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CATHERINE HERRIDGE, FOX NEWS CHIEF INTELLIGENCE CORRESPONDENT (voice- over): With scandals that leave many Americans questioning whether it’s open season on their personal data , publicly available reporting suggests ties between Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, and the Obama White House.

During the 2012 campaign, the Obama team harness big data to build virtual profiles of voters who could be swayed to support the incumbent. That team who mustered the big data skill set is now operating under a different name with financial support from Schmidt. One watchdog group says the potential for data mining on political opponents is there.

JUSTIN BROOKMAN, CTR FOR DEMOCRACY & TECHNOLOGY: They can decide we want to target union members, we want to target the Tea Party members, we want to target whoever we want. You know, they can take the information they buy (ph) from one data broker, combine it with another.

HERRIDGE: According to its own website, civis (ph) analytics was born in a large backroom of the Obama 2012 re-election headquarters. The key investor is Schmidt, according to a May “Business Week” report also posted on the company’s website, quote, “Schmidt thought enough of the team that when the campaign ended, he put up several million dollars to keep its core together.”

Fox’s Peter Boyer investigated the role of big data in the 2012 election.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So, what was the cave?

CAROL DAVIDSEN, FMR OBAMA 2012 CAMPAIGN STRATEGIST: The cave is where we put the analysts.

HERRIDGE: Carol Carol Davidsen worked for the Obama campaign as director of integration and media targeting.

DAVIDSEN: The hard-core analysts were in that room for multiple reasons. We were able to get the data from our vendors, injects (ph) data into the system, and then, at the same time, pair that data to the border file data .

HERRIDGE: Sasha Issenberg, author of the “Victory Lab,” wrote about the Obama campaign’s success with big data .

SASHA ISSENBERG, “THE VICTORY LAB” AUTHOR: These are basically like drug trials for politics, pharmaceutical trials, where the voters are the guinea pigs.

HERRIDGE: The same “Business Week” article says civis leadership (ph) expects, quote, “The company to work for democratic candidates and only Democrats next year.” The article also reports, quote, “On election night, he was in our boiler room in Chicago.”

JIM HARPER, CATO INSTITUTE: If a business leader in Silicon Valley wants to start a political company, I don’t see much wrong with that. It’s if a handover of data from the company goes to a political operation or to the government going to the government is the most concerning.

HERRIDGE: A Google Spokesperson told Fox that the investment and civis (ph) analytics is a personal investment by Schmidt and not Google, adding that Google does not share or sell data sets to civis .

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HERRIDGE (on-camera): Ask whether their big data company would work with the range of classes (ph), spokesperson for civis analytic said they’re interested in working with companies, non-profits, as well as democratic and independent campaigns. Asked about the workforce, we were told many works on the Obama campaigns, but none of the current employees at civis analytics has worked at Google — Chris.

http://www.redstate.com/2013/05/30/google-chairman-bankrolls-tech-shop-exclusively-for-democrats/

Google Chairman Bankrolls Tech Shop Exclusively for Democrats

By: Ben Howe (Diary) | May 30th, 2013

I’ve written previously about how embedded Google, Inc., is with the Democratic Party and the Obamasphere in particular.

I was told by many that it was the stuff of tin-foil hats to believe that Google was in the tank for Democrats. They’re just working with clients after all! Why, Romney and Republicans could’ve just as easily worked with them! This isn’t partisan!

Well, now, this is just in from Bloomberg/Businessweek: Google Chairman Eric Schmidt, one of Obama’s biggest boosters, is bankrolling a new for-profit endeavor being run by former Obama tech staffers that will be working exclusively for Democrats, as well as some corporate clients, in future.

(more at link)