Ted Cruz is a critic of excessive government data collection, but ironically has been very aggressive about gathering personal information for his campaign. Data came partially from Facebook and other public online sources. Cruz’s campaign also gleans data from their own smartphone app that keeps supporters up to date while giving the campaign the ability to scrape their phones for additional contacts. Cambridge Analytica in Massachusetts was hired to gather and analyze data for the Cruz campaign. Cambridge’s parent company, called the SCL Group, has been paid over $750,000 by the Cruz campaign according to Federal Election Commission Records.

Data mining is very common practice now in a digital age. I have no problem with using public data and analytics, but I think it is pretty hypocritical of Ted Cruz to preach data privacy and then do the opposite in his campaign. If he think the government and other entities should gather online data, then he shouldn’t rely on it for his own campaign.