Privacy and Data-Driven Political Campaigns

Technology systems have brought with them myriad ways in which data can be produced and collected. Internet-connected devices and common associated tools, like browser cookies, location access and Internet caches are able to collect massive amounts of personal information without the subject being aware of it. This information is stored and organised in large datasets that can then be sold to third parties such as data brokers, election consultants and PR firms that purchase the datasets with the intention of conducting political influence.

While vast amounts of data are now produced every day, the shadowy nature of the technologies and actors of the influence industry obscure the level to which data is collected, such as what types of data are collected, how long the user will be tracked and to whom the datasets are being sold. These practices often conceal the reality of how our privacy is respected – or in many cases, how it is violated. Many of the mechanisms to protect users’ privacy – such as privacy policies – are inadequate. These policies are long, dense and full of legalese or consent requests that lack context and are necessary to accept to access a website.

Privacy Explained

Privacy is a multi-dimensional concept, defined differently across contexts. Privacy may be understood as a space in which individuals can be left alone and will have freedom from interference or intrusion in their personal matters. Understanding privacy as a space allows private places to be defined as sites where individuals can express themselves, make autonomous decisions and play with new identities, with the freedom to make mistakes and consequently learn from them. Privacy is also commonly understood as a human, or political, right recognised by The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. As a right, privacy becomes the responsibility of our governing systems to protect the individual from constraint, coercion and uninvited observation and allows individuals to protect themselves from others who may wish to exert unwanted, or even unwarranted, control. Scholars Daniel Kreiss and P. Howard encapsulate the importance of privacy in their writing:

Scholars have divided the concept of privacy into several sub-categories. Types of privacy can very based on what aspect of our lives we want to be free from interference.

• Psychological: People need private space to think and make decisions
• Sociological: People need to be free to associate with others
• Political: People need to be free to think, argue, and act
• Communications: People need to be free to communicate via any means such as phone, email, and chat
• Experience: People need to be able to watch, read, and interact with content
• Behavioural: People need to be able to take action and move around
• Information and data: People's digital personas and online life should receive the same treatment

Information and data privacy, defined as the right to control access to personal information, is at the centre of many debates of digital technologies.

For the purposes of political influence, data brokers and campaign consultants either directly collect data about political actions –such as turning up to a protest or supporting a specific political party –or they may infer a person’s political leanings about which candidate and causes they are more and less likely to support based on data about their movements, networks of friends and Internet browsing habits. Data can be collected without the user’s consent, without their knowledge and may be of a sensitive nature.

The seven types of privacy, Source: Tactical Tech

Hear for Yourself:

“... It was especially concerning to see that some political parties didn't even have privacy policies on their websites, and others, even through some superficial analysis of the website, had certain security issues.”

Researcher Tetyana Bohdanova describes the gap between regulation and practice during her research of the 2019 Ukraine national election.

Find the full audio and transcript here or listen on Peertube.

In Practice:

Many protesters at the marches against the killing of George Floyd and in support of Black Lives Matter in June 2020 across the United States did not realise their location data was being tracked by a voter registration company. In order to determine where the mobile-users were originally based, the company examined device location 48 hours before the protest and 48 hours after the protests. Within a period of two weeks, the company was able to serve over 14,000 targeted ads to individuals based on their participation in a protest.

What is more important than privacy?

In defence of the violation of the privacy of an individual, a common reasoning is that a person with nothing to hide wouldn’t, or shouldn’t, mind intrusions into their personal life. Furthermore, it is argued that the benefits outweigh the costs: national security, the production of a useful product or a good political campaign are said to be worth the cost of our private data. Edward Snowden neatly summarises a key problem by saying:

Arguments in favour of data collection are used, for instance, to defend mass surveillance in the name of catching a few criminals. However, arguments relying on issues of criminality are not always simple, and ignore many issues within legal systems including the struggles of political activists who are often branded as dangerous and therefore whose right to privacy is often removed by the state. For example, there has been little evidence to show that mass surveillance of people’s behaviours has actually had any positive effect on monitoring crimes against the state.

If we understand that privacy means our data is private in ownership – meaning our data belongs to us – then we may choose to hand over our private information but only with our knowledge, consent and usually with the expectation of something in return. For example, we can choose to give sensitive information to our doctors or our email address to organisations we want to know more about regularly. Our data is being exchanged for an outcome or information that we want. In these instances, we are involved in making a decision about whether we would like our data to be used for set purposes or not.

The Chilling Effect

The impact of the continued reports of privacy breaches or the ways in which collected data is used for political influence may result in a so-called 'chilling effect' for journalists and digital users alike. The knowledge of the ubiquitous dataveillance, defined by Büchi, Festic and Latzer as "the automated, continuous, and unspecific collection, retention, and analysis of digital traces", encourages individuals to adapt their digital communication behaviour for fear of retribution. This adaptation of behaviour – to how we feel watched, or that our words may be used in some other way in the future – produces a chilling effect in which we censor or adapt ourselves to expectations based on fear, and consequently can negatively impact important processes of political participation.