Political candidates have always done everything in their power to target voters. But in the current election cycle, with primary election season officially under way, technology is giving them a lot more power than before. It is at the point where privacy advocates are referring to it as “voter surveillance.” Bruce Schneier, author, blogger and CTO of Resilient Systems, wrote in his recent book “Data and Goliath” that voter surveillance data can cause “unique harms” to the political process due to, “personalized marketing’s capability to discriminate as a way to track voting patterns and better ‘sell’ a candidate or policy position.”
Katharina Kopp, director, privacy and data at the Center for Democracy & Technology, said data collection and analytics can result not only in the “micro-targeting” of some voters, but of others being ignored.
“We should not just ask who is getting what message,” she said. “We need to think about who is not being addressed and what topics are being left out. Who is being left out of the conversation?”
Full Article: Voter targeting becomes voter surveillance | CSO Online.