Slashdot Mirror
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
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.
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.
Yet another way Democrats and Republicans have devised to drive voters to register (and vote) as independents. Let's hope this trend keeps up!
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.
You can't simultaneously thing wikileaks and government transparency are good things and this is a bad thing
The hell I can't. Government should be transparent, not people.
Also, there's a similar analogy to the difference between a six-shot revolver and an automatic weapon. The balance between openness and privacy was struck when the data was hard to get. Now that it's so easy to get en masse, that balance needs to be re-struck.
If your opinions are that private, WTF are you doing on Slashdot?
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.
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.
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.