Personalisation and politics

I have to admit to following the Republican party's presidential candidate race with some fascination. It's a slightly ghoulish fascination - there's often a touch of fear when I listen to some of the candidates, and there's always the underlying question of 'how low can they go'. There's comedy, tragedy, a bit of historical eccentricity, and often a good deal of farce. It's also, however, revealing of some of the issues that we should take seriously in terms of how our politics, our democratic politics, functions - and in particular, how it might function in the future.

One particular aspect that came to the fore to me in the recent Iowa Caucus - the role of advertising in politics. We haven't developed it to nearly the same degree in the UK as the US, though every successful politician this side of the pond has tried to follow Thatcher's hugely effective use of Saatchi & Saatchi. In the US, though, it's a highly developed art form - and is only likely to become more so. In Iowa, an orchestrated advertising campaign against the surging Newt Gingrich sent him down from first to fourth place (and nearly out of the race) in a matter of days. Advertising works, or at least appears to - and politicians know it, and know it well.

What might this mean for the future? I've written about advertising many times before, both in academic papers and in blogs. The internet is changing advertising - and we need to be aware of how that change might have an impact not only on our commercial behaviour but on our political behaviour: on politics itself. There are two trends in internet advertising that are particularly relevant and worth thinking about here: behavioural profiling and personalisation. People browsing the internet can be (and are) profiled according to their online behaviour, from the search terms they use and the links they follow to the friends they have on social media sites, the music they listen to, movies they watch and so forth. That profiling is generally used to target advertising - advertising more suited to their personal needs and desires. My last blog, Privacy and the Phantom Tollbooth, talked about some of the risks of this kind of thing - but when looked at from a political perspective the risks are even more sinister.

Through profiling, it is possible to make good guesses - sometimes very good guesses - as to which political issues matter to someone and which ones don't. With just a little bit of work, the vast majority of which could be entirely automatic, it could become possible to create tailored political advertisements designed to highlight the policies or features of a particular candidate or party that are of specific interest to an individual - and to omit anything that might detract from their attraction. And, given the US experience in particular, to do the reverse for any opponents - automatically pick out the things that will make a particular voter see them in the most negative light possible.

Taking this a few steps further, these ads could include background music that the advertiser knows that you particularly like, and even voice-overs by an actor that they know you admire - they could even choose the colours, styles and typefaces to suit your 'known' preferences. Of course they wouldn't do this for everyone, at least not at first, but it wouldn't take that much effort to produce a range of options (a handful of different actors, soundtracks etc would do the job) that would cover most of the key, swing voters. Political advertising in its current form is already persuasive - how much more persuasive could it be in this kind of form? And remember that with behavioural targeting in the hands of relatively few advertising organisations, these advertisements can be sent to a vast number of different websites that you visit. They can be sent to you in emails. They can be inserted at the beginnings of videos that you watch online.... the possibilities are endless.

Is this far fetched? A nightmare scenario beyond the realms of possibility? Spend a little time watching US elections and I don't think you'll feel that way. It's just the logical extension of existing advertising and political trends. It is important to remember, too, that this kind of thing requires money - and money already talks enormously in politics. The power of personalised advertising can very easily become just one more tool in the hands of those who already wield excessive power over the political domain.

What can be done? Well, the first thing is a matter of awareness. The impact of behavioural advertising goes beyond the commercial sphere, and we need to understand this. It's not just a matter of deciding which deodorant or drink we choose - potentially it's about our whole lives. We ignore its importance at our peril - so things like 'do not track' really matter, and the European 'Cookie Directive' should not be dismissed as a legalistic impediment to good business. They may not be perfect tools - indeed, it seems clear that they aren't - but they're being pushed for very good reasons. Tracking on the internet should not be the default, accepted without a thought. The risks are far greater than most people realise.

Privacy - and Occupy Wall Street?

One of tweeters I follow, the estimable @privacycamp, asked a question on twitter last night: is there a privacy take on 'Occupy Wall Street'? I immediately fired off a quick response - of course there is - but it started me off on a train of thought that's still chugging along. That's brought about this somewhat rambling blog-post, a bit different from anything I've done before - and I'd like to stress that even more than usual these are my personal musings!

