Pro Publica's Lois Beckett takes a hard look at the "massive" database about supporters that the Obama campaign has put together . They're able to find out what we're encountering minute by minute online and they use the information, at least in part, to personalize communications that are designed, in turn, to "sell" the candidate. This huge effort appears to mirror the disconcerting data mining Karl Rove did on behalf of his candidate, most notably in 2004.
Maybe, like Target, the campaign staff know when you're pregnant before you do...
The Obama campaign has hired a corporate data-mining expert, Rayid Ghani, to serve as its "chief scientist." Ghani has previously researched how to use a retailer's record of customer purchases to predict what a particular customer will buy during a given shopping trip — the same kind of data crunching that Target has apparently used to predict whether shoppers are pregnant. The campaign is continuing to hire "analytics engineers" and other data experts.
Some of the most important data that campaigns need are already public. State voter files include voters' names, addresses and voting histories. Campaigns don't know whom you voted for. But they know when you voted, when you didn't and, in some states, your race and party registration. ...ProPublica
If you log into the Obama page at Facebook, you're opening yourself and your friends up to exploration and possible exploitation. They're tracking your online contacts.
Get them off your back? Well, the invasion is well underway and you can't stop it, but it might help to know what they plan to do with the data after the election.
According to the privacy policy, the campaign reserves the right to share the personal information it collects "with candidates, organizations, groups or causes that we believe have similar political viewpoints, principles or objectives." ...ProPublica
So, you can't do anything to stop them? No. No you can't.
The Obama campaign does make it easy to unsubscribe from email, text messages or newsletters. But we couldn't find any way to take yourself off its database — and the campaign wouldn't comment. There's also no apparent way to see what information the campaign is storing about you. ...ProPublica
One piece of good news.
... To the campaign's credit, EPIC's Lillie Coney said, the privacy policy also includes a link to the Network Advertising Initiative, which allows users to control which digital advertisers are tracking them. ...ProPublica
One possible response to this data mining would be a massive migration of supporters' dollars to Pro Publica which may well be doing a better job on the voter's than the Obama campaign team is doing.
