Watchdog slams political data slurpers' 'disturbing disregard' for voters' privacy Cambridge Analytica, Facebook, universities and political parties are all in the dog house as the UK's data protection watchdog condemned a "disturbing disregard" for personal privacy across the system. 50 of your British pounds. Photo by Shutterstock ICO poised to fine Leave campaign and Arron Banks’ insurance biz £135,000 …
Guy I was at Uni in the 80s wrote a paper on how being able to identify the few voters in marginals that actually cause an election result go one way or another would effectively gift the election to whoever could influence those few - at most thousand - voters.
He got as far as showing how you could pull the electoral roll and marketing lists together to start guessing at who votes which way (address data was used).
He stopped after a visit, and a suggestion he do something else for his Masters. Turns out a lot of academics have weird links to the security services.
the few voters in marginals that actually cause an election result go one way or another would effectively gift the election to whoever could influence those few
I think you'll find that all political parties have known this for many decades - you only have to look at both Labour & Conservative bringing in foreign "electoral gurus" to do their campaign strategy over decades. And before technology looked useful to the politicians they still segmented voters in marginal seats, hence segments like Mondeo Man and Worcester Woman.
The ability to specifically target individuals through technology is certainly new, but since all political parties are at it, it becomes something of a zero sum game that isn't materially different to previous elections.
"... significantly change their business practices, to earn people's trust."
Why should they? They make a mint of money the way things are and most of their users don't know or care about the misuse of their data. They don't need their users trust because things are going so well for them. They might need their customer's trust if things go on as they are, because all these characters are interested in is money. Sod ethics and doing the right thing.
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