At first glance I was pretty excited about this new AP (application) that has been promoted on several credible websites including those which are considered to be "conservative." Countable allows users to discover bills moving through the legislation process and provides a brief description of what a vote for or against it may represent in terms of outcomes and considerations. It also gives members vote buttons to send an indicator of your preference to your representative. It seems like a quick easy way to let your voice be heard but once I stopped to consider the implications of how APs work and dug into who started this site the excitement faded.
To use this AP you must sign in with Facebook. For starters, one of my biggest beefs with Facebook is the way the APs work to spy on the user's friends without the consent of their friends to do so. The first thing you agree to in order to use an AP is to allow it access to your profile, list of friends and other information. It is potentially more harmful than the merely annoying notifications that friends of AP users see such as YOU just popped all of your bubbles in level five while playing Bubble World. That they see the notification means the AP has access to their feed and public information whether they want it to or not. Before signing up for any AP on Facebook, please stop to consider the ramifications subjected on your friends. One that collects your personal preferences for voting on bills might be especially concerning.
While it seems bad enough that APs collect information on your friends, don't forget that their primary purpose is to collect information on you. Many who use Facebook use fake identities and one might think they are somewhat protected by an alternate identity in terms of what an AP may be able to determine. Outside of what fellow users may be able to figure out behind the scenes this is not the case. Consider what is already known about you due to your unique IP address by Facebook and practically every site you visit. This information may include your address, phone number, kids' names, where they go to school, what you have purchased online and much more. Even the most innocent looking sites where you merely stop by to look at a page may have tracking that will report this much about you to them. I can't fathom the amount of information Facebook, one of the world premiere info-gathering sites knows about its members.
The Countable AP needs to know your location in order to serve your votes to your representatives. With phones and hand-helds becoming the fastest growing computer usage, Facebook also may be reporting your whereabouts depending on settings. Using Facebook to center the data through your account very clearly identifies exactly who you are including intimate details. You need to ask yourself, how much do you want any application to know about you and especially one that registers your preferences to vote on bills.
The next questions to be asked are: 1 Who owns/operates this site and application?, 2 What are they doing with the information they gather? and 3 How can it be used against you? If the owners are bipartisan do-gooders who are intensely dedicated to offering you the convenience of tracking bills and notifying your representatives for free, that would be an important difference to keep in mind than if they aren't. What I found indicated a highly skilled team with the kind of background that I am wary of. The links below this article include those that are about their Leadership Team.
For example according to Wikipedia - "Joe Trippi (born June 10, 1956) is a long-time American Democratic campaign worker and consultant. A mainstay in presidential politics, Trippi has worked on the presidential campaigns of Edward Kennedy, Walter Mondale, Gary Hart, Dick Gephardt, Jerry Brown and most recently John Edwards. Most notably, he served as campaign manager for presidential candidate and former Vermont governor Howard Dean."
Collecting and sharing/selling information is the most valuable primary business of most websites but in today's political climate there are possible dangers to also keep in mind. I believe many readers can easily imagine that a government capable of targeting oppositional groups through the IRS is capable of most anything as are the people who support the same ideology. Whether you call it marketing or propaganda, there is a lot of mind control to be potentially processed out of this information.
An interesting side note, currently when browsing to Countable's website, the top tab identifies the site as "Countable - Direct Democracy," which as most of us know or should know, is not the form of government that America was founded on due to the dangers of the system of mob rule. America is a Republic. What this means about them, I can't say but either they are promoting Democracy or ignorant of the type of government that we have.
I found the front page of the site to be a nice presentation of the bills upcoming as a source or reminder if you don't mind visiting in spite of the information they may collect, compile and analyze.
Bottom Line: As handy as it may be, I can't say that I plan to sign up anytime soon but others may not feel the same way and I would be interested to hear what you think about it.
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