Recent revelations about the practices of the British company, Cambridge Analytica (CA), raise a larger set of questions about democracy: Should “Big Data” be playing a role in our elections? Should the “micro-targeting” of precise segments of the electorate based on sophisticated profiling of voters be permissible? And does it work?
It is to be hoped that this recent global publicity about the activities of CA will generate a broader debate about the role of “Big Data” in elections in Canada and elsewhere.
The story has a rich and enticing set of ingredients: a company that engages in the ethically questionable practice of “psychographic profiling” – inferring political leanings from personal traits; a sting operation by Channel 4 news revealing that the company also offered to entrap politicians through all kinds of “dirty tricks”; a harvesting of around 50 million Facebook profiles, raising serious questions (again) about Facebook’s privacy practices; a Russian angle that connects to the bigger story about interference in the US election; a local Canadian perspective in the data scientist and whistleblower, Chris Wylie, who used to work for the federal Liberals; and various investigations by regulators and legislators in the UK, Europe and the US.
