<div dir="ltr">Fair enough. To the extent that targeted ads are working better and less clunky, I say (and it seems Ms. Harlos agrees) that's a good thing, all else being equal. I wish I got useful ads.</div><div class="gmail_extra"><br clear="all"><div><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr">Joshua A. Katz<div><br></div></div></div></div></div></div>
<br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Jul 13, 2017 at 12:25 PM, Caryn Ann Harlos <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:carynannharlos@gmail.com" target="_blank">carynannharlos@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr">I am in agreement with Joshua on many points - particularly the overbroad nature of the resolution. It may be impossible to keep it.<div><br></div><div>But where I disagree:</div><div><br></div><div>Targeted ads to me have actually been great. I see things now I might actually buy and appreciate it. The cutest dresses in ages have come across my FB feed. I actually click good ads now because I want more good ads and now I rarely see things I am not interested in, and yes, I have bought a few things (cute shoes).</div><div><br></div><div>My opinion of Snowden remains the same.</div><div class="gmail_extra"><div><div class="h5"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Jul 13, 2017 at 10:01 AM, Joshua Katz <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:planning4liberty@gmail.com" target="_blank">planning4liberty@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr">A few thoughts:<div><br></div><div>1. I think the threats from big analytic data are oversold. There are benefits (yay getting coupons I actually need!) but, for the most part, it's incredibly clumsy, even from the best in the field. Do I really need to see suits for days after I buy one? If I needed another, I would have bought it already, yet there's no ability, at least as of now, to instead show me relevant ads. For example - if a person buys a suit and is unemployed, you might want to show them ads for transportation options to get to interviews, lines of credit available to the unemployed,and headhunters. </div><div><br></div><div>2. I think the benefits of big analytic data are oversold. In my view, yes, campaigns are using it, and it will become a part of the landscape - but I think it will shrink from its current 'fad' status. Since campaigns do not use only one tool at a time, I think data is getting credit better reserved for other tactics, such as better efforts to find and exploit fat tails - which does not require heavy use of analytic data. I don't think it's going away, but I think it will fade from being seen as the pinnacle of smart campaigning. I do not think we should copy these techniques, in which we cannot compete. We should adopt the basic forms that are providing 90% of the benefit - say, good use of registration and turnout data in a seamless database like NB - where I can make a list of those who like a certain post, for instance, then send out an email on that topic - but nothing more.</div><div><br></div><div>3. My opinion of Snowden, while I do not want him prosecuted, has chilled over the last year or so. I'm less inclined to praise him in these terms than I was in the past. </div><div><br></div><div>4. I think, to the extent such "spiderwebs" exist, that they will be a part of the landscape, even outside government, and we should learn how to live with them (hello Torrent) and not fight a fruitless war. I suggested in a speech many years ago that our society was having a war about information, with some wanting to lock it up and others wanting to free it. Some, like FB, want it both ways - people provide it for free, yet FB monetizes and privatizes it. We can win that war, I think, by pushing for openness, but with that comes loss of privacy. Fighting against openness, on the other hand, means shifting power to the few with access to the information. I think the trade-off works better if we lower our privacy expectations. Think of it this way, to use a trivial example: if 100 people apply for a job, and you find a picture of one of them with a lamp on their head, they will probably not be hired. If you find pictures of all 100 with lamps on their heads, things level out.</div><div><br></div><div>5. I would support a limited motion against big data, if it focused on what we do (the Resolved) portion, without all the Whereas. I think the Resolved here, though, is too broad and unclear. I'm not sure what it prohibits, and that's a problem - it's a bigger problem if staff is unclear. Does it prohibit buying lists of registered Libertarians from Secretaries of State? Buying lists of "(Reason subscribers OR GOA members OR NRA members OR homeschoolers) AND registered voters"? </div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br clear="all"><div><div class="m_-6099333239841293668m_-1991269273779929427m_8757955145087301387gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr">Joshua A. Katz<div><br></div></div></div></div></div></div>
