Lockdown

Posted at 9:41 AM on March 1, 2006 by Bob Collins (8 Comments)

It was interesting to see how the blogosphere was "alive" with chatter about the posts yesterday regarding the marriage amendment CD. For a time it was #1 on Slashdot (someone who wanted to get his traffic numbers up lifted parts of the post off this site, put it on his, and then put a message on Slashdot with a link to the "article" on his site. That's just paisley-and-stripes lame. Tons of responses there, lots of folks commenting on what the article said -- its merits and flaws. Only problem is, very few actually read the original posts here and were operating in relative ignorance. Intead, they relied on what some blog said some blog said about the post. As much as the exercise revealed about privacy concerns, for me it revealed how quickly and effectively reposting a blog's information (deleting somet things, and editing ot others) can spread misinformation. Sometimes it's just carelessness. But it's a lesson learned and I hope readers of blogs will remind themselves that unless they're reading the original post on the original blog site, they may be reading garbage.

Now then. The company responsible is CH Consulting. And if you're interested, they've published an article about database marketing and how it works.

The data we referred to was available on CH Consulting's Web site, by virtue of a link off the main site to viewyouriq.com talks about what kind of value they bring to political campaigns. It's now not accessible, but Google Cache can show you the page.

The theory behind the CD is exemplified by the company's product, ProCard, a significant feature of which is its ability to get around the do-not-call rules that have hampered telemarketers. CH cites IQ Central on its Web site, which gives a glimpse into the appeal of accessing the gathered data. However, keep in mind that political organizations -- and non-profits -- are exempt from Minnesota's Do Not Call rule.

In terms of a product however, Christa Heibel, the executive at CH, also has written about the effect of the Do Not Call laws and how to get around them.

Remember, it's OK to call someone if your company has an existing prior relationship. How that relationship is built will be the difference for many firms seeking to return to telemarketing.

So you run the program, and you transmit your data, and you establish a relationship.

ProCard lets a company present their sales material to prospective clients on a CD. The CD can be loaded with multiple-choice personal data questions to gather information on the viewer, as well as tracks where and what was done with the CD.

I can't recall, by the way, if I mentioned this earlier but there is a Terms of Use on this CD, one to which you must agree in order to get it to function. However, the contents are for the protection of the vendor (no decompiling, reservation of copyright etc., and a mention that the user is responsible for any damage caused by any downloads as a result of running the program). There is no mention of data collection and transmission. There was, I'm told, no mention of it at the news conference unveiling the CD on Monday either.

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Comments (8)

why go to all the pain and effort of scripting a program, burning a cd, and sending it out to users?

why not just point them to a website? like it is done by everyday by marketing firms that know what they are doing?

Posted by regexp | March 1, 2006 9:50 AM

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Wow, a huge GOP calling list out in the open. What are the odds that the DFL didn't get a hold of it?

cp

Posted by Mr. Sponge | March 1, 2006 10:04 AM

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"why go to all the pain and effort of scripting a program, burning a cd, and sending it out to users?

why not just point them to a website? like it is done by everyday by marketing firms that know what they are doing?"

Very simple. In going to a website and interacting, most people realize that the site is collecting the results. Just playing a CD and interacting with it, many people would not realize that the information could be transmitted without their knowledge -- or so the perps hope.

Posted by Abel Baker | March 1, 2006 10:25 AM

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I can't wait to see the first GOP candidate's ad/literature touting "data privacy" as one of their marquee issues.

Posted by Snoops R Us | March 1, 2006 11:59 AM

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I'm having trouble figuring out your first graf — are you referencing Think Progress? Because if you are, they linked back to you so I'm not sure what the deal would be about that. And I don't understand why you wouldn't name the blog in question if you're really P.O.ed. (Frankly, your daily hits must be at least double or triple what they were last week, so I really don't get the snark...)

But your posts on this have been great and I think it's safe to say that everyone who follows US politics via blogs has now been exposed to this story. Unless, of course, they only read rightwing blogs, none of which have touched this one to the best of my knowledge.

Posted by The Wege | March 1, 2006 12:11 PM

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First of all, thanks for giving even more information about the aspects of the CD and how it ties into telemarketing.

Also, before having read this post, I did do a post of my own, but made sure to link to your original post about the GOP's CD.

Posted by Rook | March 1, 2006 12:20 PM

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80% of the folks at Slashdot almost never understand what they're talking about, but that's the world of IT as defined by Microsoft.

A decent blogger should have pulled the source link instead of Think Progress's, then attributed their discover of the link to TP with a "via..." But frankly that kind the-history-of-this-link linking gets a little old after a while.

Bloggers aren't, for the most part, journalists. Most of us are ideologues looking for new memes, and your story provided one dandy meme fershure.

Posted by The Wege | March 1, 2006 1:35 PM

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//Bloggers aren't, for the most part, journalists

This is a whole 'nother thread, of course but maybe by traditional standards they're not. But Paul Revere was a silversmith; you know what I mean?

This story is an interesting one even internally here because we're essentially sharing a story as it's being written. At the same time, it's a story from the blogs and MSM cannot possibly get ahead of a story once it's on the blogs and this frustrates them greatly and presents a tremendous challenge to MSM.

I think having this develop over several days would make traditional journalists quite uncomfortable, indeed.

Good. We need to be uncomfortable.

Posted by Bob Collins | March 1, 2006 1:44 PM

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