Australian political parties are using voter email addresses to find matching social media profiles then combining them with the country's compulsory electoral roll data, illustrating how privacy scandals have done little to slow the march of data-driven campaigning.

While the use of data and public profiles from Facebook, Twitter and other social media for political campaigning has become widespread globally, Australia is one of the most open countries in the world to online information gathering by political operatives.

"Most Australians have little idea about how many data points organisations like political parties, let alone Facebook, have on each of them," said Glenn Kefford, a political scientist at Macquarie University who has written extensively about data-driven campaigning.

"They would be shocked and probably disgusted."

Australia, which goes to the polls on May 18, is one of the few Western democracies where voting is compulsory.

What's more, Australian political parties and candidates are exempt from privacy laws covering access to the electoral roll data - full names and addresses - that all 16 million voters are required to provide.

In the United States, just 60 per cent of adults are registered to vote, limiting the number of voters whose electoral roll information can be dragged into a data profile.

Last year, Europe introduced sweeping laws requiring political organisations to get specific permission before scraping a person's data from another website.

Australia's government, however, rejected calls for a review of its exemption from privacy laws.

The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner said it has been asking the government for over a decade to overturn that exemption and "continues to hold the view that this exemption should be re-examined in light of the changing digital environment and data collection practices".

Click match

Branches of the left-leaning Labor and Greens parties, the conservative Liberals and the rural-focused Nationals have all hired consultants to run the U.S.-owned campaigning software NationBuilder, a Reuters analysis of party websites shows.

Privately held NationBuilder, which counted several senior Facebook personnel among its early investors and markets itself as politically neutral, launched its social media "match" function in 2013 but stopped automatically offering it in Europe in 2018 due to new digital privacy laws.

NationBuilder's vice president of strategic partnerships, Toni Cowan-Brown, said the company was looking at spreading its "model of privacy by default and consent" beyond Europe but it had not stopped offering its "match" function by default in Australia.

"It's a very delicate line between innovation and privacy," Cowan-Brown said. "The way customers are innovating is very cool and we don't want to stifle that."

In 2018, amid a political data harvesting scandal involving now-defunct British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, Facebook made it more difficult for third-party apps like NationBuilder to harvest some user data, although it still lets them import people's profile photo and name based on an email address match.

NationBuilder is trying to regain access to Facebook event RSVPs, the only data it uses that is affected by the new policy, said Cowan-Brown. Unlike Cambridge Analytica, the firm does not pull data on a person's emotions or habits, Cowan-Brown added.

NationBuilder customers can also collect the names of people who "like" or comment on their Facebook posts.

Facebook declined to comment on interactions with NationBuilder specifically but said third-party apps could no longer ask for access to personal information such as religious or political views, relationship status, education or work history.

The company has also limited access to information in its groups, pages and events features, a spokeswoman said.

With Twitter, NationBuilder customers can under certain circumstances import a person's written profile bio, location, personal website, as well as their name and photo and tweets when a customer is mentioned, Cowan-Brown said.

Twitter said its data reflected information that users choose to share publicly.

"Our API (application programming interface) provides broad access to public Twitter data that users have chosen to share with the world," Twitter said in an emailed response to Reuters.

Marketers dream

The major parties also prospect for email addresses with social media "petitions" about hot-button topics, some collecting emails addresses without a person typing it, thanks to other software linked to the person's Facebook account.

"It is a wet dream for marketers," said Curtis Harrison, a NationBuilder consultant who has worked on Australian political campaigns for five years.

"You start off with an email address, and once you get that email address you get a name. And once you get a name you get a phone number. Once you get that phone number you get more and more and more."

Attorney-General Christian Porter said in an email the exemption was "designed to encourage freedom of political communication and support the operation of the electoral and political process". He did not respond to a question about whether politicians had access to too much voter data.

A spokesman for the Labor Party's shadow attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, said the political exemption was "put in place to facilitate political engagement, which is a foundation of our system of representative democracy".

When the Australian Labor Party posted on Facebook a video of two of its leaders bantering on a campaign bus last month, artist Jaymie Faber was one of 1,600 people who clicked "like", automatically sending the party's NationBuilder database her name and Facebook photo.

From there, the party could manually enter her public profile information, which included her employment situation and home city, to match with electoral roll information.

"While I never intended for the information to be collected into a database, I also accept that I had the knowledge that it could be a possibility," Faber told Reuters.

"I don't believe that it should be allowed or legal to be collected in such a matter but unfortunately it is."

Australian political parties are using voter email addresses to find matching social media profiles then combining them with the country's compulsory electoral roll data, illustrating how privacy scandals have done little to slow the march of data-driven campaigning.

