*** Democracies Online Newswire - http://www.e-democracy.org/do *** * Future of E-Democracy - http://publicus.net/articles/future.html *
Thank you John Fraim <http://www.symbolism.org> for pointing the article on privacy referenced below. Just as the use the web will create new information on voters/supporters, in the U.S. we also have the issue of voter registration files and their combination with other data. This article reminded me of an article by Jim Warren on how important it is voters to be able to communicate with each other instead of just having information about them being used to influence them. Here is a bonus link to his "Voter Access to Empower Grassroots Participation" column from 1995 (I love flat HTML archives) <http://www.govtech.net/magazine/gt/1995/sep/voter_ac.phtml>. In democracy, what balance must be struck between the rights of individuals to discreetly act on their political views and our right to know what other individuals are doing to trying to influence the democracy within which we live? If democracy is about "public life" what parts of it should we expect to be private? What level of exposure and loss of privacy defeats the purposes of democracy? Hmmm.... Steven Clift Democracies Online From: http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue7_2/hunter/index.html Political Privacy and Online Politics: How E-Campaigning Threatens Voter Privacy In the 1998 and 2000 U.S. elections, the Internet played an important role as a source of information for citizens and as a campaign tool for office seekers. The rise of Internet campaigning has brought about numerous benefits including increased access to political information, increased depth of content, and the ability to engage in online interactive political dialogue. Unfortunately, there is a potential dark side to all of this interaction. Just as the rise of electronic commerce has created tremendous concerns about online privacy, so too has the rise of e-campaigning. Through the use of cookies, online donation forms, and political mailing lists, Internet- based campaigns can now gather tremendous amounts of information about which candidates voters prefer and where they choose to surf. The creation and sale of such detailed voter profiles raises serious questions about the future of political privacy and the democratic electoral process itself. This paper will explore the importance of political privacy, its protection through our rights to associational privacy and anonymous speech, and the many ways that the political preferences of citizens are compromised online by campaign Web sites, database and e-mail marketers, and excessive U.S. Federal Election Commission disclosure rules. The potential negative effects of a monitored electorate on the democratic process are also examined. Contents Introduction Political Privacy: Oxymoron or Necessity? The Right to Associational Privacy The Right to Anonymous Political Speech >From Profiling Consumers to Profiling the Electorate FEC Disclosure and the Threat to Political Privacy and Anonymous Speech Conclusion See: http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue7_2/hunter/index.html ^ ^ ^ ^ Steven L. Clift - W: http://www.publicus.net Minneapolis - - - E: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Minnesota - - - - - T: +1.612.822.8667 USA - - - - - - - ICQ: 13789183 *** Please send submissions to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** *** To subscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** *** Message body: SUB DO-WIRE *** *** To unsubscribe instead, write: UNSUB DO-WIRE *** *** Please forward this post to others and encourage *** *** them to subscribe to the free DO-WIRE service. ***