<br><div class="gmail_quote"><div><div class="m_-6099333239841293668m_-1991269273779929427h5">On Thu, Jul 13, 2017 at 11:44 AM, Starchild <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:realreform@earthlink.net" target="_blank">realreform@earthlink.net</a>></span> wrote:<br></div></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div><div class="m_-6099333239841293668m_-1991269273779929427h5"><div style="word-wrap:break-word"><div><br></div><div><span class="m_-6099333239841293668m_-1991269273779929427m_8757955145087301387m_-5254704426832844050Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre-wrap"> </span>Ever heard the following observation about George Orwell's dystopian novel: "<i>1984</i> was not an instruction manual"? </div><div><br></div><div><span class="m_-6099333239841293668m_-1991269273779929427m_8757955145087301387m_-5254704426832844050Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre-wrap"> </span>I much appreciated that dark witticism when I first heard it, and still do. But lately it occurs to me that <i>1984 </i>actually <i>is</i> a kind of an instruction manual. Not in the sense the original observation intends to warn us against, of would-be totalitarian leaders using it as a blueprint for imposing control, but in the sense of instructing the rest of us about what kinds of developments to be on guard against; what kinds of conditions we must not allow to come into being.</div><div><br></div><div><span class="m_-6099333239841293668m_-1991269273779929427m_8757955145087301387m_-5254704426832844050Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre-wrap"> </span>In the spirit of trusting you my colleagues to grasp the implications of this material enough to read it as a <i>pro-freedom</i> and not an <i>anti-freedom</i> instruction manual, the following Newsweek story from June 8 addresses a topic that I believe demands our attention as a political party:</div><div><br></div><div><b><a href="http://www.newsweek.com/2017/06/16/big-data-mines-personal-info-manipulate-voters-623131.html" target="_blank">http://www.newsweek.com/2017/0<wbr>6/16/big-data-mines-personal-i<wbr>nfo-manipulate-voters-623131.h<wbr>tml</a></b></div><div><br></div><div><span class="m_-6099333239841293668m_-1991269273779929427m_8757955145087301387m_-5254704426832844050Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre-wrap"> </span>A couple excerpts (much more at the link, and well worth a read):</div><div><p></p></div><blockquote type="cite"><div><p><i>The speaker, Alexander Nix, an Eton man, was very much among his own
kind—global elites with names like Buffett, Soros, Brokaw, Pickens,
Petraeus and Blair. Trouble was indeed on the way for some of the
attendees at the annual summit of policymakers and philanthropists whose
world order was about to be wrecked by the American election. But for
Nix, chief executive officer of a company working for the Trump
campaign, that mayhem was a very good thing.</i></p><p><i>He didn’t mention it
that day, but his company, Cambridge Analytica, had been selling its
services to the Trump campaign, which was building a massive database of
information on Americans. The company’s capabilities included, among
other things, “psychographic profiling” of the electorate. And while
Trump’s win was in no way assured on that afternoon, Nix was there to
give a cocky sales pitch for his cool new product.</i></p><p><i>“It’s my privilege to speak to you today about the power of Big Data and psychographics in the electoral process,”
he began. As he clicked through slides, he explained how Cambridge
Analytica can appeal directly to people’s emotions, bypassing cognitive
roadblocks, thanks to the oceans of data it can access on every man and
woman in the country...</i></p></div><div></div><div></div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div><i>To illustrate, he walked the audience through what he called “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8Dd5aVXLCc" target="_blank">a real-life example</a>”
taken from the company’s data on the American electorate, starting with
a large anonymous group with a general set of personality types and
moving down to the most specific—one man, it turned out, who was easily
identifiable.</i></div><div><p><i>Nix started with a group of 45,000 likely Republican
Iowa caucusgoers who needed a little push—what he calls a “persuasion
message”—to get out and vote for Ted Cruz (who used Cambridge Analytica
early in the 2016 primaries). That group’s specifics had been fished out
of the data stream by an algorithm sifting the thousands of digital
data points of their lives. Nix was focusing on a personality subset the
company’s algorithms determined to be “very low in neuroticism, quite
low in openness and slightly conscientious.”</i></p><aside class="m_-6099333239841293668m_-1991269273779929427m_8757955145087301387m_-5254704426832844050break m_-6099333239841293668m_-1991269273779929427m_8757955145087301387m_-5254704426832844050break-3"><div id="m_-6099333239841293668m_-1991269273779929427m_8757955145087301387m_-5254704426832844050" class="m_-6099333239841293668m_-1991269273779929427m_8757955145087301387m_-5254704426832844050block m_-6099333239841293668m_-1991269273779929427m_8757955145087301387m_-5254704426832844050block-fusion-ads"><div class="m_-6099333239841293668m_-1991269273779929427m_8757955145087301387m_-5254704426832844050content"></div></div></aside><p><i>Click. A screen of graphs and pie charts.</i></p><p><i>“But
we can segment further. We can look at what issue they care about. Gun
