If you’re a swing state voter who thought AmericaPAC was helping you register to vote, think again. The Elon Musk-backed SuperPAC seems more interested in your personal info than your civic participation. It appears to be misleading visitors in order to collect all sorts of data, specifically on swing state voters, according to an incredible CNBC report.

I tend to think that the discourse around all three of the following things is overblown: the impact of SuperPACs on elections, concerns about “dark patterns,” and how much the owner of a social media platform can influence an election. But Elon Musk sure seems to be working overtime to change my mind on all three things.

Remember how Musk took over Twitter because he thought its leadership was managing the company in too political a manner? Indeed, while he was in the process of trying to buy the site, one of the things he said is that the site needed to be “politically neutral” to “deserve public trust.”

Since taking over Twitter, renaming it to X, and reinstating the worst people in the world, Elon continues to fall deeper and deeper into MAGA-fueled fantasyland, leading to his official endorsement of Donald Trump and turning ExTwitter into an all-day, every-day promotional campaign for the former President.

Around the same time that he endorsed Trump, it was announced that Musk would be donating to a SuperPAC that was created to support Trump. Some of the details have been disputed, but Musk admits he created a SuperPAC to support Trump.

“Now what I have done is that I have created a Pac or Super Pac or whatever you want to call it,” he said. “It is called the America Pac.”

Now, the whole thing with SuperPACs is that they’re supposed to be independent from the campaign. This is a convenient lie for everyone, so it’s rarely enforced. But, earlier this year, the Federal Election Commission said that the independence is really only around advertising. It said they can coordinate on canvassing.

That’s a very big deal, because these days canvassing and “get out the vote” campaigns appear to be the keys to winning elections.

And that brings us to the CNBC article, which notes that AmericaPAC has been running sketchy ads that then push users to a site where it claims it will help register them to vote. But how it handles users depends on where they live:

The website says it will help the viewer register to vote. But once a user clicks “Register to Vote,” the experience he or she will have can be very different, depending on where they live.

If a user lives in a state that is not considered competitive in the presidential election, like California or Wyoming for example, they’ll be prompted to enter their email addresses and ZIP code and then directed quickly to a voter registration page for their state, or back to the original sign-up section.

But for users who enter a ZIP code that indicates they live in a battleground state, like Pennsylvania or Georgia, the process is very different.

Rather than be directed to their state’s voter registration page, they instead are directed to a highly detailed personal information form, prompted to enter their address, cellphone number and age.

If they agree to submit all that, the system still does not steer them to a voter registration page. Instead, it shows them a “thank you” page.

So that person who wanted help registering to vote? In the end, they got no help at all registering. But they did hand over priceless personal data to a political operation.

This is… not normal. Yes, political campaigns do all sorts of things to collect data on potential voters, but that’s not supposed to involve actively misleading them. And targeting the enhanced data collection in swing states suggests that the PAC could seek to focus on activating likely Trump voters, while decreasing turnout of likely Harris voters.

Now, I’ve pointed out before that people freak out too much over claims of everything being “election interference,” but it kinda does seem that collecting a ton of personal data on someone, telling them that you’re helping to register them to vote, and then not actually registering them to vote… is a form of fraud, doesn’t it?

The report notes that people who end up on this page are not given any indication that the site they’re on is designed to support Trump. Instead, it’s made to look like a generic form to help you register to vote.

The PAC’s website offers no indication one way or another what the group’s political leaning is. But in its federal filings, the group discloses that all of its work is designed to either help Trump or hurt his opponent.

When you put all of this together, it’s fairly concerning. The PAC is not upfront with visitors, and then is potentially fraudulently suggesting that it’s helping them register to vote, when it’s actually just collecting a ton of valuable information on people in important swing states (while not actually registering them to vote). Combine that with the fact that the SuperPAC has been engaging in canvassing activities (where it can coordinate with the campaign) and the whole thing seems quite sketchy:

“What makes America PAC more unique: it is a billionaire-backed super PAC focused on door-to-door canvassing, which it can conduct in coordination with a presidential campaign,” Fischer said.

No wonder Elon is so quick to insist that others are engaged in attempts at election interference.

The government and private companies spy on us.

My former employee, Naomi Brockwell, has become a privacy specialist. She advises people on how to protect their privacy.

In my new video, she tells me I should delete most of my apps on my phone.

I push back. I like that Google knows where I am and can recommend a "restaurant near me." I like that my Shell app lets me buy gas (almost) without getting out of the car.

I don't like that government gathers information about me via my phone, but so far, so what?

Brockwell tells me I'm being dumb because I don't know which government will get that data in the future.

Looking at my phone, she tells me, "You've given location permission, microphone permission. You have so many apps!"

She says I should delete most of them, starting with Google Chrome.

"This is a terrible app for privacy. Google Chrome is notorious for collecting every single thing that they can about you…[and] broadcasting that to thousands of people…auctioning off your eyeballs. It's not just advertisers collecting this information. Thousands of shell companies, shady companies of data brokers also collect it and in turn sell it."

Instead of Google, she recommends using a browser called Brave. It's just as good, she says, but it doesn't collect all the information that Chrome does. It's slightly faster, too, because it doesn't slow down to load ads.

Then she says, "Delete Google Maps."

"But I need Google Maps!"

"You don't." She replies, "You have an iPhone. You have Apple Maps…. Apple is better when it comes to privacy…. Apple at least tries to anonymize your data."

Instead of Gmail, she recommends more private alternatives, like Proton Mail or Tuta.

"There are many others." She points out, "The difference between them is that every email going into your inbox for Gmail is being analyzed, scanned, it's being added to a profile about you."

But I don't care. Nothing beats Google's convenience. It remembers my credit cards and passwords. It fills things in automatically. I tried Brave browser but, after a week, switched back to Google. I like that Google knows me.

Brockwell says that I could import my credit cards and passwords to Brave and autofill there, too.

"I do understand the trade-off," she adds. "But email is so personal. It's private correspondence about everything in your life. I think we should use companies that don't read our emails. Using those services is also a vote for privacy, giving a market signal that we think privacy is important. That's the only way we're going to get more privacy."

She also warns that even apps like WhatsApp, which I thought were private, aren't as private as we think.

"WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted and better than standard SMS. But it collects a lot of data about you and shares it with its parent company, Facebook. It's nowhere near as private as an app like Signal."

She notices my Shell app and suggests I delete it.

Opening the app's "privacy nutrition label," something I never bother reading, she points out that I give Shell "your purchase history, your contact information, physical address, email address, your name, phone number, your product interaction, purchase history, search history, user ID, product interaction, crash data, performance data, precise location, course location."

The list goes on. No wonder I don't read it.

She says, "The first step before downloading an app, take a look at their permissions, see what information they're collecting."

I'm just not going to bother.

But she did convince me to delete some apps, pointing out that if I want the app later, I can always reinstall it.

"We think that we need an app for every interaction we do with a business. We don't realize what we give up as a result."

"They already have all my data. What's the point of going private now?" I ask.

"Privacy comes down to choice," She replies. "It's not that I want everything that I do to remain private. It's that I deserve to have the right to selectively reveal to the world what I want them to see. Currently, that's not the world."

COPYRIGHT 2023 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.

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