Presidential Campaigns 'All About The Data' This Year

With what's called microtargeting of voters, the Obama campaign is making its much-heralded 2008 digital campaign look prehistoric.

By harvesting information from public sources, Facebook and campaign websites and emails, Obama's digital staff knows supporters' friends, shopping preferences, and interests and they can crunch all that data and target you with specific digital ads and fundraising pitches targeted exactly to win your vote and your money.

Propublica reporter Lois Beckett writes that it's not clear what the Obama campaign will do with all of this information once the campaign is over, but it reserves the right to share it with others and supporters can't completely erase themselves from their database.