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A New Bill Aims To Protect US Voters From the Next Cambridge Analytica (technologyreview.com) 124

Posted by msmash from the for-what-it-is-worth dept.
As the 2020 campaign season accelerates, a US lawmaker introduced a bill on Thursday that would regulate how political parties use voters' data in federal elections. rrconan writes: Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein said the bill, the Voter Privacy Act, is the first to directly respond to Cambridge Analytica, which used Facebook to harvest the data of 87 million voters, often without permission, in hopes of influencing their behavior. In fact, this was just one of many data operations ongoing in the world of US elections. Massive collections of data: In 2017, the Republican National Committee accidentally exposed political data on more than 198 million US citizens. The incident highlighted the technical challenges of protecting sensitive data troves online, as well as the enormous collections of information the Republican Party has gathered in an effort to win the next vote. While legislators around the world have zeroed in on how industry uses personal data, there is no American law governing the collection and use of voter data in politics.
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A New Bill Aims To Protect US Voters From the Next Cambridge Analytica More

A New Bill Aims To Protect US Voters From the Next Cambridge Analytica

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  • Moscow Mitch McConnell (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 01, 2019 @11:09AM (#59023280)

    Moscow Mitch McConnell will just block it because he's been paid off by the voting machine industry. [newsweek.com]

    • Re:Moscow Mitch McConnell (Score:5, Insightful)

      by hey! ( 33014 ) on Thursday August 01, 2019 @11:25AM (#59023370) Homepage Journal

      Actually, I take him at his word when he explained his reason for blocking election protection funding. He said he thought the measure, if passed, would benefit Democrats.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward

        If the bill is an attempt to prevent corruption and get a true vote count, and Moscow Mitch is working against that for partisan reasons...

        Then Mitch has confirmed that the gop relies on corruption to get elected

        We need to get the gop out of office before they do multi-generational damage to this country

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by hey! ( 33014 )

          Corruption? No, there's a better word: "treason".

          "Treason" is an emotion-laden word that gets thrown around a lot in US politics, but this is an instance where the action actually meets the Constitutional definition of treason: giving aid and comfort to an enemy engaged in warfare against the United States.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Doctor_Jest ( 688315 )

            What country is currently at war with the US? Besides North Korea, of course. Keeping in mind that war declarations can only come from Congress.... I don't recall hearing we're at war with Russia or China. So your glib "Constitutional" definition of treason doesn't hold water.

            There's a REASON it's specific. To prevent idiots lilke you from using it as a political bludgeon when you lose elections.

          • Corruption? No, there's a better word: "treason".

            "Treason" is an emotion-laden word that gets thrown around a lot in US politics, but this is an instance where the action actually meets the Constitutional definition of treason: giving aid and comfort to an enemy engaged in warfare against the United States.

            Russia is our ally, not our enemy.

            But you do not need a formal declaration of war or a formal classification of "enemy" for treason to apply.

        • Then Mitch has confirmed that the GOP relies on corruption to get elected

          If you had any doubt of that, then you haven't been paying attention to politics for the last 230 years. If you don't want to have your illusions popped, then never read the story of Abraham Lincoln's elections.

      • Re:Moscow Mitch McConnell (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Darinbob ( 1142669 ) on Thursday August 01, 2019 @01:00PM (#59023948)

        And that sort of blatant partisan view should, in my view, disqualify someone for higher office. The purpose of a government should be to serve its citizens, and not serve as a vehicle for non-stop campaigning and jockeying for power. At least in the past McConnell paid lip service to being fair but these that few years he's just been blatantly hypocritical.

  • This summary just seems to only imply that the Republican's are doing deep dives and massive gathering of voter data.

    If I recall, the modern equivalent of this started with the Obama election cycles.

    So, it is both parties doing this.

    I disagree with pretty much 99.9999% of what Feinstein tries to promote and legislate, but I likely could back this one. Hell, let's push it a bit more and promote laws that protect US citizens' privacy and data usage even more in all aspects of life.

    • it was that they were getting data from Facebook and using it for purposes other than what they told Facebook they were using it for. They were given special access to Facebook's data under false pretenses.

      Now, I doubt Facebook is so naive that they didn't know what was going on, but they seem to have only given this special access to the GOP. I have not read a single report of a DNC outfit having access to this data. And of course once the cat was out of the bag Facebook had to lock it down.

      Would t

      • I should add (Score:3, Insightful)

        by rsilvergun ( 571051 )
        I'm open to hearing about a GOP equivalent to the Justice Democrats. One that refuses corporate PAC money and stead fastly stands on hard policy. I'd love to see one. It'd be great to have a movement to get money out of politics from both sides..
      • Here is the bill [senate.gov]. It is mostly stuff you would expect. You have the right to request that your data be deleted, you have the right to know what data is being collected. If your data is sold to a third party, you must be informed of that. (note: only applies to political candidates and their helpers).

        The interesting part of it is, any violators can be fined or imprisoned up to three years.

      • Now, I doubt Facebook is so naive that they didn't know what was going on, but they seem to have only given this special access to the GOP. I have not read a single report of a DNC outfit having access to this data.

        The Obama cambpaign had largely the same type data and used it the same during its two campaigns, in fact, I believe they spearheaded the major use of data in this way.

