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Canadian Minister Mined Data To Target Email To Gay Voters
An anonymous reader writes "Has Immigration Minister Jason Kenney been emailing you? Maybe it's because you're gay. The minister sent out an email on Sept 24 lauding the government's efforts to protect and promote queer rights abroad. It highlights the 'emphasis . . . on gay and lesbian refugee protection, which is without precedent in Canada's immigration history.' The Ottawa Citizen's Glen McGregor broke the story, complete with reaction over the 'creepy' letter. For many who received an email from Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney about gay refugees on Friday, the message raised one important question: How did he know I'm gay? The Conservatives have targeted written messages at minority communities in the past, most notably using direct mail lists to send out greetings to Jewish voters on religious holidays. Some recipients were alarmed by the prospect of the government assembling lists based on ethnicity or religious beliefs. Surely creating such a list will become easier when you are forced to use your real identities on social sites."
tracking your browsing might clue them in I suppose.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
Our current government is peculiarly amoral. Fuelled by a fundamentalist background, if it is not written down (ie. law), then there is nothing wrong with it. Even when it is written down, if it is for the greater glory, it gets an exception.
These lists will come in handy when phase II of their minority targetting comes to pass.
Looks like it's time for Privacy Commissioner Stoddart to investigate the Con's! It's a bit like putting Capone away for tax evasion, but I'll take what I can get, if it hastens the demise of Harper's quisling government.
Seriously, stop trying to sneak in how unfair it is that social sites have a real name policy. If you don't like them, don't use them - it's pretty easy.
They probably hired the same guy who some time ago devised the criteria for how to find out that an on-line user is pregnant. :-)
Ezekiel 23:20
People sent email to the minister of immigration telling him they were interested in gay rights. The minister took note, and then wrote back to tell them about the work he's doing to promote gay rights. Is this not how democracy is supposed to work? Should he ignore his incomming email in order to protect the sender's privacy?
ya know that religion that likes ot beat little kids and was called a cult buy the catholics till the current pope changed his mind ( guess cause they cant molest lil kids why not beat them )
This seems more akin to targeted advertising by private entities than "the government assembling lists". They're don't seem to be doing it in any official capacity, but rather as a tactic for promoting their party. Not that I'm saying it's not creepy or a cause for concern! But the implication that this is akin to something the NSA might be doing is, I think, out of place.
weinersmith
you torrented gay pron LOL
they are hollywood buddies so they just using that on you now
It's especially ironic that you'd take to the Internet to complain about this. You're more concerned about government using demographic data to target messaging, than google (or, erm, Dice)? One on these is accountable to voters, and the other is a private business.
Political parties of all kinds have been targeting specific groups for years. This is nothing new. What is new is that the Canadian Conservative party has a really kick-ass CRM system that lets them do this kind of targeting very efficiently.
Apparently, this was the source of the email list:
nearly 10,000 people who electronically signed a 2011 online petition supporting a gay artist from Nicaragua, who was then facing deportation.
I think it's perfectly reasonable to assume that those opposing the deportation of a gay artist would also be supporters of gay rights in general (though not necessarily gay themselves).
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
How did Kenney know you were gay? He asked John Baird.
The only thing that worries me is, how are Gay Jewish Canadian's supposed to vote?
Ok, so, I studied PSC and worked for a statewide campaign here in the USA last year. That said, there is very, very specific databasing/tracking software used by the political parties (We used NGP-VAN) to do this exact thing. We used data from previous Dem campaigns (this was a gubernatorial race; we got the AG, a couple lists from previous governors, and some lists from unsuccessful previous campaigns for various state and local positions) as well as data we collected from cold-calling and anything we found on the internet. Early in the campaign, my role was to track down contact information for our database, as well as any relevant info on where people worked and what their strong political leanings were (Southern Dems are much different from Northern ones). It's easy, especially when it's for calling for contributions.
There are only about 4M people in my state, so there are more competitive mayoral races in large cities. However, when you're dealing with 10M+ people, you have to rely on outsourced data. I get junk email from a bunch of social action campaigns because of petitions I've signed. I emailed all my state reps over a couple issues. So they know who I am. They also know who you are if you have been politically active online at all.
This is not an inherently bad thing. Expecting privacy on the internet, expecting your actions not to have unforeseen consequences, is the mark of a person who doesn't understand how the world, and the web, and people in general, work. Just for funsies, go request a dump of your Facebook ad topic data.
I have the hiccups.
They are using public information. How is this different from marketing companies doing the same targeting? If it's really the government who are paying for the tracking, you could complain about them wasting you tax dollars. Instead it seems that as soon as the government does something it's scary, even if it's legal and frequently done by private companies. (the real problem with government is when they legislate tracking that you can't get away from, such as the story about the EU "Clean IP" law)
It was Pierre Poutine with help from his Facebook account.
But when governments make the lists, you know the ones that have power to put you in prison or deny you accesses to services or locations or permits or can tax you, to gets creepy. We have seen targeted political action before and we still have a collective nightmare over it. Lets stop that and have governements blind to things like race, creed, sexual orientation..
First of all, neither of the articles posts the letter itself. I infer it's about civil rights (and happens to relate specifically to gay peoples' rights) rather than "isn't it fun to have buttsex?" or something like that, but then people say their reaction was "How did hew know I'm gay?" which implies it really was about gayness itself, rather than government policies about how people should be treated.
Furthermore, later in TFA some people refer to the letter as propaganda, and the "People from our community are not voting Conservative" part made me wonder if it was an election campaign letter.
It's all so ambiguous. The letter would have cleared it up. Lame TFA. In this situation it almost seems like deliberate obfuscation to not quote the letter itself.
Secondly, people admit they publicly petitioned the government on some rights issues. People told the entire world that they give a shit about government's relation to people. How is it disturbing that someone -- whether it's the government or someone private who uses government records -- is using that to market to the fraction of citizenry who is interested in civil rights issues?
How does anyone know they're a 'minority'?
How inefficient. What percentage of the intended (online) audience did he reach? 10%? 20%? Instead of just looking at his own e-mails, he should have asked Vic, because we #TellVicEverything!.
This is news for Slashdot? More political dribble. I for one am glad I didn't get the email and glad they chose targetted emails to do it because I could care less about the issue
Something to think about next time you fill out an online survey or petition that collects your email address. Read the fine print much?
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
How did he know I'm gay?
I'll tell you how he knew: his gadar is suspiciously accurate for a conservative... :p
790: "I am a robot that wants to live in your underpants". Lexx
Anybody else getting a "lost scene from 40 Year Old Virgin" vibe from this?
"Know how I know you're gay? Becuase you got an e-mail form Jason Kenney."
or maybe "nature abhors an information vacuum"? in any case, it seems natural for people to avail themselves of information, though we might try to limit the behavior of out elected officials (and, theoretically, the civil servants who answer to them...) I don't really see any point to telling people what they can do with information, though it would be great if there were some punitive incentive for them to get it right. public action based on wrong data should be, IMO, punished by more than just libel laws.
Because I see nothing wrong with this. Targeting groups of people (any) to let them know what your policies are in the hopes that they vote for you? I thought that was the whole point. The fact that they are actually using data mining tells me that maybe just maybe they aren't technologocial dinosaurs either...
I still think the conservatives are a bunch of jerks, but this doesn't seem all that vile to me, particularly compared to some of their other tricks.
Besides, it is only a matter of time before some intern gets two mailing lists mixed up, and hilarity can ensue! :)