Is data mining to better poll prospects legal?

Seshadri Chari, former editor of RSS weekly Organiser and a regular BJP face on the TV debates, finds nothing wrong in political parties banking on use of the data mining brought into focus this week by Law and Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad.

While Congress and BJP are blaming each other for engaging those involved in the Facebook data theft for the purpose in the elections in India, Chari says, "Legally speaking, no political party can be prevented from using any data mining technique to better its prospects in elections."

He says, "While trading of data can be termed as normal business of ''material and information collected with consent,'' little do we realise that we are willingly handing over our personal data to the service provider... If one of the many websites now trades information about us, remember, we have given it blanket permission to do so. What is worse still is that there is no way to undo this damage."

Chari explains that data mining is basically an elaborate process of collecting and storing large quantities of information about people, their likes and dislikes, preferences and views on various issues concerning day-to-day life. The process involves analysing data, enquiring into its concealed patterns using intricate algorithms, and categorising this information into easily usable tools for those engaged in decision-making in business and other strategic areas of operation.

With politics becoming one of the biggest commercial enterprises ever known to human beings, he says it is little wonder that politicians made a beeline to data mining white-collar workers all over the globe. One such company, Cambridge Analytica, is believed to have created a database of almost one-fourth of US voters, thereby providing valuable insights into their likes and dislikes, and more importantly, their voting preferences.