All political parties in France have long had databases containing the names and contact details of their supporters or members. But these are not the only sources of digital information available to presidential candidates for intensive online campaigning.
Analyzing the digital data left behind by citizens surfing the web has long offered politicians around the world the opportunity to fine-tune their online electoral strategy. This digital targeting enabled, for example, in 2008 Barack Obama to achieve victory by using the resources of the huge database of the American firm Catalist, which collected sensitive data concerning ethnic origin, religious affiliation , or the favorite food brands of American voters. After analyzing this data, it was possible to assess the possibilities of a voter switching to the camp of the candidate for president of the United States at the time.
Information controlled by the CNIL
In France, as in all countries of the European Union, the use of this type of file for electoral purposes is prohibited. The National Commission for Computing and Liberties (CNIL) prohibits the constitution and scrupulously supervises the use by the teams of candidates of this so-called sensitive information. Officially, only databases containing the names and contact details of supporters or members of a political party would be authorized. In reality, it’s a whole different story! The sources of information available to candidates for campaigning in the digital arena are actually more diverse. Anonymised data from socio-demographic studies, the results of opinion polls, the history of ballots cast in polling stations during previous local and national elections, are used by all campaign teams.
Since this information is not nominative, are voters protected against political hype by electronic means? Maybe not ! A recent American and European study has shown that all the systems that have been put in place to protect our digital privacy are easily circumvented. In particular with the development of software which is capable today of cross-checking and classifying by criteria the information of an individual among thousands of others.
Digital voter targeting, an activity in its own right
In addition, political parties use other more controversial databases, which are neither public, nor local, nor even anonymized. They are sold to the highest bidder by individual data trading professionals. This activity is completely legal in France if it appears in campaign accounts, recalls the CNIL, on the condition, however, of clearly indicating to Internet users the origin of this data, specifying whether it is a indirect collection on social networkspurchases of databases or the acquisition from an operator of a list of telephone contacts.
But whether they are distributed by email or SMS, campaign teams have an obligation to provide Internet users with the technical means to unsubscribe from these electoral canvassing messages at any time.
