “User Guide”:…Crosscheck's user guide recommends purging older voter registrations when the name and partial Social Security number match the name and SSN of a more recent registration.…Harvard, Stanford, University of Pennsylvania and Microsoft team estimate that following this guideline would result in 200 deletions of legitimate voter registrations for each real-world case of double voting it prevented.Kobach loves the “Interstate Crosscheck Program” and wants to take it to a national level - that’s concerning:Kobach's championing of Crosscheck is one reason many voting rights advocates are concerned that President Trump's voter fraud commission may be a vehicle for recommending mass voter purges……In his opening remarks before the election commission he said the Crosscheck program “illustrates how a successful multi-state effort can be in enhancing the integrity of our elections and in keeping our voter rolls accurate. I'm confident that this commission will be equally successful on the national level.”…If the system is primarily a vehicle for false positives, why bother using it at all?…the naming of Kobach to President Trump's voter fraud commission ensures that Crosscheck will continue to have a role in the spotlight this year. And if the Republican Party has its way, Crosscheck will expand — the 2016 GOP party platform called for “every state to join the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program to keep voter rolls accurate and to prevent people from voting in more than one state in the same election.”Kris Kobach sent a letter to all 50 states (June 28th, 2016), requesting information on voters: [10]This letter asked for: [11]The information requested includes the names, addresses, birthdates, political party (if recorded), last four digits of the voter's Social Security Number and which elections the voter has participated in since 2006, for every registered voter in the country.It would seem that Kobach desires to use “Interstate Crosscheck System” on all the information sent in regarding the information he requested.The ACLU said this about the request from Kobach:As a part of Donald Trump’s Election Integrity Commission, Kris Kobach sent letters across the country, asking state representatives for details on every registered voter in the country. This is an unprecedented government request for information on American voters, including names, addresses, birthdates, political affiliation, last four digits of Social Security numbers, and voting history.Here is a chart from the ACLU regarding where each state stands on these requests:After Kobach’s letter, there are currently seven federal lawsuits that have been filed in July (2017) against Trump’s “Commission on Election Integrity”: [12]The NAACP Legal Defense Fund filed a lawsuit on July 18th, 2017. The lawsuit alleged that the “Commission on Election Integrity”: [13]“was formed with the intent to discriminate against voters of color in violation of the Constitution…to reaffirm President Trump’s false allegations of millions of ‘illegal’ votesto provide a basis for actions that will target African-American and Latino voters…rather than objectively analyze an issue of national significance.”It went on further, saying:“Statements by President Trump, his spokespersons and surrogates…as well as the work of the Commission as described by its co-chairs, are grounded on the false premise that Black and Latino voters are more likely to perpetrate voter fraud…”The suit points to the below evidence:Trump’s repeated lies that “millions of illegals” voted in the electionPence repeating Trump’s claim/defending it [14]Kobach repeating Trump’s claim: [15]“I think the president-elect is absolutely correct when he says the number of illegal votes cast exceeds the popular vote margin between him and Hillary Clinton at this point.”Hans von Spakovsky’s ties to the “Public Interest Legal Foundation”The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) filed a lawsuit against the Commission on July 3, 2017, alleging that: [16]“the Commission’s demand for detailed voter histories also violates millions of Americans’ constitutional right to privacy.”The “Commission on Election Integrity” asked states to stop sending voter information until this lawsuit was resolved [17]The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit on July 10th, 2017, alleging that the Commission was not following proper transparency laws: [18]The lawsuit charges the commission with failing to comply with the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which is designed to ensure public accountability of all advisory committees.The ACLU said that the Commission was not making any of the topics discussed available to the publicThree days later, the White House had a page added to its website which contained some documents regarding the meetings [19]The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law filed a lawsuit similar to the ACLU’s on July 10th, 2017, citing the Commission’s failure to comply with transparency laws [20]The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law also filed a Hatch Act Complaint against Kobach, saying that he improperly used his role on the Commission to promote his upcoming run for Governor in Kansas [21]The Florida ACLU filed a lawsuit on July 10th, 2017 (separate from the other ACLU lawsuit) against the Commission, alleging that the collection efforts were: [22]“…an unjustified invasion of privacy not authorized under the Constitution and laws of the United States or the individual states.”Public Citizen filed a lawsuit on July 10, 2017, similar to the lawsuit from ACLU Florida, alleging that the Commission: [23]“collection and dissemination of [voter] information violates the Privacy Act, which prohibits the collection, use, maintenance or distribution of any ‘record describing how any individual exercises rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.’ ”Public Citizen is requesting a temporary restraining order on the Commission’s request regarding voter informationCommon Cause also filed a lawsuit regarding Privacy Act violations on July 14, 2017, against the Commission: [24]“Common Cause asks the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to order the commission, [the Department of Homeland Security], and [the Social Security Administration] to stop seeking and using the voter history and party affiliation of voters, and return any such data it has already obtained from any state.”How Kobach’s request could be unconstitutional: [25]Kobach’s goal seems to be collecting personal information on people to put in a national voter file [26]The files would collect information not limited to:NameAddressPolitical party affiliationVoting HistorySome states include even more information: [27]Date of birthTelephone numbersEmail addressesInformation about minors (some states “pre-register” minors so that they can automatically vote when they turn 18)“Publicly Available” is not a cut and dry definition: [28]In some states, voter files are widely accessible, but not to everyoneSome states restrict “why” one can have access to voter filesFor example, Texas prohibits access to voter information used for commercial profitsVoter information is sometimes limited to: [29]Political partiesCandidatesNonprofitsAny state that have these types of restrictions are automatically breaking their own laws by sending information to back to KobachNo one knows what the Commission’s security protocols will be (or if they even have any)Asking for this information via email is suspectMakes it appear that the Commission has no security protocolsAnd/or doesn’t care about securityNo one knows exactly what the Commission will do with the infoWhat laws could this data request be breaking? Here are some of them: [30]The Privacy Act:We’ve long had privacy and security concerns about government recordkeeping in this country. Back in 1974, Congress passed the Privacy Act, regulating how federal government entities keep records. There are a number of substantive requirements for a body like the Kobach commission. Those actually include specific limits on data that Kobach has asked for, like voting history and party affiliation.The Paperwork Reduction Law:The Paperwork Reduction Act, a law with a longstanding pedigree (if an uninspiring name), governs agencies that want to issue potentially burdensome information requests. The statute covers requests that are mandatory or voluntary, aimed at individuals or organizations. The guiding idea behind the PRA is simple: before the federal government enlists individuals, companies, organizations, or state governments into potentially burdensome fact-finding, it should have a good justification and a well thought out plan.Procedural requirements found within the PRA:PRA requires federal agencies to satisfy procedural requirements designed to ensure a deliberative approach informed by the people who will feel the effects of federal action. Much of it is basic stuff. Before sending out an information request to more than ten people, a federal agency must articulate a justification for doing so. It must weigh any potential benefits to the government against the burdens that its requests will impose on recipients. It must have a plan for conducting the request and managing the information it receives. Perhaps most importantly, it must engage the public through two rounds of detailed public notification, coupled with opportunities for the public to weigh in. Only then may the agency seek final approval from the White House’s budget office, which oversees compliance with the PRA, to go forward.The election commission didn’t do any of those things. It simply ignored the statute’s requirements. In other words, its request to every Secretary of State in the country violated federal law.…In other words, the Commission’s failure to adhere to the PRA isn’t a matter of mere technical non-compliance; it flouted a legal framework whose provisions would have offered a safeguard against a misguided, and potentially quite harmful, national fishing expedition for voter data.…For state officials on the fence about whether to provide the data, the PRA should weigh significantly in their decisions. The Kobach letter was, after all, an unlawful request. State officials should pause long and hard before turning over such sensitive data – data that is foundational to the democratic process…And on top of all of that, the letter from Kobach also creates a major target for hackers: [31]Digital security experts say the commission’s request would centralize and lay bare a valuable cache of information that cyber criminals could use for identity theft scams — or that foreign spies could leverage for disinformation schemes.Quick facts on voter fraud:Justin Levitt, Loyola Law School professor, found: [32]2000 - 2014 = 35 cases of voter impersonation out of ~800 million ballots that were cast in primary, municipal, special, and other elections.News21 journalism looked into voter impersonation as well as people voting twice, vote buying, absentee fraud, etc from 2000 - 2012. [33]For voter impersonation: 10For other alleged fraud cases: 2,068~50% of those votes ended with acquittals or charges being droppedThe State Board of Elections in North Carolina found: [34]1 case of voter fraud out of 4.8 million votes in the 2016 General ElectionThere were 500 