Shaun Dakin, creator of the political do not call list, StopPoliticalCalls.org had an interesting op-ed published in the Washington Post recently.
While John McCain and Barack Obama have plenty to fight about, there is at least one thing that they agree on: Voters who interact with their campaigns have no privacy rights.
What does this mean?
It’s simple: Voters do not have the right to opt out of unwanted campaign communications, either online or off-line. Voters don’t have the right to decide who will contact them or how they will be contacted by the presidential campaigns.
This invasion of the voters’ privacy is bipartisan. Republicans do it. Democrats do it. Heck, even Libertarians do it.
This week, I received an e-mail from the Obama campaign that had the subject line: “Your Neighbors.” Intrigued, I opened the message and learned that the campaign was launching a sophisticated program called “Neighbor-to-Neighbor” that makes “it easier than ever to connect with potential supporters in your community by phone or door-to-door.” It continues: “Neighbor-to-Neighbor gives you the option to make phone calls or knock on doors — the choice is yours.”
The choice may be yours, but what about your neighbors, who may not want you to bother them at their homes?
[continue reading, “A Privacy Shield Against the Campaigns”]
I’ve read lots of hysterical fear-mongering about StopPoliticalCalls.org. This is an opt-out program for people who are tired of being badgered. It does not mean that you opt out of reading or information gathering or learning, it means that you opt out of being harassed dozens of times a day for months on end by robo-calls.
That’s not a desire to cede one’s Civil Liberties or opt out of the political process in any way. In fact, I believe that one of the rights we can all agree to protect is the right to be left the fuck alone. Think I’m crabby now? You should have been around last year when we were getting an average of 10 of these calls a day. I would have had our phone number changed by now if it wasn’t for StopPoliticalCalls so yeah, I’m a fan.