Slashdot Mirror
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.
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?
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
But that was via assembling data people chose to submit to Target through their purchases. This is the government assembling data that their citizens probably didn't want to submit.
Remember, you have a choice not to support private business intrusion, you don't have a choice not to support government intrusion.
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?
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.
you don't have a choice not to support government intrusion.
That's bull. You can vote out the intruders and they have to leave. A business can keep on intruding as long as it can afford to.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
If you don't like them, don't use them - it's pretty easy.
That's easy to say, but hard to do. More and more sites are using social media sites as their login credentials. It's getting harder to not use them.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
How did he know I'm gay?
I'll tell you how he knew: his gadar is suspiciously accurate for a conservative... :p