rights I’ve selected. That narrows the field slightly more.”</i></p><p><i>Click. Another screen of graphs and pie charts, but with some circled specifics.</i></p><p><i>“And now we know we need a message on gun rights. It needs to be a persuasion message, and it needs to be nuanced according to the certain personality type we are interested in.”</i></p><p><i>Click. Another screen, the state of Iowa dotted with tiny reds and blues—individual voters.</i></p><aside class="m_-6099333239841293668m_-1991269273779929427m_8757955145087301387m_-5254704426832844050break m_-6099333239841293668m_-1991269273779929427m_8757955145087301387m_-5254704426832844050break-4"><div id="m_-6099333239841293668m_-1991269273779929427m_8757955145087301387m_-5254704426832844050" class="m_-6099333239841293668m_-1991269273779929427m_8757955145087301387m_-5254704426832844050block m_-6099333239841293668m_-1991269273779929427m_8757955145087301387m_-5254704426832844050block-fusion-ads"><div class="m_-6099333239841293668m_-1991269273779929427m_8757955145087301387m_-5254704426832844050content"></div></div></aside><p><i>“If
we wanted to drill down further, we could resolve the data to an
individual level, where we have somewhere close to 4- or 5,000 data
points on every adult in the United States.”</i></p><p><i>Click. Another screenshot with a single circled name—Jeffrey Jay Ruest, gender: male, and his GPS coordinates.</i></p><p><i>The
American voter whose psychological tendencies Nix had just paraded
before global elites like a zoo animal was easy to find. Cambridge
researchers would have known much more about him than his address. They
probably had access to his Facebook likes—heavy metal band Iron Maiden, a
news site called eHot Rods and Guns, and membership in Facebook groups
called My Daily Carry Gun and Mopar Drag Racing.</i></p><p><i>“Likes” like those are sine qua non of the psychographic profile.</i></p><p><i>And
like every other one of the hundreds of millions of Americans now
caught in Cambridge Analytica’s slicing and dicing machine, Ruest was
never asked if he wanted a large swath of his most personal data
scrutinized so that he might receive a message tailored just for him
from Trump.</i></p><div><i>Big Data, artificial intelligence and algorithms designed and
manipulated by strategists like the folks at Cambridge have turned our
world into a Panopticon, the 19th-century circular prison designed so
that guards, without moving, could observe every inmate every minute of
every day. </i></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div><span class="m_-6099333239841293668m_-1991269273779929427m_8757955145087301387m_-5254704426832844050Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre-wrap"> </span>The choice for us seems clear: Will we emulate Alexander Nix, or side with Jeffrey Jay Ruest? Do we get on the big data bandwagon and attempt to beat the authoritarians at their game by being cleverer at manipulating people's personal information than they are, or do we condemn the practice and put our trust in the public to appreciate those who refuse to engage in such methods? Be manipulators, or speak out against manipulation? </div><div><br></div><div><span class="m_-6099333239841293668m_-1991269273779929427m_8757955145087301387m_-5254704426832844050Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre-wrap"> </span>The Newsweek piece discusses how big data analytics has advanced, and will likely continue to advance at a rate such that by 2020, the analytics used in the 2016 campaign will look like "horse and buggy" technology. Already, writes author Nina Burleigh,<i> "On any given day, Team Trump was placing up to 70,000 ad variants, and
around the third debate with Hillary Clinton, it pumped out 175,000 ad
variants."</i></div><div><i><br></i></div><div><span class="m_-6099333239841293668m_-1991269273779929427m_8757955145087301387m_-5254704426832844050Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre-wrap"> </span>Of course it wasn't just the Trump campaign. According to the article, <i>"The Democratic National Committee has used <a href="https://www.catalist.us/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Catalist</a>,
a 240 million–strong storehouse of voter data, containing hundreds of
points of data per person, pulled from commercial and public records." Further on, Bureigh tells us:</i></div><div><br></div><div></div><blockquote type="cite"><div><i>Democratic strategists say Facebook’s microtargeting abilities,
behavioral science and the stores of data held by other social media
platforms like Twitter and Snapchat are tools that won’t go back inside
Pandora’s box. They, of course, insist they won’t be looking for
low-cognition voters high in neuroticism who are susceptible to
fear-based messages. But Big Data plus behavioral science plus Facebook
plus microtargeting is the political formula to beat. They will use it,
and they won't talk about how they will refine and improve it.</i></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div><span class="m_-6099333239841293668m_-1991269273779929427m_8757955145087301387m_-5254704426832844050Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre-wrap"> </span>Panopticon be damned, if the temptations to a candidate, or a party, of going down Nix's road aren't already obvious, read the article and I think they will be. The dangers likewise. I hope it's no mystery which side I come down on. I think we should listen to Edward Snowden, whose point of view Burleigh's piece describes thus:</div><div><br></div><div></div><blockquote type="cite"><div><i>Speaking to a Big Data industry conference in Washington May 15,
fugitive National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden implored
his audience to consider how the mass collection and preservation of
records on every online interaction and activity threatens our society.
