Privacy rites of passage

Privacy again was all the rage last week on Capitol Hill, but this time it wasn’t about telecom companies getting legal cover so they can help the National Security Agency wiretap individuals with terrorist leanings. This time it was a return to concerns about online privacy, a legitimate subject that apparently polls well with voters and has implications for the emerging mobile marketing space.
“Privacy is a cornerstone of freedom,” said House telecom subcommittee Chairman Edward Markey (D-Mass.), who has pushed for additional privacy safeguards to address communications technology advances. “Obviously, this is happening across our society – from video cameras at crosswalks and federal buildings, checkout scanners in supermarkets, to the collection of information by national security entities and the gleaning of information from a consumer’s Web use.”
It would be hard to find a politician who opposes the right to privacy. Presidential foes – Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) – would tell you they’re all for consumer privacy.
That’s why it’s so illuminating to realize that political campaigns like theirs are arguably as good as the NSA or any company at learning all about us and divining – through sophisticated analysis of massive data – our behavioral tendencies. It makes the candidates’ use of text messaging look like childish tech play.
Salon.com’s Mike Madden recently penned a superb article on what appears to be one of the secrets to Obama’s phenomenal success to date: political marketing driven by data mining.
“The sheer scale of the operation – because of Obama’s large network of supporters and heavy emphasis on field organizing – means the data can be sliced in ways that the Bush-Cheney campaign couldn’t have dreamed of in 2004,” writes Madden. “It’s most likely also more advanced than what either side did in the 2006 elections, or, for that matter, what John McCain is doing now.”
The story goes on to say the “Obama campaign staff wouldn’t talk about what patterns they’ve discovered among supporters, but it may be that such broad categories as ‘soccer moms’ from races past are being replaced by others as complex as ‘iPhone owners with master’s degrees in their 40s who shop at Costco and get frequent-flier miles for their credit-card purchases.'”
See, you’re not just another statistic after all.