Where is the reporting on Hawkfish, Bloomberg’s Cambridge Analytica!?
And if there isn’t any ongoing and substantive reporting on Hawkfish because it remains ultra-secretive what does that say about the voter surveillance operation that undergirds the Bloomberg campaign for plutocracy?
ICYMI - the only reporter I know of who has been covering Hawkfish, quite possibly the most consequential political technology and voter profiling shop that you’ve never heard of.
Hawkfish is better positioned to remain secretive than Cambridge Analytica was. At least CA/SCL was subject to UK Data Protect Act of 1998 and was criminally prosecuted for ignoring orders to disclose voter data. Hawkfish has ZERO obligations to disclose anything about our data.
Hawkfish LLC has no website, so there’s not even a privacy policy to examine. California residents can’t even look up if the company is honoring the CCPA and respecting data requests and opt-outs. Madness. #DataRights
If you’re a registered voter you better believe you have a Hawkfish profile. But you’re not allowed to see it even if you knew to ask for it. This why Sen Feinstein floated the Voter Privacy Act to address this asymmetry of knowledge and power that’s baked into voter analytics.
I’m not alleging mass data abuse here by Hawkfish. There’s no way to know if it’s even occurring. I’m pointing out this company’s secrecy-by-design that is inherently harmful to our democratic process. That’s the enduring lesson of Cambridge Analytica.
Americans should realize that Hawkfish would be illegal in the EU. Why do we tolerate it then? #DataRights
