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Is Your Neighbor a Democrat? There's an App For That
theodp writes "ProPublica's Lois Beckett reports that the Obama for America campaign's new mobile app is raising privacy concerns with its Google map that recognizes one's current location, marks nearby Democratic households with small blue flags, and displays the first name, age and gender of the voter or voters who live there (e.g.,'Lori C., 58 F, Democrat'). Asked about the privacy aspects of the new app, a spokesperson for the Obama campaign wrote that 'anyone familiar with the political process in America knows this information about registered voters is available and easily accessible to the public.' Harvard law prof Jonathan Zittrain said the Obama app does represent a significant shift. While voter data has been 'technically public,' it is usually accessed only by political campaigns and companies that sell consumer data. 'Much of our feelings around privacy are driven by what you might call status-quo-ism,' Zittrain added, 'so many people may feel that the app is creepy simply because it represents something new.'"
It is creepy, and a good reason not to register as a member of either party...no matter how much you may want to vote in the primaries.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
> Harvard law prof Jonathan Zittrain said the Obama
> app does represent a significant shift. While voter
> data has been 'technically public,' it is usually
> accessed only by political campaigns and companies
> that sell consumer data.
"But the plans were on display..."
"On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."
"That's the display department."
"With a flashlight."
"Ah, well, the lights had probably gone."
"So had the stairs."
"But look, you found the notice, didn't you?"
"Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'."
- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Right. Yes voter records are accessible to the public but so are criminal records and those
of sex offenders. Even the wages and salaries of federal employees are available online
for anyone curious enough btw.
I wonder what a given neighborhood would look like if we overlaid sex offenders and
criminal records with Obama voters. This is entirely feasible and entirely legal as well.
But yes for everybody else who didn't have the misfortune of living 30 years in a communist
country, commies love to use peer pressure. Right now they're planning to show who is
using how much electricity in a given neighborhood and giving discounts if _everybody_
reduces their energy use in a street. Yes, if only one neighbor exceeds the set quota
everybody 'loses' and everybody will know who is 'responsible'. Expect your neighbors
to come to your door and bitch at you.
It appears your hunch isn't that far off from reality:
SCOTUS Rules Petiton Signatures Are Public Record.
The previous method, back in the days before all this social networking stuff: Republicans tend to keep their shades drawn, even though they really don't have anything that would be worth hiding. Democrats ought to draw their shades, but don't.
I am officially gone from
You can't simultaneously thing wikileaks and government transparency are good things and this is a bad thing. The data was already available, this app just puts a more accessible spin on it. Whether the data should be available or not, that we can talk about...
This data is not 'creepy' when company's are using this data privately for profit, however when it's expressed publicly in a not-for-profit way it's a privacy concern. God bless America.
Such are the flaws of collectivism.
What I find is interesting is that this is Obama's official campaign app and not some third-party "lets see what we can do with data" app.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
...shows the private addresses of all politicians with a range of little icons over their houses showing what kind of scandals they have been involved with and what organisations they have been members of.
It's interesting, I was just thinking- so now I know how to find out who all is voting for the other guy without drawing attention to myself.
Not that I would ever do anything to harm them or anything. But if I decide I don't want Bill's lawn service taking care of my lawn because he is a democrat, I don't need to sign for a big list at some government office and suffer people wondering why I want it. Come to think about it, there are a lot of performance reviews coming up, perhaps I can show some people how evil big corporation really can be.
Note: I am not over anyone who doesn't already think like me. There is absolutely no chance I could economically harm anyone with this information, But others could. Kind of really creepy isn't it.. lol
What this may do is surprise a lot of people, who are actually secret liberals but pretend to be right-wing to avoid confrontations. (My husband does this with his parents. They're as tea party as it comes.) If people see they're not so alone, maybe they won't be so ashamed... Then again, if they see a wall of solid red around them, maybe they'll move.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
They act as though IOS is the only platform. I searched on Google Play (Stupid name btw, Market was much better!) and no such app exists for Android.
This database been used by Choicepoint for years for Gerrymandering. When you read that a GOP mob will be challenging black voters in district X, it's because Choicepoint has worked out that district X is the best chance of swinging the vote by barring black voters. Ethnicity they mine from one database, the voting preference from this database.
Remember the voter cleansing list? Crossed referenced with Choicepoint (DBT as it was then). The list of mostly Democrats purged from the Florida electoral roll for having similar names to convicted felons in other states. Where do you think they got the list of Democrats from to filter by??