ineligible votesAlmost all of those 500 were people voting who genuinely thought they couldIn 2007, the NYT found that there were: [35]86 convictions of voter fraud from 2002–2007Quick background on voter ID laws (hint, its voter suppression): [36]Voter ID laws disproportionately affect minorities:These laws have a disproportionate effect on minorities, which is exactly what you would expect given that members of racial and ethnic minorities are less apt to have valid photo ID.States that do have strict voter ID laws tend to vote more conservative:Because minority voters tend to be Democrats, strict voter ID laws tilt the primary electorate dramatically.All else equal, when strict ID laws are instituted, the turnout gap between Republicans and Democrats in primary contests more than doubles from 4.3 points to 9.8 points.Likewise, the turnout gap between conservative and liberal voters more than doubles from 7.7 to 20.4 points.States that pass strict Voter ID laws tend to have GOP legislatures:By instituting strict voter ID laws, states can alter the electorate and shift outcomes toward those on the right:Where these laws are enacted, the influence of Democrats and liberals wanes and the power of Republicans grows.Strict ID laws are passed almost exclusively by Republican legislatures.Quick look at what States have Voter ID laws: [37]Some states seem energized by Trump’s voter fraud conspiracies, many pushing for more Voter ID laws in 2017:At least 99 bills to restrict access to the polls have been introduced (or have been carried over from previous sessions) in 31 states this year; that's already more than double the number last year, according to data compiled by the Brennan Center.Voter ID — requiring voters to prove who they are with identifying documents — is the most common requirement, but changes to the voter registration process, such as asking people to prove their U.S. citizenship, are a close second.Why obtaining a government issued ID tends to be more challenging for minority demographics, collectively as well as some of the reasons that these laws are discriminatory: [38]Cost:Obtaining ID Costs Money.Even if ID is offered for free, voters must incur numerous costs (such as paying for birth certificates) to apply for a government-issued ID.Underlying documents required to obtain ID cost money, a significant expense for lower-income Americans. The combined cost of document fees, travel expenses and waiting time are estimated to range from $75 to $175.Travel:The travel required is often a major burden on people with disabilities, the elderly, or those in rural areas without access to a car or public transportation.In Texas, some people in rural areas must travel approximately 170 miles to reach the nearest ID office.Voter ID laws are discriminatory:Minority voters disproportionately lack ID.Nationally, up to 25% of African-American citizens of voting age lack government-issued photo ID, compared to only 8% of whites.Some Voter ID laws exclude forms of ID in a discriminatory way:Texas:allows concealed weapons permits for voting, but does not accept student ID cards.North Carolina:Until its voter ID law was struck down, North Carolina prohibited public assistance IDs and state employee ID cards, which are disproportionately held by Black voters.Wisconsin:Until recently, Wisconsin permitted active duty military ID cards, but prohibited Veterans Affairs ID cards for voting.Enforcement of Voter ID laws shows a trend of discriminatory behavior:A Caltech/MIT study found that minority voters are more frequently questioned about ID than are white voters.Voter ID laws reduces the turnout of minority voters:Several studies, including a 2014 GAO study, have found that photo ID laws have a particularly depressive effect on turnout among racial minorities and other vulnerable groups, worsening the participation gap between voters of color and whites.The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is a right wing group that is funded by corporations like Exxon Mobile and the Koch brothers, is the culprit behind most of the voter ID laws: [39]Lawmakers proposed 62 photo ID bills in 37 states in the 2011 and 2012 sessions, with multiple bills introduced in some states.Ten states have passed strict photo ID laws since 2008, though several may not be in effect in November because of legal challenges.…More than half of the 62 bills were sponsored by members or conference attendees of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a Washington, D.C.-based, tax-exempt organization.At ALEC’s annual conferences, legislators, nonprofits and corporations work together without direct public input to develop bills that promote smaller government…The group’s Public Safety and Elections Task Force at the 2009 Atlanta meeting approved the “Voter ID Act,” a photo ID bill modeled on Indiana and Georgia laws.