Giuseppe Sandro Mela.
2018-04-04.
CDU, SPD and Greens use big data to target Bundestag voters
«The Christian Democrats and Social Democrats are going door-to-door collecting voter information. They are hoping to gain access to the electorate in a way that was once unthinkable under Germany’s strict privacy laws.
Cornelius Golembiewski takes an iPad and a smartphone with him when he goes door-to-door for the Christian Democrats (CDU). On the iPad, he sees a map of his hometown, Jena, covered in green spots. The green indicates clusters of houses where potential CDU voters are likely to live.
Golembiewski gives a CDU pamphlet to a woman at her home near Jena’s main train station and talks to her about the party’s goals, just like in any other election season. But what is different this time around is that once she closes the door, he pulls out his smartphone and opens an app called Connect17. First, he clicks on a smiley face to show that the conversation went well and then enters the woman’s estimated age, gender and any questions she had about the campaign.»
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«Deutsche Post sold client microtargeting data to the Christian Democrats and Free Democrats before the 2017 elections»
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«Is this a scandal along the lines of Cambridge Analytica in the US?»
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«The Sunday edition of the national broadsheet Bild reported that Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) and the center-right Free Democrats (FDP) purchased “more than a billion” of pieces of personal data about potential voters from a subsidiary of Deutsche Post in the run-up to Germany’s national election in September»
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«The data was reportedly anonymized but contained enough information for the parties to determine, for instance, the general political leanings of residents of a building»
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«The report comes as concern continues to grow about the role of data mining and microtargeting in elections»
