The GOP’s assault on privacy continues
A story by Minnesota Public Radio reveals a disturbing new way that a political party is secretly grabbing sensitive personal information about voters.
This week the Minnesota Republican Party is distributing a new CD about a proposed state marriage amendment. Along with flashy graphics, the CD asks people their views on controversial issues such as abortion, gun control, illegal immigration, and so on.
The problem – the CD sends your answers back to headquarters, filed by name, address, and political views. No mention of that in the terms of use. No privacy policy at all.
What happened to Sony in the DRM fiasco needs to happen to the Panoptic GOP.
It’s good to dream.
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This doesn’t surprise me one bit. In many ways this is just an indication of how closely integrated the Konservative Kristian Koalition is in the Republican Party. Although there is certainly the possibility that the GOP and KKK can out your political views to others with the information that they collect, the KKK has had other nefarious uses for the personal information that they collect during their “polls”
Several years ago, an anonymous author infiltrated the Kristian Koalition and published an online expose’ entitled The Hijacking of the Christian Church. In chapter 2, the author gives some details from a training meeting in Northen California which featrued David J Gibbin, who was National Field Director for the KKK at the time. (Gibbin is currently a lobbyist for interests that would like to privatize our National Highway System).
Gibbin is quoted as instructing KKK members to call up people on their telephones and falsely identify themselves as belonging to some other ficticious group. He suggested something like Citizens for a Better Government, but he encourages the use of any name that will not identify the caller has being a reactionary Xian Fundamentalist Nut.
Gibbin encouraged asking questions like ‘Do you think abortion should be legal?’ or “Should vouchers be given out to allow people to choose a private school”, but all questions on pro-life, education, taxes, and other issues were designed to identify people who are sympathetic to KKK’s cause. The intent was not to take a legitimate poll, which is why it was important for the “pollster” to record who he/she was talking to and other identifying information such as the telephone number and address.
Once the KKK leadership identifies people by name who are sympathetic to their views, they conduct targeted voter registration and KKK membership drives to make sure these people vote and contribute money. Also with everyone’s poltical views recorded, when they offer rides to the polls on election day, they can check their list and tell callers that don’t share their views that they won’t be able to shake anyone loose to give them a ride, or tell them they they will be over as soon as possible and then show up after the polls are closed. Folks who are on the list and identified as supporters are promptly picked up and taken to the polls. Understand that it isn’t the democratic process that is important to the KKK, its how you vote, so they make it easy for people that agree with them, and hard for those who don’t. That is why they go to such pains to figure out who you are and where you live.
Give it time though. They’ll soon figure out that they can blackmail people too.