…Arkansas state Rep. Dan Greenberg, Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce and Indiana state Rep. Bill Ruppel (three Republicans now out of office) led drafting and discussion of the Voter ID Act.Critics of photo voter ID laws…say voters without a driver’s license or the means (a birth certificate or Social Security card) to obtain free ID cards at a state motor vehicles office could be disenfranchised.They claim that ALEC pushed for photo ID laws because poor Americans without ID are likely to vote against conservative interestsThe White House asked for feedback on the “Election Integrity Commission” on the White House website, which didn’t go so well. For example: [40]There was a lot of swearing:People called out Kobach and Pence specifically:Others questioned the integrity of the Commission:There were comparisons to Big Brother:Others demanded that the commissioners explain themselves:And my personal favorite:So, in conclusion, Trump’s “Commission on Election Integrity” is a waste of taxpayer money. The goal of the Commission is to create a “solution” that is looking for problems that don’t exist as well as creating problems.Are they going about it the right way? No.The premise of this Commission is based on lies.How the Commission is going about collecting the information based on a false premise is wrong.The data the Commission is wanting is likely a violation of privacy laws.Footnotes[1] Trump Asks Supporters to Prevent ‘Rigged’ Election by Becoming ‘Observers’[2] Opinion | The Voter Purges Are Coming[3] Some voters unregistering after Trump administration's data requests[4] Trump’s election integrity commission needs to redress voter suppression, not fraud[5] Analysis | Here are the first 10 members of Trump’s voting commission[6] Trump's election commission meets as critics condemn president's 'biggest lie'[7] Kris Kobach Email [8] This Trump administration official wants to make it more difficult to vote[9] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/07/20/this-anti-voter-fraud-program-gets-it-wrong-over-99-of-the-time-the-gop-wants-to-take-it-nationwide/?utm_term=.b08bbbc38661[10] https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3881818/SOS-Letter.pdf[11] Election Integrity Commission - State Responses[12] Trump’s voter commission is now facing at least 7 federal lawsuits[13] http://www.naacpldf.org/files/about-us/EIC%20Complaint.pdf[14] Watch Mike Pence try to defend Trump’s false claim that ‘millions’ voted illegally[15] Kris Kobach agrees with Donald Trump that ‘millions’ voted illegally but offers no evidence[16] EPIC v. Presidential Election Commission[17] https://epic.org/privacy/litigation/voter/epic-v-commission/EPIC-v-Commission-government-filing-on-DOD-database.pdf[18] American Civil Liberties Union v. Donald Trump[19] Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity[20] Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law Files Lawsuit To Halt Commission Hearing for Failure to Comply With Federal Law | Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law[21] Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law Files Hatch Act Complaint Against Kris Kobach | Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law[22] https://www.aclufl.org/2017/07/10/coalition-of-voting-rights-leaders-and-florida-voters-sue-presidential-commission-over-request-for-voter-information/[23] https://www.citizen.org/media/press-releases/public-citizen-sues-trump-administration-prevent-government’s-collection-voter[24] http://www.commoncause.org/press/press-releases/PenceKobachLawsuit.html?referrer=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/07/18/trumps-voter-fraud-commission-is-now-facing-at-least-7-federal-lawsuits/?utm_term=.696f889ac706?referrer=http://www.denverpost.com/2017/07/18/trumps-voter-commission-facing-several-federal-lawsuits/[25] All Your Voter Data Are Belong To Us | Take Care[26] http://www.ncsl.org/Documents/Elections/The_Canvass_February_2016_66.pdf[27] Full List Facts and Info - Voter List Information[28] States - Voter List Information[29] ELECTION CODE CHAPTER 18. PROCEDURES FOR IDENTIFYING REGISTERED VOTERS[30] President Trump’s Election Commission Has Already Violated Federal Law | Take Care[31] Trump voter-fraud panel’s data request a gold mine for hackers, experts warn[32] Voter Turnout Data - United States Elections Project[33] A News21 2012 National Project[34] https://s3.amazonaws.com/dl.ncsbe.gov/sboe/Post-Election%20Audit%20Report_2016%20General%20Election/Post-Election_Audit_Report.pdf[35] In 5-Year Effort, Scant Evidence of Voter Fraud[36] Analysis | Do voter identification laws suppress minority voting? Yes. We did the research.[37] States push new voter requirements, fueled by Trump[38] Oppose Voter ID Legislation - Fact Sheet[39] Oppose Voter ID Legislation - Fact Sheet[40] https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/docs/comments-received-june-29-through-july-11-2017.pdf

In the single sign-on implementation, there are various identity as a service vendors and you can check out the Gartner quadrant for Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) here. Some vendors are: Okta, OneLogin, Azure, PingIdentity (Now Vista Equity Partners), Centrify, Google, etc.Without going in-depth, there are two providers here in this single sign-on workflow:1) Identity provider (who can act as the master for the identity) and2) Service provider (application that needs to be accessed - Salesforce, Pagerduty, Amazon,Dropbox, etc).Here are ten concrete steps for a successful single sign-on implementation:Create Application MatrixAs part of assessing the need for SSO, you might have done this already. For a successful implementation, it's very important to identify all the applications that you want to roll-out in different phases. Think about quick but real wins. What apps do you want to integrate with your identity provider first? Sometimes, if employees do not have two-factor enabled for an app and there's enough non-compliance, you should consider those apps first and enforce 2FA behind the identity provider (ex: Okta or OneLogin). This must be the first and foremost step for a successful SSO implementation.ArchitectureAs an example, do you want AD or Google apps to be the delegated master? For instance, if you decide Active Directory as the master, identity provider will be delegating all authentication requests to your Active directory allowing users to sign in to with your identity provider with their AD credentials. The IAM solution