John Kerry secretly data-mined info on campaign volunteers [priv]

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

If the Roll Call report is true, and there is no reason to believe
otherwise, it shows John Kerry to be somewhat of a hypocrite. His
campaign platform (http://www.johnkerry.com/issues/civilrights/) says
that "Kerry believes that Ashcroft has violated civil liberties and
abused his authority with invasions of privacy without justification."

How does Kerry justify his own invasion of privacy?

At the very least, this should make privacy advocates pause before
they back Kerry. He has some explaining to do. It's starting to look
like both major parties like to talk about privacy but don't have the
common decency to follow their own rhetoric.

-Declan

---

http://www.rollcall.com/pub/49_87/news/4616-1.html
Kerry E-Mail Move Irks Privacy Experts
By Ethan Wallison
Roll Call Staff
March 4, 2004

Sen. John Kerry's (D-Mass.) presidential campaign used a controversial
marketing practice offered by one of the country's three credit
bureaus to collect additional information last year about people who,
according to the campaign, indicated that they would like to help the
candidate in the primaries and caucuses.

---

Subject: Kerry's campaign snooped on volunteers
Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2004 11:43:02 -0600
From: Andy Ringsmuth <andyring () inebraska com>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>

Declan, according to Drudge:

http://www.drudgereport.com/flash4.htm

Kerry's campaign took volunteers information and matched it up with
data provided by at least one of the Big Three credit reporting bureaus
to skim additional information about volunteers.

Definitely a good topic for Politech, in my opinion.



-Andy

Below is the text from Drudge:




  Kerry Campaign Collected Info On Volunteers
  Thu Mar 04 2004 10:53:35 ET

  Sen. John Kerry's presidential campaign used a controversial marketing
practice offered by one of the country's three credit bureaus to
collect additional information last year about people who, according to
the campaign, indicated that they would like to help the candidate in
the primaries and caucuses.

  ROLL CALL reports on Thursday: The contracts with Equifax Marketing
Services worth about $36,000 called for the company to find so-called
'appendages' in its massive consumer database. Appending is a practice
that involves plugging bits of information into databases in order to
collect e-mail addresses or flesh out consumer profiles. The practice
has been widely attacked by consumer advocates, who consider it
invasive.

  Marketing experts believe Kerry's campaign is the first political
committee to make use of the append, a relatively recent innovation
that has emerged as retail commerce has increasingly moved online.

  Developing....



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