NZ Election 2020 – Tracking

NZ Election 2020 – Tracking

With Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announcing the date of New Zealand’s election as Saturday, September 19, I thought it might be a good idea to see how the current Party’s perform on the subject of digital privacy/rights by having a look at the trackers attached to their websites. This isn’t an in depth look but is really more a reminder to people that although ‘such and such party’ says it wants more privacy it may well at the same time be tracking every user to it’s website and/or selling or buying that information in order to target New Zealanders in the Election.

To do so, I will be using the Electronic Frontier Foundations Privacy Badger. This will tell me what third party services are attached to the websites that it considers trackers.

The Party’s

There are currently 14 registered political parties in New Zealand;

• ACT New Zealand
• Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party
• MANA Movement
• Māori Party
• New Conservative
• New Zealand First Party
• New Zealand Labour Party
• NZ Outdoors Party
• Sustainable New Zealand Party
• The Greens, The Green Party of Aotearoa/New Zealand
• The New Zealand Democratic Party for Social Credit
• The New Zealand National Party
• The Opportunities Party (TOP)
• Vision New Zealand

Of which only 11 have websites with the Mana Party and Vision New Zealand not having them and the NZ Outdoors Party website appearing to be broken. So lets go through the list.

ACT New Zealand

Privacy Badger found 4 potential trackers on www.act.org.nz:

• ajax.googleapis.com
• ssl.google-analytics.com
• apis.google.com
• platform.twitter.com

Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party

Privacy Badger found 4 potential trackers on www.act.org.nz:

• ajax.googleapis.com
• ssl.google-analytics.com
• apis.google.com
• platform.twitter.com

Māori Party

Privacy Badger found 4 potential trackers on www.maoriparty.org:

• ajax.googleapis.com
• www.google-analytics.com
• apis.google.com
• platform.twitter.com

Also, the Maori Party’s site has a bad HTTPS certificate and then redirects to an unencrypted connection.

New Conservative

Privacy Badger found 6 potential trackers on www.newconservative.org.nz:

• ajax.cloudflare.com
• www.google-analytics.com
• apps.wix.com
• ding.wix.com
• frog.wix.com
• wts.one

New Zealand First Party

Privacy Badger found 3 potential trackers on www.nzfirst.org.nz:

• ajax.googleapis.com
• apis.google.com
• platform.twitter.com

New Zealand Labour Party

Privacy Badger found 4 potential trackers on www.labour.org.nz:

• ajax.googleapis.com
• www.google-analytics.com
• apis.google.com
• platform.twitter.com

Sustainable New Zealand Party

Privacy Badger found 2 potential trackers on sustainablenz.org.nz:

• pixel.wp.com
• stats.wp.com

The Greens, The Green Party of Aotearoa/New Zealand

Privacy Badger found 3 potential trackers on archive.greens.org.nz:

• cdnjs.cloudflare.com
• www.google-analytics.com
• cdn.syndication.twimg.com

It is likely, the greens.org.nz is redirecting to archive.greens.org.nz that there is another version of the site coming up with alternate tracking.

The New Zealand Democratic Party for Social Credit

Privacy Badger found 6 potential trackers on www.socialcredit.nz:

• overbalance.visitor-analytics.io
• ding.wix.com
• frog.wix.com
• progallery.wix.com
• www.wix.com
• wixlabs-hcounter.appspot.com

The New Zealand National Party

Privacy Badger found 8 potential trackers on www.national.org.nz:

• s7.addthis.com
• ajax.googleapis.com
• ssl.google-analytics.com
• apis.google.com
• amplify.outbrain.com
• s3.amazonaws.com
• cdn.taboola.com
• platform.twitter.com

The Opportunities Party (TOP)

Privacy Badger found 5 potential trackers on www.top.org.nz:

• ajax.googleapis.com
• apis.google.com
• platform.twitter.com
• p.typekit.net
• use.typekit.net

So, why is this a bad thing?

This is not good because companies like Google sell your data for profit or sometimes in the case of government just to cover costs. In the case of government it is even worse because emails have revealed an apparent close working relationship with America’s intelligence agencies. This same company has been providing services to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Military in America. Basically, the complaint here would be that the use of Google services opens New Zealand Election 2020 up to interference (or possible interference) by the Trump government.

That is just one example and not an unrealistic one.

Another is just the use of that information by the New Zealand political parties. Tying together your information with all the other information about you allows political parties to either ignore you as they are already certain of your vote or target you with specific advertising to alter it. An example would be if you own a house then Labour is going to collapse house prices, if you don’t then the house prices are going up because of immigration. For Maori it might be that it is all the fault of colonialism and for Pakeha it’s those Maori getting rich off the treaty again.

All these example are fairly broad though. What if you could target male, home owning, upper middle class, swing voters between the age of 60 and 65 (basically pakeha) with targeted advertising about Labour collapsing house prices? Then you have something going. Those people are getting ready to retire and can’t afford to lose money. They will vote for you, or whoever makes them scared enough.

That’s bullshit.