Australian political parties are using voter email addresses to find matching social media profiles then combining them with the country's compulsory electoral roll data, illustrating how privacy scandals have done little to slow the march of data-driven campaigning. While the use of data and public profiles from Facebook, Twitter and other social media for political campaigning has become widespread globally, Australia is one of the most open countries in the world to online information gathering by political operatives. "Most Australians have little idea about how many data points organisations like political parties, let alone Facebook, have on each of them," said Glenn Kefford, a political scientist at Macquarie University who has written extensively about data-driven campaigning. "They would be shocked and probably disgusted." Australia, which goes to the polls on May 18, is one of the few Western democracies where voting is compulsory. What's more, Australian political parties and candidates are exempt from privacy laws covering access to the electoral roll data - full names and addresses - that all 16 million voters are required to provide. In the United States, just 60 per cent of adults are registered to vote, limiting the number of voters whose electoral roll information can be dragged into a data profile. Last year, Europe introduced sweeping laws requiring political organisations to get specific permission before scraping a person's data from another website. Australia's government, however, rejected calls for a review of its exemption from privacy laws. The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner said it has been asking the government for over a decade to overturn that exemption and "continues to hold the view that this exemption should be re-examined in light of the changing digital environment and data collection practices". Click match Branches of the left-leaning Labor and Greens parties, the conservative Liberals and the rural-focused Nationals have all hired consultants to run the U.S.-owned campaigning software NationBuilder, a Reuters analysis of party websites shows. Privately held NationBuilder, which counted several senior Facebook personnel among its early investors and markets itself as politically neutral, launched its social media "match" function in 2013 but stopped automatically offering it in Europe in 2018 due to new digital privacy laws. NationBuilder's vice president of strategic partnerships, Toni Cowan-Brown, said the company was looking at spreading its "model of privacy by default and consent" beyond Europe but it had not stopped offering its "match" function by default in Australia. "It's a very delicate line between innovation and privacy," Cowan-Brown said. "The way customers are innovating is very cool and we don't want to stifle that." In 2018, amid a political data harvesting scandal involving now-defunct British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, Facebook made it more difficult for third-party apps like NationBuilder to harvest some user data, although it still lets them import people's profile photo and name based on an email address match. NationBuilder is trying to regain access to Facebook event RSVPs, the only data it uses that is affected by the new policy, said Cowan-Brown. Unlike Cambridge Analytica, the firm does not pull data on a person's emotions or habits, Cowan-Brown added. NationBuilder customers can also collect the names of people who "like" or comment on their Facebook posts. Facebook declined to comment on interactions with NationBuilder specifically but said third-party apps could no longer ask for access to personal information such as religious or political views, relationship status, education or work history. The company has also limited access to information in its groups, pages and events features, a spokeswoman said. With Twitter, NationBuilder customers can under certain circumstances import a person's written profile bio, location, personal website, as well as their name and photo and tweets when a customer is mentioned, Cowan-Brown said. Twitter said its data reflected information that users choose to share publicly. "Our API (application programming interface) provides broad access to public Twitter data that users have chosen to share with the world," Twitter said in an emailed response to Reuters. Marketers dream The major parties also prospect for email addresses with social media "petitions" about hot-button topics, some collecting emails addresses without a person typing it, thanks to other software linked to the person's Facebook account. "It is a wet dream for marketers," said Curtis Harrison, a NationBuilder consultant who has worked on Australian political campaigns for five years. "You start off with an email address, and once you get that email address you get a name. And once you get a name you get a phone number. Once you get that phone number you get more and more and more." Attorney-General Christian Porter said in an email the exemption was "designed to encourage freedom of political communication and support the operation of the electoral and political process". He did not respond to a question about whether politicians had access to too much voter data. A spokesman for the Labor Party's shadow attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, said the political exemption was "put in place to facilitate political engagement, which is a foundation of our system of representative democracy". When the Australian Labor Party posted on Facebook a video of two of its leaders bantering on a campaign bus last month, artist Jaymie Faber was one of 1,600 people who clicked "like", automatically sending the party's NationBuilder database her name and Facebook photo. From there, the party could manually enter her public profile information, which included her employment situation and home city, to match with electoral roll information. "While I never intended for the information to be collected into a database, I also accept that I had the knowledge that it could be a possibility," Faber told Reuters. "I don't believe that it should be allowed or legal to be collected in such a matter but unfortunately it is."

After data scandals, Australia faces an election under heavy profiling

The two men vying to lead Australia for the next three years faced off over the economy and plummeting trust in politicians in a testy first televised election debate Monday.

As polls showed the race to the May 18 vote tightening, embattled conservative Prime Minister Scott Morrison and frontrunner Bill Shorten of the centre-left opposition Labor party traded sometimes personal barbs as they debated the country's future.

Morrison -- who faces electoral defeat less than a year after coming to office in a party coup -- painted the opposition leader as a poor custodian of this G20 economy.

