Obama's election win tied
to data-driven flying squads

President Obama's 2012 election campaign benefited greatly from information obtained by data miners on his staff, accordng to a Daily Princetonian report today.

Ethan Roeder, Obama's data chief in both presidential runs, told of deploying vast data collection methods to mine public records, the newspaper said. The big data approach helped the Obama campaign identify voters who might be approached and persuaded to back Obama, Roeder is reported to have told a lecture audience on Thursday.

The Princetonian report
http://dailyprincetonian.com/news/2013/11/data-department-targets-voters-helped-communicate-obamas-2012-campaign-message/

Roeder said his team garnered polling data, consumer data and public voter files for their operation, the paper said. The IT specialist denied reports that his team had collected browsing histories and identified pornography watchers, the paper said.

Roeder's talk was sponsored by the university's Center for Information Technology.

Comment:
We see that Obama was doubtless favorably impressed by the power of "big data." In fact, the White House has boosted an intiative supporting "big data" research. Did these successes influence his decisions to permit the NSA to go pell mell for all the data it could get? Possibly.