Curious how many Democrats live on your block? Just download the Obama campaign's new mobile app.
The app, released last week, includes a Google map for canvassers that recognizes your current location and marks nearby Democratic households with small blue flags.
For each targeted address, the app displays the first name, age and gender of the voter or voters who live there: "Lori C., 58 F, Democrat."
This simply makes my skin crawl. We know that there are people who are willing to target their political opponents. Not with words, but with violence:
In the ten days following the November 4 election [California's Proposition 8], seven houses of worship in Utah and ten buildings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) in the Sacramento area were targets of vandalism, such as graffiti and meeting house glass doors shattered. According to the LDS spokesperson for the Sacremento area, the vandalism that they experienced in the ten days after the election was more than they usually get in an entire year.[5][30][31][32] A copy of the Book of Mormon, an LDS religious text, was found burning at the front of a meetinghouse.[30][32] The FBI investigated these events to determine whether a violation of civil rights had occurred.[31]If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear, Citizen.
An affiliate group of the radical trans/queer organization Bash Back! claims credit for pouring glue into the locks of an LDS meetinghouse and spray painting its walls. A Web posting signed by Bash Back!’s Olympia chapter said, “The Mormon church (just like most churches) is a cesspool of filth. It is a breeding ground for oppression of all sorts and needs to be confronted, attacked, subverted and destroyed.”[33]
UPDATE 6 August 2012 20:02: Having slept on this (I queue posts the night before), this seems even more appalling than it did. It utterly fails Joe Huffman's Jews In The Attic test, and if this sort of thing had been done my Karl Rove and Dick Cheney, liberals' heads would have exploded like the Martians from Mars Attacks:
This is one of those things in tech that falls under just cause you can doesn't mean you should.
ReplyDeleteThe saying with great power comes great responsibility.
This apps certainly uses power. But it does not show a practice of responsibility.
Am I the only one who saw, "Hotel Rawanda?"
ReplyDeleteImage if the Hutus had a "Tutsis in your area," app.
Don't criticize the app.
ReplyDeleteDon't criticize the Democrats.
Criticize the policy that requires registration and publication of that info. Really though, criticize the people who cannot learn to have open honest discussions regarding politics without scaring other people.
The same thing is available for donations too.
Yep, they would have exploded if the Pubs had done it... Goose/Gander all over again...
ReplyDelete"Criticize the policy that requires registration and publication of that info."
ReplyDeleteIf we didn't have registration and publication in the public domain there would be 120% Dem. turnout in every election.
Voter registration doesn't require party affiliation, which is what people are concerned about here. I'm registered to vote, but I'm not a "registered" anything. I'm not sure why the state should be involved at all in party politics anyway. Voting in a party primary should be a totally distinct operation from voting in the public general election.
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't matter if you what you are registered as- as long as it isn't D, your house is still marked by omission.
ReplyDeleteThis is seriously creepy.
ReplyDelete