should automatically import the existing group hierarchy from Active Directory, simplifying the deployment.There are DaaS solutions available if you do not have LDAP or Active Directory. DaaS solutions connect users to a wide variety of IT resources, including: Mac, Windows, and Linux devices as well as applications located both on-premise and in the cloud. If you do not have any of these solutions, design your architecture so that your identity provider will be the master who can authenticate and authorize based on local groups and roles.Scope of the roll-out:Which apps in the organization are SWA (Secure web authentication) and which apps in the organization are SAML (applications that understand security assertion mark up language)?Licenses: For some applications, if you want to enable SAML or provisioning, you would need additional licenses. For example, unless you have Slack's Enterprise plan, you cannot integrate SAML with Slack. Again, this should be carefully scoped out to fully account for the costs.Do you want provisioning to be enabled for the applications that support it? You need to be extremely careful with this. Some applications such as Dropbox and Google Apps provide these capabilities. If you remove/disassociate an application from a user, they will be automatically deprovisioned in the respective application as well. Same goes for provisioning as well. Deprovisioning accounts for inactive users bolsters security and aids in preparing for audits and compliance reporting.Do you want to enable both organization managed apps and user managed apps? Some orgs just want to expose only the company approved enterprise applications.Multi-factor authenticationYou want to audit your existing applications on what value this single sign on tool provides. Do you already have most of your critical apps behind two-factor? Is it enabled for all critical apps currently? Will this implementation/roll-out provide significant security advantage or more of a user-convenience? This helps you prioritize this project accordingly.As MFA provides more security, it's also important on the risk appetite for your organization. Do you want to enforce MFA for people logging in within the office/corporate network? If so, plan accordingly so you want to whitelist your corporate network IP's.SLA, Response times, & AvailabilityAs part of the evaluation of the SSO tool, you might have already researched about the cost of downtime, service level outages, and any system failures seen with identity provider. If the identity provider network goes down, all the apps that have SAML enabled (Big Bang) cannot be accessible (unless you change the configuration).Ensure that the IAM solution can integrate with multiple Active Directory domains/forests and/or LDAP directories so that even if one domain controller is down, your users can still authenticate to the other controller via delegated authenticationThe identity providers offer local agents to sync passwords, import user repositories, and keep a constant sync of your identity store. As part of the plan, make sure to deploy multiple agents and install them on your servers.Shared accountsIf there are shared accounts employees use, you need to identify the owners and plan this ahead of the single sign-on roll-out. Whether you use Office 365 or Google Apps, make sure you have a list of these shared accounts and provide the ability for these owners to login to these shared accounts. Mail delegation is one solution how those owners can login to those accounts after the SAML integration.Implementation windowSince the SAML implementation for some applications is “All-or-Nothing”, this can affect the way people access applications. There can be a significant downtime depending on the application.Remember you need to involve all the other service providers (ex: Quip, Pagerduty, Amazon, Salesforce, Slack) and can make the necessary changes on their end during the same time. For example, they would need to know all employee email ID's, meta-data from your identity provider and enable the application configuration (SAML) at the same time to minimize the downtime.Integrate the tool/logs as part of your logging and continuous monitoringSingle sign-on logs should be integrated into your log aggregation and monitoring solution. Log critical events (login name, source address, geo-location, application access date & time, success or failure, User-Agent, etc) and forward it to your local log collector and integrate this process as part of your security operations. Make sure your security operations team is trained completely to analyze and respond to intrusions and suspicious events.As part of your data retention policies, ensure that the SSO logs are retained appropriately with your data retention practices.Contractors & Temp employeesContractors and temp employees usually are not part of all groups and channels employees belong to. On rare occasions, if your contractors access your corporate apps/tools, you want to make sure they are aware about the roll-out and clear instructions are provided. This is important especially if you do not have a strict delineation thereby forcing SSO layer to all the apps they access.Testing Group & FeedbackThis is a very critical component of a successful single sign-on roll-out. You are changing the way that people sign-in to different applications. Even though there is a huge user convenience aspect to this, everyone do not see the same way. Include all teams (including few senior management folks) as part of beta testing your single sign-on solution. Ensure that every piece of feedback is properly addressed.Start small, start engaging your employees, and sign-on securely.