"Who do you trust to manage a $2 trillion economy?" asked Morrison, framing the debate as a choice between the Liberal party's continued stewardship and costly policy changes.

While Australia's economy has grown solidly for more than two decades, storm clouds are gathering and there is unease at the rising cost of living and vast income disparities.&nbsp;

Tapping into that sense of growing malaise, Shorten accused the Liberal government of looking after "the top end of town".

"There is a mood for change in Australia," he said, promising to improve incomes and put "middle and working class people back on top".

"Everything is going up in Australia except people's wages," he said.

Morrison accused the Labor leader of not being honest with voters about the cost of new emissions reduction targets and other policy changes.

For months the polls have shown the opposition headed for a sizeable victory, but ahead of the debate a Newspoll survey showed Labor's lead narrowing to two percentage points, well within the margin of error.

The campaign so far has been dominated by shrill attacks and hyperbolic accusations of impending doom if one side or the other wins.

That tension was on full display, with cries of "rubbish" and frequent interruptions from the candidates as moderators in Perth tried to keep the debate on track.&nbsp;

When asked to say what they admired about the other man, the pair could offer only tepid endorsements about public service in parliament and on a few specific issues.

Controversial tycoon

Monday's poll showed the election will be closely fought, but also underscored the complexities of Australia's election system -- which asks voters to rank parties by preferences and encourages voting pacts between major and minor parties.

The poll for the first time counted support for controversial mining mogul Clive Palmer, who has bought his way to five per cent of the vote with months of ad spending worth tens of millions of dollars.

His populist "Make Australia Great" message can be seen on billboards and TV screens across the country, echoing the campaign waged successfully by Donald Trump in his 2016 run for the White House.

The Newspoll predicted that 60 per cent of Palmer's supporters would preference Morrison's Liberal party, boosting its showing relative to Labor.

Morrison tried to distance himself from Palmer but insisted Labor and the Greens were a bigger risk to the Australian economy than the controversial millionaire.

The two men vying to lead Australia for the next three years faced off over the economy and plummeting trust in politicians in a testy first televised election debate Monday.

The two men vying to lead Australia for the next three years faced off over the economy and plummeting trust in politicians in a testy first televised election debate Monday. As polls showed the race to the May 18 vote tightening, embattled conservative Prime Minister Scott Morrison and frontrunner Bill Shorten of the centre-left opposition Labor party traded sometimes personal barbs as they debated the country's future. Morrison -- who faces electoral defeat less than a year after coming to office in a party coup -- painted the opposition leader as a poor custodian of this G20 economy. "Who do you trust to manage a $2 trillion economy?" asked Morrison, framing the debate as a choice between the Liberal party's continued stewardship and costly policy changes. While Australia's economy has grown solidly for more than two decades, storm clouds are gathering and there is unease at the rising cost of living and vast income disparities. Tapping into that sense of growing malaise, Shorten accused the Liberal government of looking after "the top end of town". "There is a mood for change in Australia," he said, promising to improve incomes and put "middle and working class people back on top". "Everything is going up in Australia except people's wages," he said. Morrison accused the Labor leader of not being honest with voters about the cost of new emissions reduction targets and other policy changes. For months the polls have shown the opposition headed for a sizeable victory, but ahead of the debate a Newspoll survey showed Labor's lead narrowing to two percentage points, well within the margin of error. The campaign so far has been dominated by shrill attacks and hyperbolic accusations of impending doom if one side or the other wins. That tension was on full display, with cries of "rubbish" and frequent interruptions from the candidates as moderators in Perth tried to keep the debate on track. When asked to say what they admired about the other man, the pair could offer only tepid endorsements about public service in parliament and on a few specific issues. Controversial tycoon Monday's poll showed the election will be closely fought, but also underscored the complexities of Australia's election system -- which asks voters to rank parties by preferences and encourages voting pacts between major and minor parties. The poll for the first time counted support for controversial mining mogul Clive Palmer, who has bought his way to five per cent of the vote with months of ad spending worth tens of millions of dollars. His populist "Make Australia Great" message can be seen on billboards and TV screens across the country, echoing the campaign waged successfully by Donald Trump in his 2016 run for the White House. The Newspoll predicted that 60 per cent of Palmer's supporters would preference Morrison's Liberal party, boosting its showing relative to Labor. Morrison tried to distance himself from Palmer but insisted Labor and the Greens were a bigger risk to the Australian economy than the controversial millionaire.

Australia holds feisty first election debate as race tightens

Australians go to the polls in a general election on May 18, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Thursday (April 11), firing the starting gun on a campaign expected to be fought over taxation, climate change and inequality.

Australia sets May 18 election with campaign expected on taxes, climate change

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After data scandals, Australia faces an election under heavy profiling

Australia holds feisty first election debate as race tightens

Australia sets May 18 election with campaign expected on taxes, climate change