Many people in the UK may not even have noticed Occupy Wall Street - it certainly hasn't had a lot of mainstream media coverage over here - but it seems to me to be something worthy of a lot of attention. A large number of people - exactly how many is difficult to be sure about - have been 'occupying' Liberty Square near Wall Street, the financial heart of New York - indeed, some might call it the financial heart of the modern capitalist world. Precisely what they're protesting against is hard to pin down but not at all hard to understand. As it's described on occupywallst.org, it is a:

"leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%."

That isn't in any sense an 'official' definition - because there's nothing 'official' about occupy wall street. The movement has spread - the Guardian, one of the UK newspapers to give it proper coverage, talks about it reaching 70 US cities - and has lasted over three weeks so far, with little sign of flagging despite poor media coverage, strong-arm police tactics and a perceived lack of focus.

So what has this got to do with privacy? Or, perhaps more pertinently, what has this kind of a struggle got in common with the struggle for privacy? Why do people like me, whose work is concerned with internet privacy, find ourselves instinctively both supporting and admiring the people occupying Wall Street? Well, the two struggles do have a lot more in common than might appear at first glance. They're both struggles for the 'ordinary' people - for the 'little' people - against a huge and often seemingly irresistible 'machine'. Where Occupy Wall Street is faced by an array of banks with huge political and financial influence, internet privacy advocates are faced by the monoliths of the internet industry - Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple etc - whose political and financial influence is beginning to rival that of the banks. Both Occupy Wall Street and internet privacy advocates are faced by systems and structures that seems to have no alternatives, and institutions which appear so entrenched as to be impossible to stand against.

Further to that, both the banks and the big players of the internet can claim with justification that over the years they've provided huge benefits to all of us, and that we wouldn't be enjoying the pleasures and benefits of our modern society but for their innovation and enterprise - I'm writing this blog on a system owned by Google, on a computer made by Apple, and bought through a credit card provided by one of the big banks. Does this mean, however, that I should accept everything that those big players - either financial or technological - give me, and accept it uncritically? Does it mean that the people occupying Wall Street should shuffle off home and accept that Wall Street, warts and all, cannot be stood up against - and should be supported, not challenged? I don't think so.

Of course there are ways in which the two struggles are radically different. The damage done to peoples' lives by the financial crisis which is the core of the protest against Wall Street is huge - far huger than the material damage done by all the privacy-intrusive practices performed on the internet. People have lost their livelihoods, their houses, their families - perhaps even their futures - as a result. The damage from privacy intrusions is less material, harder to pin down, harder to see, harder to prove. It is, however, very important - and is likely to become more important in the future. Ultimately it has an affect on our autonomy - and that's where the real parallels with Occupy Wall Street lie. Both movements are about people wanting more control over their lives. Both are about people standing up and saying 'enough is enough,' and 'we don't want to take this any more'.

Occupy Wall Street may well fizzle out soon. I hope not - because I'd love to see it have a lasting influence, and help change the political landscape. The odds are stacked against them in more ways that I can count - but I didn't think they'd last as long as they have, so who knows what will happen? The struggle for privacy faces qualitatively different challenges, but at times it seems as though the odds are stacked just as much in favour of those who would like the whole idea of privacy to be abandoned. Even if that is the case, it's still a fight that I believe needs fighting.

The politics of privacy - does privacy matter?

A few weeks ago I attended Privacy International's 20th anniversary party - a fascinating event, celebrating a truly admirable organisation which has done sterling work over the last twenty years, from a time when privacy seemed to be very much a 'niche' subject, one that most people didn't think mattered much at all. Over the last few years, however, that seems to have changed - privacy issues regularly make headlines, from lost data to the sell-out of Chinese dissidents, from ID cards to data retention. Emphasising that, one of the two keynote speakers at the party was Nick Clegg - and this was BEFORE the first of the UK's leadership debates, so before Clegg had etched himself on the public consciousness. He spoke powerfully, quite eloquently, and fairly passionately about privacy - and at the same time, since he and we all knew that the election was just aroung the corner, he used the occasion as an 'electoral address', suggesting that his party, the Lib Dems, was the best party for privacy, and would protect all our rights much better than the other two. No to ID cards. No to centralised databases for Data Retention. No to fingerprinting our children....

....well, now he's become the 'kingmaker', it will be interesting to see how high up his agenda privacy really is. Is it one of the points he makes to his potential coalition partners? Will he get his way? It's a very interesting test of both his political will and his judgment as to the views of his supporters. We should know in a week or two....