Serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis. © James Conner.

 

27 October 2014

Mailergate linked to former UK Prime Minister advisor

Head on over to Montana Cowgirl this morning for the latest on the Mailergate experiment (if it was an experiment) that meddled in Montana’s supreme court elections, and that may have broken several laws. The experiment’s principal investigator, Stanford professor Adam Bonica, is a co-founder of Crowdpac, a Silicon Valley start-up that that has some pretty nifty technology and that hopes to make money by taking eight percent of the political contributions it generates. One of Bonica’s fellow co-founders is Steve Hilton, a former high level aide to United Kingdom Prime Minister David Cameron now teaching at Stanford. Camerson’s a Tory and not a politician who represents labor and common folk.

Was the Mailergate experiment a proof of concept test to validate Crowdpac’s technology and impress future clients and investors? Is that why voters in Montana were selected as involuntary guinea pigs? That’s a distinct possibility.

After visiting Cowgirl’s blog, spend some time at the Wikipedia’s page on unethical experimentation on humans in the United States. Should Mailergate be added to the long list of experiments on people who were conscripted as test subjects without their knowledge or consent? I think so.

Social scientists have no right to tamper with elections to satisfy their curiosity. Experiments like Mailergate’s are morally indefensible, and ought to earn their authors extended stays in secure facilities surrounded by razor wire, guard towers, and near-rabid dogs.