Political contributions have long been a matter of public record in the U.S. But there’s “public” and there’s “very public.” With the Internet, they are now very public.

In Chapter 2 of Blown to Bits we mention a couple of sources for campaign contribution data. But the Huffington Post’s is just outstanding. Click on the link, type in your Zip code, and you immediately see a neighborhood map decorated with little blue donkeys and red elephants, which you can click on and mouse over to reveal your neighbors’ names, who they’ve contributed to, and how much. (Or, if you live in my neighborhood, blue donkeys with no red elephants.)

It’s very invasive, even though in principle there’s no more data disclosure than there was in the days when you had to go to the Town Hall and ask to see the files.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 4th, 2008 at 9:20 pm and is filed under Privacy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.