Minnesota Republicans Using Software to Snoop on Citizens

People ask me why I’m so upset about the news that the Patriot Act has been renewed, and Total Information Awareness never was closed down like they told us it would be. The answer is quite simple, really. The Republican party has proven over and over again that it cannot be trusted to respect the liberty and privacy of American citizens.

A new example about how much Republicans love to abuse the liberty of American citizens came out of Minnesota today. Apparently, the Minnesota Republicans mailed out a compact disc with information about same sex marriage to its supporters. What the Minnesota Republicans did not tell its supporters is that the CD contained software that was used to grab information about them and send it back to a gigantic Republican database.

Here’s how Minnesota Public Radio describes the problem:

“On Monday, the Minnesota Republican Party announced that it will send out CD videos on Friday to inform voters about the importance of a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. It turns out the CD is also being used to add to the GOP voter database. Officials with the Republican Party say certain voter data is being collected by the party. Internet privacy experts say they’re concerned that the party isn’t telling the viewer that it’s collecting the data and worry where the information will end up… Republican Party Chair Ron Carey said the video is an attempt to get the DFL Senate to vote on a constitutional amendment to define marriage as only between one man and one woman. At the CD’s unveiling, he never mentioned that the party is also using the video to collect information about those who view the video.”

Most of us can see very plainly that what the Minnesota Republicans did to their supporters is wrong. That’s because we have a solid moral compass.

The moral compass of the Republican Party, however, seems to be pointing 180 degrees in the wrong direction. The moral values of the Republican Party are so out of balance that Republican political operatives seem to think that it is more important to stop people from getting married than it is to allow Americans to keep political consultants from peeping into voters’ private lives.

After the effort to use compact discs to extract information from voters was revealed, Mark Drake, a representative of the Minnesota Republican Party, told reporters, “I don’t think it’s anything that is particularly a big deal.”

The experts say differently. Lillie Coney, of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, reacted to the news by reminding us, “Any time the consumer is providing information to an entity and they’re not aware of how that information is being used or what purpose the information may be put to, they’re at a disadvantage. It’s easier to tell people what’s going on.”

The Minnesota Republican Party has also been dishonest with voters about the privacy protections installed on the CD. Christa Heibel, CEO of CH Consulting, the company that made the CD for the Minnesota Republicans, has claimed that there were firewall protections in the software that would prevent third parties from gaining access to the personal information voters may not have been aware that they were sending in the first place.

In fact, staff members at Minnesota Public Radio were able to gain access to voter data gathered through the CD. Either the Minnesota Republicans are lying about the firewalls, or the people at CH Consulting are incompetent at their work.

Republican die hards in Minnesota are thus left with no excuse for their continuing support for the GOP than the claim that they just don’t mind being spied on. As for myself, I have different values than that, and I think that the rest of America shares those values. We don’t want the Republican Party sifting through information about our private lives, but the GOP elite doesn’t seem to understand that. Thus, we have the infamous Patriot Act, Total Information Awareness, the Republican government listening to our telephone calls without restraint, and compact discs from Republican Party hacks looking into our private affairs.

I won’t stand for it any more. I refuse to surrender my dignity to these people. I’m betting that, sooner or later, the American people will have had enough too, and will tell the Republicans to go mind their own business.

… Oh, who the heck am I kidding? It’s Friday night. People just want to have fun and relax. Go ahead, America, have fun and relax. They’e spying on you, but the chips and salsa go well with the beer, so what the hell, right?