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Presidential Campaigns Leak Supporters' Info To Tracking Firms
Peter Eckersley writes "Stanford privacy researcher Jonathan Mayer has published new research showing that websites of both the Obama and Romney presidential campaigns, which are used to communicate with and coordinate their volunteers, leak large amounts of private information to third-party online tracking firms. The Obama campaign site leaked names, usernames, zip codes and street addresses to up to ten companies. The Romney campaign site leaked names, zip codes and partial email addresses to up to thirteen firms."
That's not so much a "leak", and more of a "take this". They probably even get paid for it.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Romney out performs Obama yet again
MONEYYYY
'merica wooo
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Obama and Romney have been sending me 12 page full color magazines daily for the past twelve weeks. I think there comes a point when campaign money should be capped.
but, considering that congresscritters exempted themselves from the Do Not Call phone list, it will never happen. We don't have a representative government, but one made of people who think they're better than those they supposedly represent.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
If you want to know which trackers are in use on a page, install Ghostery
I also run AdBlock Plus and NoScript.
Any other plug-ins that I'm missing?
This isn't leaking in the traditional since that someone is giving databases of information to 3rd parties. The leaking going on here has to do with GET requests to their respective web sites containing identifying information in the URL. This is probably unintentional and may not even be occurring at all since a lot of the pages use SSL and the URLs are encrypted. Of course internal analytic software can (and probably does) retain the URLs, but that's hardly "leaking" information to 3rd parties. If I was using a pay-for analytics suite and found that the people I'm paying were looking at my private information (tracking data) I would be pretty pissed off and might even consider legal action.
TLDR: No "leaking" going on here. The headline does not match the content of the article.
Of all the reasons I don't support either candidate, of all the ways either candidate is apt to violate my privacy, this is the least.
Still, I'll add it to the list.
You'd better read it. *shakefist*
Without a political call exemption, the law would have been thrown out under the First Amendment of the Constitution. You know,
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Don't like it? Amend the US Constitution. Good luck with that.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
If a citizen decides to give their details to the party of their choice why would they worry when that party receives the information? Could they be under the impression that their party is not the amalgamation of a dozen or so corporations?
For a democracy, this would be a story. But for a corporatocracy I just don't see the problem.
Why is it called a leak?
A leak means something unintended. Like a leaky faucet, or an engine leaking oil. You don't intend for that to happen, but it does.
Or for information, a leak is when an insider betrays the organization they work for, and secretly releases confidential information to the public.
This is not a leak. This is a blatant and pre-meditated handover of information, to 3rd party organizations.
They gave out the usernames of people? Why didn't they just give out their passwords as well?
I suspect the reason they do it this way is for their emails campaigns, they also have the donation options in the query string as well. Doing it this way, you don't have to hit the database, imagine the email campaigns both parties are doing.
This is why I only donate through my own tiny 503(c)(4), sometimes by way of a sham 501(c)(3), so it is much easier to obscure my name. Seriously, I like to support the candidates I like, but I don't necessarily want them screwing around with my contact information or bugging me at home, so I do it as anonymously as possible.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
If I'm not mistaken, Red Cross, CARE, Oxfam, etc. do this, in fact I'm not sure who doesn't. (Mommy, I'm tired of Bronco Bama and Mitt Romney on Slashdot.)
Gently reply
In short: people dumb enough to donate^H^H^H^H^H^Hlose their time and effort to either of those two sockppets in a corporate reality show called "presidential campaign" have been sold like a bunch of lambs for a few bucks. Whatever.
Once I received and email from wikileaks telling me the reason I received the email because I was on a list of GOP supporters. They were so over confident and basically told me "HA, you're a GOP supporter and we're outing you". I was on that GOP supporter list because I am a libertarian so naturally I would be much more interested in the GOP fiscal policy than any dem fiscal policy. Sort of like the Communist Party of the United State endorsing Obama because his regime's policies are much closer aligned to the CPUSA's agenda than the GOP's agenda, LOL
Well, since I am for responsible spending, small government, lowest cronyism as possible, non-redistibution of wealth (STEALING) and many other philosophies that are closely aligned with the constitution, the constitution framers and the founding fathers, I have no other conclusion that wikileaks is against these things and thus are included in the most infamous, anti-American and anti-patriotism groups that currently exist, in or outside of our borders. Which, by the way, inherently makes them a serious threat to national security.
Thank you, wikileaks, for outing yourselves!!! LOL
Here is an excellent collection of resources and tools relating to security and privacy on the internet, courtesy of Tunafish at the CrunchBang Linux discussion forums. Those who want to take a slightly more 'proactive' stance against the collection of their information should find this worthwhile reading.