Data Miners Liken Obama Voters To Caesars Gamblers 166
theodp writes "As Steve Wozniak publicly laments how government used new technologies he introduced in unintended ways to monitor people, the NY Times reports how the digital masterminds behind the Obama Presidential campaign are cashing in by bringing the secret, technologically advanced formulas used for reaching voters to commercial advertisers. 'The plan is to bring the same Big Data expertise that guided the most expensive presidential campaign in history to companies and nonprofits,' explains Civis Analytics, which is backed by Google Chairman and Obama advisor Eric Schmidt. Also boasting senior members of Obama's campaign team is Analytics Media Group (A.M.G.), which pitched that 'keeping gamblers loyal to Caesars was not all that different from keeping onetime Obama voters from straying to Mitt Romney.' The extent to which the Obama campaign used the newest tech tools to look into people's lives was largely shrouded, the Times reports, but included data mining efforts that triggered Facebook's internal safeguard alarms. ... 'We asked to see [voter's Facebook] photos but really we were looking for who were tagged in photos with you, which was a really great way to dredge up old college friends — and ex-girlfriends.' The Times also explains how the Obama campaign was able to out-optimize the Romney campaign on TV buys by obtaining set-top box TV show viewing information from cable companies for voters on the Obama campaign's 'persuadable voters' list. "
Re:Well, yeah. (Score:4, Informative)
Oh, not again. Every once in a while ignorant people complain about America's "two-party system" — failing to account for the vast differences between our political system and that of most of the Democracies of the world.
You see, we do not have parties in the same sense as other countries. Voters here vote for individuals, whose party-affiliation is fluid and non-binding. Every once in a while an elected official may switch their party [wnd.com] — without any legal consequences. In other countries voters vote for a party, who then pick individual politicians to fill the slots the legislature. The number of slots is in proportion to the total number share of votes won by the party.
Though some State-laws regulate the parties in the US, there is nothing about them in our Constitution or Federal Law. And for good reason — Americans vote for individuals, not parties. Whether that's "better" or "worse" is another topic, but it is different. There is no law regulating the establishing of a party, or how it is operated. Oh, and we have multiple parties: Communists of different kind (as usual for them), Libertarians, Green... That they aren't winning many offices is not the fault of the system...
BTW, if you think, a multi-party system (however it is achieved) will automatically be better — think again [guardian.co.uk].
Re:Well, yeah. (Score:0, Informative)