Editorials
Campaigns know more about you than ever
TBO.com
Published: October 25, 2012
San Francisco Chronicle on political data mining:Published: October 25, 2012
Do you watch college football? Listen to smooth jazz? Search the Internet for guidance on parenting, spirituality or a health concern? Look at pornography sites online?
Do you like the fact that political strategists with the presidential campaigns know the answers to each of those questions?
It's disturbing, but they do. The architects behind this year's presidential campaigns know far more about voters than ever before, thanks to the increasingly precise science of data mining. There are companies that compile and study a wealth of details about your personal life, from the type of beer you like to drink to whether you paid your bills on time last month.
Some of those companies, like Rapleaf or Intelius, have been sued for alleged privacy violations. That hasn't stopped political strategists from buying their data. ...
But it's deeply creepy that the campaigns know so much about individuals' lives, and they know it ...
Data mining at this level carries terrible privacy concerns, and the campaigns need to be cautious. ...
We urge both political parties to abide by these restrictions right now, even though no standards have been developed. It's one thing to urge voters to go to the polls. It's altogether another thing to violate their privacy while doing it.
By Jan. 1, 2015, the last NATO combat soldier is due to have departed Afghan soil, leaving behind a scattering of military advisers and trainers. Listen to NATO leaders, like the UK's Prime Minister David Cameron, and you will be told that the 135,000 foreign troops will be marching home, heads held high, with their mission accomplished.
The story is that Afghanistan will, within the next two years, achieve an effective army and a reliable police force. It will be able to take over for itself, the task of combating the insurgency. That's what the NATO's politicians protest. Their generals however, despite the need publicly to be towing the official line, have long been admitting privately that the rosy picture being painted by their political bosses, is far from reality.
And perhaps, most importantly, the Taliban insurgents are well aware that, even though they cannot defeat NATO militarily, they have only to wait, while continuing their pin-prick attacks on soldiers and civilians ...
Afghanistan might, however, be given a chance of peace when foreign troops quit, if NATO leaders stop pretending that their intervention has been a success and that the country is set firmly on the road to stability, with a strong and effective central government. ...