Big Brother may be watching, if you vote

The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. … There was, of course, no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. … You had to live – did live, from habit that became instinct – in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and except in darkness, every moment scrutinized.”

Those words come from George Orwell’s novel “1984,” which painted a grim portrait of a future society run by a dictator named “Big Brother,” whose government ruthlessly spied on citizens and brainwashed them out of their humanity.

If you’re a conspiracy nut, consider this. Al Gore was first elected to the U.S. Senate in “1984.” Gore claims to have invented the Internet, which is pretty close to Orwell’s “telescreen” that receives and transmits data. Will Al Gore become America’s first Big Brother?

Actually, Gore is better than most on the issue of citizen privacy. The New York Times reported that Gore declined to purchase software from an Internet company called Aristotle International that has compiled Big Brother-type personal files on the nation’s 150 million voters. George Bush, John McCain, Joe Lieberman, Pat Buchanan, Dan Quayle, Steve Forbes, however, are Aristotle customers, as are more than 200 House of Representatives and 45 U.S. Senate candidates, plus 46 state party organizations. Both of Maine’s Senate candidates, Republican incumbent Olympia Snowe and Democratic challenger Mark Lawrence, have done business with Aristotle, although their aides insisted they have not used the cutting-edge technology to poke into the personal lives of Maine voters.

Jay MacAniff, Aristotle’s spokesman, would not talk publicly about the company’s customers or data-gathering services. The Times says those techniques are eye-popping. Aristotle’s data was compiled by matching names culled from public records such as voting and automobile registration lists to financial data on individuals purchased from vendors. According to the Times, Aristotle customers can look at a voter and determine his or her ethnic background, income, employer, size of house, model and year of automobile, and more than 20 other factors. If a citizen contributes to a political candidate that individual’s name is tagged with a “fat cat” designation. When he or she logs on to the Internet the contributor’s computer screen could be filled with America On Line-type pop-up ads asking for more money.

Consider this fact. Less than 50 percent of those Americans eligible to vote cast ballots in the last presidential election. Watch that number go south when it becomes known that politicians at all levels of government now have the technology to dig into the private lives of those brave-hearted citizens who do vote.

Privately, an Aristotle official insisted his firm has been in the forefront of the privacy protection debate. He made the point that while the Times story raised the possibility of voters being bombarded by candidate-pop-up ads while they surfed the Web, there was no evidence such practices have been employed. A McCain spokesman told the Times that Aristotle was extremely useful in compiling a targeted e-mail alert to the senator’s supporters in Virginia, enabling McCain to gather enough signatures to gain ballot status.

Dave Lackey, Snowe’s campaign spokesman, said Snowe is “using Aristotle to help maintain our [supporter] lists and generate the financial reports required by federal law.” He reiterated, “We do not make use of their Internet tracking software.”

Chris Pistilli, Lawrence’s spokesman, said his boss switched to another vendor to handle the chore of meeting campaign-reporting requirements. “We never bought their [voter] names system,” he said. The Campaign Study Group, a grass roots organization cited by the Times, reported that Snowe has made $9,501 in payments to Aristotle. Lawrence’s total was $2,312.

Aristotle notwithstanding, both Maine Senate campaigns have become savvier about the Internet. Last month, the conservative Web site “As Maine Goes” (asmainegoes.com) put up a poll on the Senate race. Surprisingly, Lawrence bolted to a big lead. That would suggest the GOP base still was angry at Snowe for her vote against Bill Clinton’s impeachment. When that scenario was mentioned in a political column, AMG editor Scott Fish said Snowe mouse-clickers “came in hot and heavy and buried” Lawrence. Fish said he was sent a copy of an e-mail sent to one Snowe supporter urging others to log onto AMG “and help support Olympia in this poll.”

Lackey and Pistilli insisted that Aristotle played no roll in the AMG poll tussle.

John S. Day is a columnist for the Bangor Daily News who is based in Washington, D.C. His e-mail address is zanadume@aol.com.