Is Your Neighbor a Democrat? There's an App For That 550
theodp writes "ProPublica's Lois Beckett reports that the Obama for America campaign's new mobile app is raising privacy concerns with its Google map that recognizes one's current location, marks nearby Democratic households with small blue flags, and displays the first name, age and gender of the voter or voters who live there (e.g.,'Lori C., 58 F, Democrat'). Asked about the privacy aspects of the new app, a spokesperson for the Obama campaign wrote that 'anyone familiar with the political process in America knows this information about registered voters is available and easily accessible to the public.' Harvard law prof Jonathan Zittrain said the Obama app does represent a significant shift. While voter data has been 'technically public,' it is usually accessed only by political campaigns and companies that sell consumer data. 'Much of our feelings around privacy are driven by what you might call status-quo-ism,' Zittrain added, 'so many people may feel that the app is creepy simply because it represents something new.'"
Re:A good reason to go independent (Score:5, Funny)
Mine just say, "Get off!"
This replaces lower-tech methods (Score:5, Funny)
The previous method, back in the days before all this social networking stuff: Republicans tend to keep their shades drawn, even though they really don't have anything that would be worth hiding. Democrats ought to draw their shades, but don't.
Re:Public shaming? Commies love it they use it a l (Score:2, Funny)
But wait, there's no need for the Right to feel left out -- they could use technology like this to round up the jews, queers, gypsies et al., with just a fraction of the effort invested by their Nazi role models back in the '30s!
Re:A good reason to go independent (Score:5, Funny)
So, republican, Texan or both ...
Re:My new app... (Score:4, Funny)
That would be great, but my ipad only has 16gig of RAM, not nearly enough to handle that sort of data flow.