They know what you read and where you shop, what kind of work you do and who you count as friends

Politico reports:

CHICAGO — On the sixth floor of a sleek office building here, more than 150 techies are quietly peeling back the layers of your life. They know what you read and where you shop, what kind of work you do and who you count as friends. They also know who your mother voted for in the last election.

The depth and breadth of the Obama campaign’s 2012 digital operation — from data mining to online organizing — reaches so far beyond anything politics has ever seen, experts maintain, that it could impact the outcome of a close presidential election. It makes the president’s much-heralded 2008 social media juggernaut — which raised half billion dollars and revolutionized politics — look like cavemen with stone tablets.

Obama’s data advantage

How long has this been going on?

Ace of Spades was talking about a Washington Post article on 3/8/2006:

Apparently it's okay to data-mine to determine Americans' likely political preferences so they can be targeted for mailings, but it's a gross breach of the Constitution to use the same techniques to find likely terrorists...

Check out this succinct history of Data Mining from Doug Alexander at the University of Texas which starts with Data Collection in the 1960's:

Chart (scroll down): The Evolution of Data Mining

May the best data-miner win.