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_Central_Voter_File
This data should be private, perhaps showing people the public data about them will finally help it be kept private.
Who you vote for is your business, and nobody elses.
Basically, cellphones in any area signal to nearby wireless-router access-points (like your home wireless router) and send their own geo-location along with their signal-strength and MAC-address of the router to a database. Over time and multiple cellphones/smartphones, etc. doing the same thing, the router's MAC becomes traingulated and is mapped to a database. I think the database is managed between Skyhook and Google, which can be querried with the MAC address for the info. I'm pretty sure I've done a poor job describing this, but it's an interesting idea and a possible privacy issue. The only link I could find quickly is this: http://coderrr.wordpress.com/2008/09/10/get-the-physical-location-of-wireless-router-from-its-mac-address-bssid/
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
Yet another way Democrats and Republicans have devised to drive voters to register (and vote) as independents. Let's hope this trend keeps up!
Why would you say tea party nut? You do realize the last several shooting incidents were most likely people who would vote democrat right? They also were somewhat crazy and probably never connected their political ideology with their desire to kill people.
The Obama campaign is just using a technique that's tried and true in the corporate world.
As long as they don't start installing this app as part of AT&T's Android bloatware package, I don't have a problem with it.
But it's interesting that knowing about what corporate money is coming into a political campaign is completely off limits. For some reason, that's considered just beyond the pale. Well, we know the reason, but that doesn't make it easier to swallow.
You are welcome on my lawn.
"That's weird. How come Disneyland and every graveyard are covered with little, blue flags on this map?"
sig: sauer
Before we get too excited about this, we would do well to remember that it wasn't until the 1800's that we started having anonymous voting.
When you voted for any of the first several presidents, you went into a big room and held up your hand. There was zero voter fraud then (as now).
Secret ballots and anonymity in the electoral process was not part of the original system in the US. The founders didn't see the need, apparently. But counting the votes was always taken very seriously, with representatives from both parties involved. (This was before the innovation of black box computer voting outsourced to Republicans. Before Ken Blackwell. Before 2000).
You are welcome on my lawn.
Collectivism? Why is everything that the right doesn't like is assumed to come from the mind of Karl Marx? If your neighborhood watch goes around noting the license plates of guys who cruise for hookers, is that collectivism?
Social morality has always had an element of peer pressure and groupthink. That's as true for right wing value systems and left wing ones.
Seriously? I can't imagine any way to better piss off independents than this crap.
If your opinions are that private, WTF are you doing on Slashdot?
He wasn't talking about hate laws, you said that. His comment was about irrational fear, stereotyping, stupid generalizations and other small minded ways ol looking at things.
even more sign the democratic party is less based on ideals, but more on the sense of community
Wow, so it's "community" now to out your neighbors and friends as to political leanings?
Come to think of it, Democrats are fond of outing gay Republicans. I guess this is just another example of how the Democrats know best what aspects of your life should be public.
As others have stated - a better incentive to register independent I have not seen.
Thank you Democrats for birthing yet another wave of libertarians, keep tugging on that wool.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I don't think someone thought this app through. This app is going to tell people what the age the person is of the household, their sex, and if they are likely to be Liberal or not? I can see this app being very popular with the criminals, they can see which houses are most likely liberal since there are Democrat(s) living at that address. Now if you were a bad guy, wouldn't you love to know what the ages are in the house, if its most likely female or male, and their political leanings are since the Liberals/Progressives are most likely NOT GOING TO HAVE A GUN IN THE HOUSE! What an interesting burglary tool, or should I say, application.
If all you see is red and blue, I'd say it's time to get new glasses, metaphorically speaking...
If you start hating someone just because of one thing they believe, then the only person that has a real problem is you.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is just another example of tech burning away the illusion of privacy. It isn't taking away privacy from people; it's just another graphic example of letting people see what kind of information that is and always has been freely available to anyone who wants it. Which is worse? Not knowing what people know about you or knowing very well what people can know about you? It might be scary for some, but I'll *always* choose the latter.
Sadly, I have to tell you that Privacy has been ignored not only by the government, but also by a lot of people around us
Look at what they have disclosed about themselves on fb and other social-network sites
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
"shooters are liberal"? I wonder where that meme came from. Sounds like typical misdirection to me.
From all the facts I've seen, the shooters were not-particularly-sane people with guns, and had ideologies that weren't consistent with any major school of thought.
