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Voters who want to actively support President Barack Obama?s reelection without the added burden of putting down their iPhones can now turn to Obama for America, a free app from the Democratic Party, now available on iTunes. But since it matches voter personal info?to?locations on a?Google map, for the purpose of volunteer canvassing,?it comes with a built-in?creep factor. ?
Lois Beckett of ProPublica?points out that the app replaces the?clipboards of old with a?GPS-synced lists of ?registered?Democrats in your area. We checked it out ourselves, and the allegation is understandable.?You can't search for people, or see everyone in every house, but when?you log in (via Facebook or Obama's own campaign)?to be a canvasser you see a cluster of blue flags.
Each flag represents a home you can visit to get out the vote. But even if you have no intention of knocking on doors, you can?click blue flags to find potential voters? first names, last initials, addresses and?ages, not to mention a pretty good indication of whether that potential Obama voter lives alone.?
And it bears repeating, all this info accompanies his or her political party affiliation ? a fact plenty of people don?t like to make public.
If the idea of this information ? possibly including your own ? is potentially visible to anyone with an iPhone and a Facebook account gives you the wiggins, you?re not alone. Nor is this likely the first or even seventh time a new feature of high-tech reminded you just?how exposed you really are. That said, all this voter information made available via the?Obama for America app is already out there.
Beckett notes that the canvassing information available to?volunteers who traditionally pick up printouts of voter information at campaign offices. Further, ?this isn't the first time campaigns have released digital tools that make voter information freely available,? she writes. ?Both the Obama and Romney campaigns currently have online calling tools that give anyone who registers for their websites the names and phone numbers of voters to contact.?
Will the immediacy of this information offered through the Obama for America app make it that more likely to be abused? We gave it a whirl and imagined all sorts of scenarios fit for procedural crime or political dramas ? such as single women who seemed to live alone (or at least are the only registered democrat in the house), and anti-campaign trolls who attempt to fudge campaign data by sitting home on the couch answering the poll questions and marking off houses visited willy-nilly.
A spokesperson told Beckett that the campaign is ?strongly committed to ensuring the safety and privacy of the public and follows up with appropriate action, including alerting appropriate authorities if necessary, in any case of abuse or inappropriate behavior." And when it comes to erroneous data input via the canvassing tool, the app can detect suspect behavior, "such as people submitting way too many voter contacts in a short period of time."
Beckett also points out, it?s not clear if all Democrats in areas assigned to canvassers are provided, or just those the campaign would like canvassed.
What?s more, we tried reloading canvas locations and found we weren?t able to pinpoint exact areas and, for example, narrow down the political affiliations of our closest neighbors. Which really, if this app were to be abused, that?s likely the way most of us think of abusing it.?
? via?ProPublica
Helen A.S. Popkin goes blah blah blah about online privacy, then asks you to join her on?Twitter?and/or?Facebook. Also,?Google+.?Because that's how she rolls.
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