The Viagra vote: How campaign research is pushing the bounds of privacy

But privacy activists point out that most voters have no idea that political campaigns are digging around in their personal data for grocery receipts and club memberships: Most would be shocked, they say, if they learned about the ever-fattening dossiers that their local and national candidates are preparing about them — a smorgasbord of information collected when people make online and in-store purchases, answer surveys, sign up for loyalty cards, post on social media or just generally surf the web.

“There’s almost nothing that they won’t know about you — especially if you use credit or debit cards most of the time,” said Pam Dixon, founder of the World Privacy Forum.

Ira Rubinstein, a senior fellow at the New York University School of Law, recently published a 76-page report concluding political campaigns have “the largest unregulated assemblage of personal data in contemporary American life.” But while he’d like to see greater transparency, including mandatory disclosure of all political micro-targeting practices, he’s doubtful anything will get done about it until something goes haywire.