CD controversy redux

Posted at 8:06 AM on March 12, 2006 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)

According to MDE, the GOP CD on gay marriage has begun arriving in the mail at homes of voters in districts represented by some senators who have prevented the same-sex marriage (and its legal equivalent) ban from a Senate vote.

You may recall the flap here -- and elsewhere -- after the GOP held a news conference to unveil the spiffy technology, only to have it discovered that the CD also extracted identity and other information from the computer and went to a Republican database to be used in other party activities.

The party contended that even though no mention of the CD's purpose was made at the news conference, and that the packaging contained no warning that the CD itself was doing something other than trying to tell you about the marriage amendment, and that no disclaimer or opt-out appeared during the program, it was always the intention to put that stuff on in the 4 following days after the news conference.

Looks like it went out about a week later than planned. I have no idea other than the picture on the MDE site what changes were made since the Party did not follow through on the promise to get me an evaluation copy as soon as they had it. Nor, for the record, did I ever hear again from the party spokesman who promised to "look into" the questions I had regarding conversations the party officials and the CD developer may -- or may not -- have had about privacy and data issues prior to the time when they were revealed by the media.

BTW, judging by the number of people asking for a copy of the CD (the Symantec "crisis response team" even asked me for one), it may have some value on E*Bay.

Comments (1)

Bob,

Good job on the CD issue. We will see if you you do the same indepth investigation if something similar happens to the Democrats.

Posted by jonathan | March 15, 2006 4:52 PM

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