"How Privacy Vanishes Online, a Bit at a Time" is an above-the-fold story in today's NYT. Combined with a letter I got this week targeting me as a donor to liberal causes, and the letter writer's website that mines data to go after liberal donors, we may have a worthwhile Diary topic here.
which continues below the jump
The letter arrived in my box from the official-sounding "Texas Ethics Advisory Board," of Huntsville, Texas, and reads as follows:
Dear ______,
You are either a very generous donor to a Planned Parenthood PAC or in relation to a Gay Rights PAC or you are a partner of Waters & Kraus, LLP a law firm in Dallas, TX or are affliated with one of the above. You may also represent Planned Parenthood in legal matters or work for Planned Parenthood.
We are pleased to announce the opening of the following website:
[diarist's note: here I omit the name of the website for the moment, to not provide them more publicity than I have to -- see below]
If you would like further information about this new domain or would like to add content, please contact me.
Sincerely,
[diarist's note: here I omit signature name for the moment, to not give them more publicity than I have to, but see below]
So far, not so bad, eh? Pretty civil example of political outreach, hard to tell on the face of it what the website is going to be, and the "you might be this, that, or the other" is almost comically broad. Here's where it gets a little creepy, though.
On Monday when I looked at the website, it appeared that the guy's goal was to data-mine dossiers on Texas donors. He hadn't gotten very far beyond compiling names and home addresses, though I did learn quite a bit about one person in Dallas whose profile included her husband's business, the cost and size of her home (real big, but so is W's), and names of some friends.
More threateningly, though, the website documented some more pointed harassment including a campaign for the firing of a Catholic university employee who had given the not-so-huge sum of $100 to a PP chapter several years ago. And the calling out of a Jewish Temple and all of its employees in a case where the Rabbi had made a donation.
While limited in scope at present, this is an illustration of the kind of stalker-ish hassle someone could create given more resource. Sure, we know stuff is out there, but really who would bother (has been my attitude).
As I prepare to link his website (for footnoting purposes only, as I really don't want to give this dude much more searchable publicity), I see that the site is down as of this writing. Is that good news, bad news, or just housekeeping? I don't know. However, the site as I saw it on Monday may be visible to you as cached in Google. There's also a Houston Chronicle writeup on this guy here. The guy named in the story is the one who signed my letter this week.
UPDATE: The website (now down) is www.plannedparenthoodfacts.org. The letter author is William B. Elmer. I didn't want to enhance his publicity, but if naming these actually helps him LESS, I'm all for that. I recommend the Chronicle article, which talks about this old coot and some of his history and drives no traffic to his site (in case it comes back up again).
So, what do we conclude? We know there's a lot out there on the net. We know that political donations are public information (FEC rules). We know there's a lot of work to do, and we need to keep doing it without being paranoid. Someone who raised $200,000 for Obama and gave $10,000 to PP (this gal in Dallas) is probably already very well known and visible. The harassment campaign against a $100 donor is a lot more worrisome--though, encouragingly, her coworkers stood up for her. At some point, harassment crosses a legal line and it would be an interesting project to find out where that occurs.
We can, though, keep in mind some of the gratuitous stuff about us that gets out on the internet -- stuff that doesn't move our goals forward -- and I surely needed that reminder myself. And this is where the NYT article from today's paper comes in. Have a read, it is really good stuff. Even if you know all this abstractly, it's a good reminder: How Privacy Vanishes Online, a Bit at a Time.
Thanks for reading!