“When we have people that can be tracked and no way to live outside this
chain of records,” he said, “what we have become is a quantified
spiderweb. That is a very negative thing for a free and open society.”</i></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div><span class="m_-6099333239841293668m_-1991269273779929427m_8757955145087301387m_-5254704426832844050Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre-wrap"> </span>With all this in mind, I offer the following resolution. Does anyone have any suggested changes in wording before I ask for co-sponsors?</div><div><br></div><div>------------------------------<wbr>------------------------------<wbr>------------------</div><div><i><b>Whereas a growing ability to harvest, analyze, and manipulate data has during the past few years increasingly enabled "microtargeting" in which hundreds or thousands of data points about specific individuals, harvested from online sources, are run through algorithms and </b><b>analyzed using behavioral science in order to sell people products, or push political candidates or messages; and </b></i></div><div><b><i><br></i></b></div><div><b><i><div style="font-weight:normal"><b>Whereas algorithms and data harvesting abilities are expected to continue to rapidly increase in sophistication; and</b></div><div><b><br></b></div></i></b></div><div><b><i>Whereas our Republican and Democrat opponents in the 2016 United States presidential election were already cynically mining "big data" to employ "microtargeting" against millions of Americans without, in most cases, the knowledge or consent of these individuals that their personal data were being used to send them tailored messages different from those sent to other voters; and</i></b></div><div><b><i><br></i></b></div><div><b><i>Whereas such practices represent a clear and present danger to freedom, with NSA whistleblower and libertarian hero Edward Snowden warning that,“When we have people that can be tracked and no way to live outside this chain of records, what we have become is a quantified spiderweb," and calling this "a very negative thing for a free and open society"; and</i></b></div><div><b><i><br></i></b></div><div><b><i><div style="font-weight:normal"><b>Whereas we reject the top-down, authoritarian mindset underlying these and other unethical policies and practices of the "cartel parties" and the government institutions they dominate, and exist instead to defend the rights of the individual,</b></div><div><b><br></b></div></i></b></div><div><b><i>We therefore hereby resolve that the Libertarian National Committee will not use "big data" under this or any other name, to engage in "microtargeting" under this or any other name, by obtaining and analyzing large numbers of data points about specific individuals without the explicit consent of those individuals in order to market, advertise, or promote our party or candidates to them, or to raise money from them, and urge all Libertarian candidates and campaigns to make a similar pledge.</i></b></div><div><div>------------------------------<wbr>------------------------------<wbr>------------------</div></div><div><br></div><div>Love & Liberty,</div><div><br></div><div> ((( starchild )))</div><div>At-Large Representative, Libertarian National Committee</div><div> <a href="mailto:RealReform@earthlink.net" target="_blank">RealReform@earthlink.net</a></div><div> (415) 625-FREE</div><div> @StarchildSF</div><div><br></div></div><br></div></div>______________________________<wbr>_________________<br>
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<br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><div><br></div></div></div><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888">-- <br><div class="m_-6099333239841293668m_-1991269273779929427gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div><font size="4" face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" color="#666666"><b>In Liberty,</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" color="#666666"><b>Caryn Ann Harlos</b></font></div><div><font size="1">Region 1 Representative, Libertarian National Committee </font><span style="font-size:x-small">(Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Kansas, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Washington) - <a href="mailto:Caryn.Ann.Harlos@LP.org" target="_blank">Caryn.Ann. Harlos@LP.org</a></span></div><div><span style="font-size:x-small">Communications Director, <a href="http://www.lpcolorado.org" target="_blank">Libertarian Party of Colorado</a></span></div><div><span style="font-size:x-small">Colorado State Coordinator, <a href="http://www.lpradicalcaucus.org" target="_blank">Libertarian Party Radical Caucus</a> </span></div><div><span style="font-size:x-small">Chair, LP Historical Preservation Committee</span></div><div><span style="font-size:x-small"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-size:x-small">A haiku to the Statement of Principles:</span></div><div><span style="font-size:x-small"><i>We defend your rights</i></span></div><div><span style="font-size:x-small"><i>And oppose the use of force</i></span></div><div><span style="font-size:x-small"><i>Taxation is theft</i></span></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><span style="font-size:x-small"><br></span></div><div style="font-size:12.8px"><br></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>
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