The dangers of data mining for votes

[Commentary] Do you watch college football? Listen to smooth jazz? Search the Internet for guidance on parenting, spirituality or a health concern? Look at pornography sites online? Do you like the fact that political strategists with the presidential campaigns know the answers to each of those questions? It's disturbing, but they do.

The architects behind this year's presidential campaigns know far more about voters than ever before, thanks to the increasingly precise science of data mining. There are companies that compile and study a wealth of details about your personal life, from the type of beer you like to drink to whether you paid your bills on time last month. Some of those companies, like Rapleaf or Intelius, have been sued for alleged privacy violations. That hasn't stopped political strategists from buying their data. Data mining at this level carries terrible privacy concerns, and the campaigns need to be cautious. If they can't resist for ethical reasons, they need to think of the legal ones; the courts have yet to specify the legal limits of data mining, but there's no doubt that they will.