Tag: privacy

The Story: A recent cyberattack on the digital systems of the Waikato District Health Board in New Zealand has brought new focus to the issue...

The Story: Confidential information about people receiving treatment for  mental health and addiction issues was posted online, on a website maintained by the government of...

The Story: At the time when the economic and social power of social media has become a major political issue, one of the pioneers of...

The Story: Nebraska Medicine, a private not-for-profit hospital in Omaha, was victimized by a hack attack last week. It continued to see patients throughout the...

The Story: The health care industry in the last two decades, in the US and elsewhere, has shifted away from paper records in manila folders...

Kurt 'The CyberGuy' Knutsson shares tips to help you get the most out of your brand new gadgets. #FoxandFriendsFirst #FoxNews FOX News Channel (FNC) is a 24-hour all-encompassing news service dedicated to delivering breaking news as well as political and…

Lansing — It was four days out from the 2016 presidential election when then-Michigan GOP Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel got the call: The Republican National Committee’s advanced voter score software was, for the first time, predicting Donald Trump would narrowly win the state. “We clearly spent too much time and money here,” he added sarcastically, “because we ended up winning by 10,500 votes rather than the 7,700 we predicted.” Increasingly complex systems allow Michigan's political parties to compile robust information about individual voters that they then use in direct appeals for a cause or candidate. “Allowing political parties and special interest groups to have a very detailed dossier on a person’s behavior raises fundamental questions about privacy in a democracy,” said Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, calling it a bipartisan issue. “But just as important, it’s to put in place these local infrastructures so that the local parties can do a lot of this stuff themselves.” The RNC has spent two years building on its voter score system, which combines consumer data with voter history information to create probability rankings that inform spending, messaging and other strategy decisions. “That’s kind of the mantra of the RNC this cycle.” (Photo: Rod Sanford, Special to The Detroit News ) Targeting voters Technology has reshaped the way political parties and campaigns operate, both on the ground and online. “Because in 2016 a lot of people were blindsided by what happened because traditional polling methods, and other methods we had trusted for years, did not comport with the reality of the ground.” Two years ago, the RNC used its voter score data to fine-tune appeals to voters who were part of what officials called the “HRC change universe” and held conflicting opinions about Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. While groups are using consumer data to add shopping habits and magazine subscriptions to voter profiles, publicly available voting information “is still the most useful thing for trying to influence elections,” Grossman said. Voter privacy was tested like never before in the 2016 election cycle, when Cambridge Analytica, a firm hired by Trump’s campaign, reportedly accessed private data on more than 50 million Facebook users. Betting big on tech The RNC has invested roughly $200 million in data and technology since 2012, the second cycle in a row that President Barack Obama’s campaign had “very honestly kicked our (expletive),” Ostrow said. “But rather than go out and build it just around a candidate … we build it around a party-centric model so that any candidate with an R can use it.” The voter score system uses publicly available voter information with other data, including between 2,000 and 10,000 consumer data points for each voter, said regional data director Tyler Church.

It is now six weeks since the Cambridge Analytica scandal rocked Facebook. Potential sea change — in the sense that Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica problem was only the most visible example of a much broader and deeper phenomenon. The core business model of many tech firms is monetizing the data they collect from users — not only for themselves but also for selling on to others. But there is a powerful political dynamic right below the surface: The more visible and widely understood the tech business model of monetizing user-generated data becomes, the more people will be upset about it — and the more likely government will try to respond through some sort of regulation (even if the regulation is misguided, ineffective or both). Facebook and Google are so big that there is a plausible prima facie argument that they can no longer be regulated by market forces; the government will have to step in. Given that their core business model is monetizing information on the behavior of users, the concern is about 21st century consumer protection on an unprecedented scale. Consumer protection is different from regulating tech firms like media companies (the other oft-cited “existential risk” to tech). Big advantages to tech companies that can demonstrate a history of taking data and privacy concerns more seriously, and/or whose business doesn’t rely heavily on monetizing user data. Big challenges for other industries that combine high tech with using personal data to drive the business — and hence where consumer protection looms large. Facebook/Cambridge Analytica swallowed all the media headlines because of its tie-in with Trump/Russia.

The Story: The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments November 29 on a constitutional controversy that could determine whether the government is empowered to track the...