I didn't realize until reading this how close to dead the secret ballot is with the rise of Big Data. Maybe it already is, if geneusutwerk is right. Losing the secret ballot would be a huge loss for democracy in general, and would be absolutely terrifying if there aren't any laws against the DNC or GOP selling their data to employers/networks. Can you imagine if people had a dem/rep rating on facebook? Or a return to the time when you could lose your job for voting one way or another?
The WaPo had an interesting article about the political future of the database a while ago, back when I was trying harder to blog I wrote about it as well. The scary thing about all this is that it insulates candidates/parties even more. They have no reason to talk to those that are solidly for the other side.
A lot of these quotes are horrifying.
Neither the Federal Trade Commission, which has investigated the handling of personal data by Google, Facebook and other companies, nor the Federal Election Commission has jurisdiction over how campaigns use such information, officials at those agencies say.
Does no one govern the parties? This is absurd.
The parties govern the parties! What could go wrong? Campaign data is weird though...It is this amalgamation of what is pulled from voter files (publicly available information), purchased from corporate data sources and added by the campaign (or passed to it from other political organizations). And of course those in power have a vested interest in keeping the status quo...
I feel this article is blowing out of proportion what the Obama team did. It wasn't that new, microtargeting has been around for a few cycles now. Their genius was getting people to give up so much data (if you signed up to their facebook app it stripped data not only about you but also about your friends). The real question is now about what will happen to this data. It isn't owned by the Democratic Party, it is owned by the Obama campaign and they haven't made clear what will happen to it now. I sort of hope they just get rid of it, if the party gets the data they can use it to strengthen the position of party faithful over outsiders in any primary they might face.