Someone's taken a list of people who contributed to support the Proposition Eight movement in California and married it to Google Maps, which means that you can zoom into an area and see who in that area supported it. One writer says that this means the the donors could be targeted, personally, by people who want to agitate against what you support, and that this could result in people doing less public support of sensitive propositions. I think that conclusion is correct.
This use of technology bothers me. Frankly, I don't see where who financially supports what ought to be public information.At the organizational level, maybe. Personal, no. Another writer disagrees, with what I feel to be inflammatory prose:
If Prop 8 supporters truly feel that barring equality for gay couples is vital for saving civilization, shouldn't they be proud of their financial support? Why don't they actually have posters advertizing their support for discriminating against gay people - as a matter of pride?
My feeling? No. That's their call, no one else's. Pace Google, but not everything that can be known, should be known. And yes, I know that that sentiment would likely be firmly backed by Dick Cheney and company.
7 comments:
In general, public disclosure laws worked because it was relatively difficult to obtain the information. Now, it's a matter of a few keystrokes, a bit of (often trivial) programming and violâ!
I don't think it's the public disclosure laws that are wrong - I think it's the fact that lawmakers haven't kept pace with what's possible.
The other side of it isn't that the Prop8 Google map is wrong, per se, it's that it's the same information that is available courtesy of public disclosure laws, presented in a manner that is exceptionally easy to understand. You could take the same information, paste it to a map or two, take a picture (post it) and have the same result. There's no actual difference; the map is simply just a different expression of the available data. (It definitely turns the data into meaningful information!)
This sort of thing - once it gets standardized - will serve to stifle, and energize public debate.
Basically, give to a privately held charity and you can stay anonymous. Give to a political cause in an effort to influence public policy? You can't be anonymous.
In principle, you can be - but in practicality, it's impossible. Otherwise you'd have mysterious donors influencing policy in ways that they want. And no one would be able to combat their efforts. We've already seen what stupid amounts of money can buy - society has an unfortunate duty to prevent the few from influencing policy for the rest of us!
Carolyn Ann
PS I'm going to cross-post this...
Oh - I did like the irony of "married it to ..."
Whatever next? Yahoo and Microsoft getting together? That would be too much! And against my religion! Etc. :-)
Carolyn Ann
Well, I could be disingenuous and say that we still have mysterious donors, on all sides.... unless you want to believe that a bunch of previously non-politically-active people just decided all at once to send their money to a bundler, in support of a given candidate supported by that bundler, who'd already reached his max legal contribution. Not that thats happened more than two or three times that I recall.
But my point is really that I disagree with the concept of public disclosure. It was liveable when the data was difficult to come by. Now that it might not be so difficult, it's not so liveable. That a given position is supported by a given bloc or organization -- yes, thats worth knowing. Finding out that American Concrete is a major contributor to the Senator who's on the Highways Committee is of interest. But that Prive Citizen Bill supports him, too? Who benefits from that?
That's why I say the laws haven't kept pace with what's possible.
On the other hand, let's say the LDS Church is (quietly, or at the very least disingenuously) urging members to donate to a cause, in another state, that affects the lives and civil rights of a few million folk in that other state. In that case it is critical to know who donated what. (Although any donor's religious affiliation should not be public information, it's often not that difficult to figure it out.)
Of course, this whole debate must pay lip service to such Google Map uses as crime stats, and I think there's one that covers where sex offenders live. I doubt the people behind Google Maps envisioned all the uses it could be put to!
It won't be long before our lives aren't just lived through Facebook, but people will be able to track us quite ably via Google Maps. I think (hope?) we'll see a decided shift to more consideration of what is private and what is public!
What is certain is that this (unexpected) use of technology will have far-reaching implications. Public interest collides with privacy concepts.
It's not going to be a pretty battle - that's for sure!
Carolyn Ann
In a way (this is a stretch)what you're hypothesizing is equivilent to the 'root cause' analysis that problems are supposed to undergo. I have NEVER seen an RCA that went more that two layers deep -- but thats the level of analysis that you'd need to find something like that.
Plus the idea of 'if the Catholic Church urges support of something, and we do, is that the CC or me? Not to mention, how would you know?'
I'm still for limiting that access. I would imagine that the next step -- easy for some to do, though not me -- would be to select a person, and run a scan of ten thousand data sources to see every swinging major thing they contribute to, buy, or engage in.
You know, like the NSA does now.
Hmm. You're right.
I'm for full disclosure when it comes to politics, but the lowest publicly reported limit on donations probably needs to be raised. ($500? $1,000?)
One you get into the "big money" donations - people do have a right to know who's influencing policy debate using their wallet. But the smaller ones ($100, $200) probably are where privacy trumps public disclosure.
I'm not sure where the answer lies, although I'm extremely wary of limiting disclosure to certain conditions. They'd be too easy to get around!
Good topic, Bill! :-)
Carolyn Ann
Hey, once in four years...I was due!
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