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From the article: > Along with home addresses, birthdates, and phone numbers, the records include advanced sentiment analyses used by political groups to predi

by 317070 9y ago

From the article: > Along with home addresses, birthdates, and phone numbers, the records include advanced sentiment analyses used by political groups to predict where individual voters fall on hot-button issues such as gun ownership, stem cell research, and the right to abortion, as well as suspected religious affiliation and ethnicity. In some Western countries, the mere existence of such a database would be illegal. Especially relating to religion and ethnicity. http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/can-the-french-talk-about-race http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/can-the-french-talk-... In the US, it is leaked online.

ryanlol 9y ago
>In the US, it is leaked online. It's not a "leak" when the data is entirely public already...
- kakarot 9y ago
  It is a "leak" when additional data that was previously private, such as modeling and analytic information, gets published against the will of its owners. However, it isn't a "leak" in the traditional colloquial sense that someone stole the data and released it to the public. It's just a security leak.
matthewbauer 9y ago
France is the only country I'm aware of where that's the case.
lol214365 9y ago
France sure is a model for the US to follow...
PeterisP 9y ago
As far as I understand, the religion/ethnicity columns are not a fact, not a record and not something private provided by the person themselves or some agency - it's a modelling guess that they've made based on other publicly available data. So, if I look at your post history and make a guess about what religion and ethnicity you might have, and write that down, am I in possession of an illegal database if I lived in e.g. France? I did take a quick look, and it seems that I have a good idea about your full name, face, hair color, political views and party affiliation, your employer, etc. All this data (together with demographics of others) would also allow to make some guess about your religious preferences. All of that might be wrong, but it might also be right, so let's assume for the sake of argument that I write my guesses down and happen to have an entry that contains your full name, ethnicity and religion, just like the leaked data has. Should this be considered a crime? Does this change depending on how many people I look at? Does this change depending on how accurate my guesses are?

by 317070 9y ago

ryanlol 9y ago

>In the US, it is leaked online. It's not a "leak" when the data is entirely public already...

kakarot 9y ago
It is a "leak" when additional data that was previously private, such as modeling and analytic information, gets published against the will of its owners. However, it isn't a "leak" in the traditional colloquial sense that someone stole the data and released it to the public. It's just a security leak.

matthewbauer 9y ago

France is the only country I'm aware of where that's the case.

lol214365 9y ago

France sure is a model for the US to follow...

PeterisP 9y ago

As far as I understand, the religion/ethnicity columns are not a fact, not a record and not something private provided by the person themselves or some agency - it's a modelling guess that they've made based on other publicly available data. So, if I look at your post history and make a guess about what religion and ethnicity you might have, and write that down, am I in possession of an illegal database if I lived in e.g. France? I did take a quick look, and it seems that I have a good idea about your full name, face, hair color, political views and party affiliation, your employer, etc. All this data (together with demographics of others) would also allow to make some guess about your religious preferences. All of that might be wrong, but it might also be right, so let's assume for the sake of argument that I write my guesses down and happen to have an entry that contains your full name, ethnicity and religion, just like the leaked data has. Should this be considered a crime? Does this change depending on how many people I look at? Does this change depending on how accurate my guesses are?