Romney And Obama Want To Know Your Online Porn Habits (And More)

Here’s a little piece of fun courtesy of the New York Times via CNET.  Getting the vote out for the upcoming presidential election now includes campaign workers armed with voter personal information mined from the web.  From the New York Times:

Strategists affiliated with the Obama and Romney campaigns say they have access to information about the personal lives of voters at a scale never before imagined. And they are using that data to try to influence voting habits — in effect, to train voters to go to the polls through subtle cues, rewards and threats in a manner akin to the marketing efforts of credit card companies and big-box retailers.

How detailed is that information?  It gets a bit, uh, intimate:

The callers will be guided by scripts and call lists compiled by people — or computers — with access to details like whether voters may have visited pornography Web sites, have homes in foreclosure, are more prone to drink Michelob Ultra than Corona or have gay friends or enjoy expensive vacations.

A Romney campaign official is quoted as saying the analytical efforts shouldn’t be obvious otherwise voters get creeped out.  No kidding.  Most people seem oblivious when Google and Facebook have the goods on them for purposes of marketing.  How about giving this same demographic information to politicians?  It’s not the government knowing about your life, but it is the people who want to be part of the government.  As the song goes, how do you like me now? Both campaigns say they protect an individual’s privacy and operate within the law.  Oh, that makes me feel soooooo much better.  And patriotic.

And how do the campaigns get access to this information?  The same way any major marketer would:

In interviews, however, consultants to both campaigns said they had bought demographic data from companies that study details like voters’ shopping histories, gambling tendencies, interest in get-rich-quick schemes, dating preferences and financial problems. The campaigns themselves, according to campaign employees, have examined voters’ online exchanges and social networks to see what they care about and whom they know. They have also authorized tests to see if, say, a phone call from a distant cousin or a new friend would be more likely to prompt the urge to cast a ballot.

The campaigns have planted software known as cookies on voters’ computers to see if they frequent evangelical or erotic Web sites for clues to their moral perspectives. Voters who visit religious Web sites might be greeted with religion-friendly messages when they return to mittromney.com or barackobama.com. The campaigns’ consultants have run experiments to determine if embarrassing someone for not voting by sending letters to their neighbors or posting their voting histories online is effective.

Now we know why there will never, ever be strict privacy laws regarding web habits.  [MG]