Yes We Can (Profile You): a Brief Primer On Campaigns and Political Data 48
Posted
by
Soulskill
from the your-vote-is-one-cell-in-a-database dept.
from the your-vote-is-one-cell-in-a-database dept.
An anonymous reader writes "In the Stanford Law Review Online, Professor Daniel Kreiss discusses 'the history of political data, focusing on the recent proliferation in voter data and development of new voter-modeling techniques,' and how 'these data practices undermine privacy and democratic practice, even as they increase participation and voter turnout.' He writes: 'Underlying all of this is a vast data infrastructure that has made targeted online advertising and marketing possible, and has contributed to a revival of field campaigning over the last decade. Online advertising and field campaigning rely on voter modeling based on hundreds of data points culled from surveys, public records, and commercial information sources such as credit histories. This data details the location, demographics, political affiliations, social networks, behavior, and interests of citizens.'"
I have a hard time getting too upset about this (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyone who wants to predict how I personally will vote in the 2012 election (or any election, really) will have an easy enough time doing so -- because I talk about politics all the time, in person and online, and I don't make any effort to keep my views a secret. This isn't a violation of my privacy, because I chose to put that information out there. As far as using demographic data to decide where to focus campaign efforts, politicians have been doing that as long as there have been elections. The methods they use now may be more sophisticated than they used to be, but it's silly to pretend this is something new and dangerous.