During the 2012 election cycle, President Obama's campaign accumulated massive amounts of user data. Through the process of donations, facebook likes, surveys, store purchases, and various other outlets, a staggering amount of information collected for millions of voters, and has been handed over to a new advocacy group.
This data is without a doubt very personal. Campaigns will go to great lengths to learn more about potential voters. Age, gender, location, voting history, and opinions on various issues are collected from your browsing behavior. Campaigns use this personal data to refine their missions, serve personal recommendations (Hey Jack, did you know Mitt Romney also loves Sriracha sauce?), and pinpoint targets to gain more votes. But as we've seen today, this data doesn't always stay with the campaign.
Organizing for Action (OFA) has struck a leasing deal with the Obama campaign, essentially gaining access to databases of millions of voters without them knowing it. The OFA will use this data to push its legislative agenda onto Obama's once "secret" supporters, unleashing what has been referred to as "an army of door knockers" geared towards holding Obama supporters accountable for the ideas they supposedly agreed with.
The uncertainty of where this data will go next is worrisome to many, and even more worrisome is the fact that so few Obama supporters actually realize what data has been collected on them, and how this data can be exchanged for a price.
Source: http://openchannel.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/28/16726913-obama-campaign-gives-database-of-millions-of-supporters-to-new-advocacy-group?lite
While it is a bit upsetting to hear about our user data being sold, I'm a bit curious about what specifically they will do with it. There is no future legal obligation people have to follow (to my knowledge) so perhaps this will just end up adding to specialized internet advertisements.
ReplyDeleteDarkness! In a related story, Obama's tech gang wants to go Open Source with the systems they built for the election, but the Democratic Party wants to keep it proprietary and perhaps lease it: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130125/01260721784/obamas-techies-want-to-open-source-their-work-politicians-want-to-keep-it-secret.shtml
ReplyDeletehttp://techpresident.com/news/23401/president-obamas-grassroots-lobbying-arm-organizing-action-takes-shape
Do you think these issues of privacy and openness are connected? Or do you think that they are two different ethical/political issues with computing that should not be brought together, lest we confusingly conflate them?
Openness may not lead to "better" privacy, but it will definitely lead to "smarter" privacy. People will get a first-hand look at how these systems are targeting users and making decisions. Transparency is a big movement going on right now, and for good reason.
ReplyDeleteOpen election systems benefit everyone in the same way that open cryptographic algorithms benefit security. An open algorithm (much like an open campaign system) can be scrutinized by many smart people until things get better, or it dies out.