The two parties own our political process. They make it difficult for anyone but them to get on the ballot. They even have "straight ticket" checkboxes on ballots so you don't have to go through the trouble of voting for individuals based on their qualifications, but simply vote for every Democrat or Republican on the ballot.
But in the end, you can vote for whoever you want to vote for in the general election.
The biggest reason for the party registration is that most states don't allow you to vote in a party's primary unless you're registered to a party, and a person registered for one party can't vote in another party's primary (vote for the weakest candidate). Yes, that's another way the two parties have owned our system: The government actually runs and pays for their primary elections when it should be their own business who they put up for election, and entirely with their own money.
Yeah, and? What is better, not pointing out a bug, or pointing out a bug, even though you don't know how to fix it? Especially since it's something that needs to be fixed in consensus?
Thanks for deflecting it with such a cheap fucking "argument". I offered nothing, because it wasn't what you arbitrarily claim it should have been?
I contributed pointing out what bullshit your post was. What you think of that I couldn't care less about. Since your viewpoint included denouncing any and all independents as "crime-loving crackpots", I didn't expect you to agree. But I'm gonna have the last word, you insolent fuck.
Oh, and did it ever occur to you that certain wars and actions are crimes, too? That seeking alternatives to the two big parties who seem to be more in cahoots than distinct, is actually being SICK of crime? No really, fuck you. I'm not talking to you, I'm talking about you. Call it "a taste of your own medicine".
What? Who the fuck are you even talking to? Where did I mention any great ideas? You STATED something, I said "nah".
You're such a bad liar :'( Maybe take that to the clowns who enjoy such little jabs. I said my piece, not that your crap even warrented a response in the first place. But hey, at least you acknowledged that my post was shitting all over your viewpoint, that's a start :P
What if my neighbor is not a democrat, not a republican either, nor a libertarian, an independent ...
What if my neighbor turn out to be an illegal alien?
What should I do?
My father, who is American (not me though, technically yes, but I don't live there, and it seems like a crazy place I wouldn't want to stay for all that long), thinks the Primary system makes the USA more democratic. I'm not so sure. Seems to me like a weird way for the 2 "parties" to be completely inescapable.
In Canada, when we have a terrible political party because it gets too corrupt from being in power, eventually that party gets dumped and those with that ideology have to form a new party that must embody the ideals but not the old vices. It's not perfect but it seems light-years ahead of the US 2 party system. In the US the bad old stuff just never dies all the way back to slavery.
I support the makers of this app. All they are doing is putting to use what is already out there. If we don't want those records so public we should make the change so the records aren't public that way. In a way they are highlighting a problem that needs to be solved.
Stupidity is its own reward.
Voter reg data includes not just brief biological data [first, middle, last, address, DOB, sometimes telephone, date registered, political affiliation, the elections in which the person voted, which were absentee], but then state census data contains lots of other good stuff [first, middle, last, maiden, address, sometimes telephone, occupation as person reports it, head of household status, etc] and then if the person is a homeowner, you use the assessment database [date home purchased, assessed value each year, number of bedrooms, bathrooms, condition of each, any co-owners]. Then you can throw in the facebook, the google, the linkedin.
My concern: even private citizens like myself who know of and access this data don't flaunt it. I don't make it obvious to a neighbor that I know she votes in all Democratic primaries or only votes in November 0 mod 4 elections. I don't talk about her property tax bill either. Some people with this app will play it poorly because they will not understand that even the data is out there in the public, it is still impolite to treat it as common knowledge.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
If you think that's creepy, checkout:
http://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/elections-quebec-2012/carte-du-financement-politique-au-quebec/
Since 2011, any amount over 200$ was made public by the organisation overseeing elections. Since 2012 all amounts are public. This is (in part) to counter corporate fraud. Companies are not allowed to donate directly to political parties, so they ask their employees to do so.
When Adams wrote that, a lot of public records were still maintained on paper. That alone provided a huge natural barrier to intrusive searches, despite the fact that the information was technically public. Placing all this information online in a publicly searchable database creates the biggest invasion of privacy in history, yet the legal basis has not changed.
Everybody here always mocks "security through obscurity" so it's interesting to look back to a time when it actually was quite plausible.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
It's because we Americans are simply too stupid to select an election system that allows more than two parties
Please don't expect this to help. There are enough clueless idiots out there to fill any number of political party nominations. I'm not sure that choosing the least worse of 3 or more is much better than least worse of two. But you should definitely keep party membership lists private - it opens all sorts of possibilities for abuse otherwise.