        The difference was largely in that Obama and their team were more upfront with people on the data used and gathered than the G

  • I guess it's good to get him on Record, but with him blocking the bills from even going to floor, and thereby taking all the blame, nobody is talking about his party as a whole and their roll [newrepublic.com] in blocking these kind of bills.

    On a side note these bills have very little to do with Russia. They're mostly designed to prevent voter suppression (e.g. stuff like broken voting machines being used to create long delays at the polls in Democrat leaning districts).

    It's good politics. McConnell is in a safe dist

    • It's good politics

      Maybe call it sharp politics, not good politics?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rnturn ( 11092 )

      "McConnell is in a safe district (well State, he's a Senator)."

      Maybe not. He just blew off 100+ retired coal miners who came to his office to talk to him about aid for dealing with Black Lung Disease. He left the meeting after about a minute. Those miners are not happy about the way they were treated. Of course, the question is whether their displeasure is enough to counteract the support MoscowMich receives from Russian aluminum oligarchs.

      • But McConnell's been doing that sort of thing for ages it made a bit of press. This is the state that gave us the Ark Encounter [wikipedia.org] (oh, and I wrote Kansas by mistake, McConnell is from Kentucky). The GOP is very good [rollcall.com] at controlling voter access to their politicians in order to maintain appearances.

        Somehow the GOP has convinced rural voters that their interests don't align with the city voters, all the while their hospitals are closing [gq.com] and their water isn't safe to drink [nytimes.com]. I don't know if it's too much raci
  • As long as the information is publicly available, or obtained in a legal and or consenting way it should be fair game. The moment to attempt to restrict the use of information legally obtained or public information you begin to trample/control free speech. You may be pissed off Facebook sells your information, but you agreed for them to have it and do with it as they want, by using their platform. Screaming I want to use Facebook without them selling my information, is the same as saying I want free stuff.

    • The moment to attempt to restrict the use of information legally obtained or public information you begin to trample/control free speech.

      It's not public information, so we can rule that out. Legally obtained is what's in question. Let's say I hire a mailing company to send out an advertising campaign to customers, and then they want to sell my mailing list to a competitor. If the contract has terms that forbid this, then I have grounds to sue them for breach of contract. Are you saying that contracts shouldn't be allowed to protect consumers?

      Facebook had grounds to sue for breach of contract but had no material loss (until they in turn g

      • Its not protecting consumers, its just one corporate pimp trying to ensure they have exclusive access to their ability to profit from us.

        Having our data be much more open sounds like a good thing, sure if it means we get facebook for free, FB gets to use our data and if we revoke their access to it, then they revoke our access to FB (or demand a subscription). Of course, what really happens is that they take our data and use it as if its their own. It should be considered to be our data that we can use in e

    • The whole thing about CA is that it wasn't legally-obtained data. They collected data for everyone who signed-up for one of their surveys, fine. CA then took that data, along with data of each of those persons' friends which isn't fine.

  • Consent to data collection/transfer is needed.

    That's all really. We used to sign up for stuff and shared info, but it usually didn't leave the company (excepting some conglomerates/affiliated companies).

    But now our info is collected and shared without our consent to basically anyone with $$$.

    Want to know what the F in Facebook means? It ends in "ed", with part of Zuck in the middle. It's harder to come up with something for Google, "Foogle" doesn't work.

    Just be online less. That's what I do. I blame Bi

    • But now our info is collected and shared without our consent to basically anyone with $$$.

      That's not without consent, you agreed to it when you signed up.

  • Cambridge Analytica won't influence me!

    I'll just vote how Facebook and Google tell me.

  • Begged question (Score:4, Insightful)

    by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Thursday August 01, 2019 @12:03PM (#59023612) Journal

    It remains so inconceivable to the left since 2016 that people could have deliberately, rationally NOT voted for Hillary, that they must have been tricked/coerced/hypnotized/whatever into voting the way they did.

    Everything...literally everything proceeds from that assumption.

    • It's long been known that wait times for voting are much higher in Democratically leaning districts. Also that lower working class are more likely to vote democrat and also more likely to be arrested, particularly for minor drug offenses [youtube.com]. The there's the whole voting on a Tuesday, or the fact that relatively few states have universal vote by mail. And Gerrymandering giving state legislatures over to the GOP who use that power to pass additional voter suppression laws.

      I waited 3 hours in line to vote for

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      How much hard evidence will it take to convince you that Cambridge Analytica had an effect?

      Why isn't the mountain we already have enough?

  • While I agree that Psychological Operations and Warfare such as Cambridge Analytica conducted against our liberal democracy should be treated as a Capital office or declaration of war, even if this proposal had such a viewpoint and teeth to enforce it wouldn't strike at the heart of the malaise afflicting US liberal democracy. Our elections are corrupt and non-credible, their results illegitimate. Money is not speech and corporations are not citizens. Money spend to gaslight, manipulate, and influence a po

  • Ha ha ha, Feistein....yeah... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The idiot (or possibly corrupt and treasonous?) Dianne Feinstein had a Chinese spy on her personal staff for about 20 years, who she used as a driver, office manager, and even sent as a stand-in for her in some meetings, while she and her husband were getting rich doing business with China..... is going to be the one to save us from Facebook spying?

    Oh, and I'm also amused by all the left wingers who are still flipped-out over Cambridge Analytica doing with Facebook data for Trump in 2016 exactly what they c

  • Standard Operating Procedure.

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