Targeting vs Spamming

I had to read an article for another class by Jacob Weisberg titled 'A Banner Year' (http://slate.msn.com/id/68180/)but ironically the information in the article was beneficial for today's posting. The article spoke of the Internet impact on the 2000 Presidential Election. The argument posed by the article is that are we going to far in using the Internet to get political viewpoints across. The argument is that just because a voter selects to get information from a political candidate doesn't mean they want to be bombarded by unsolicited emails from other sources that the campaigns might give way too.

Campaigns argue this improves on the technique of targeting and its allows for a message to be so precise to their audience that it is the most effective way of engaging the voter. Others are stating that this method is a form of permission-based marketing and that these people want to be solicited.

But others argue that this is a privacy issue and that in the future this could lead to infraction upon a subscribers right i.e. the possibility of spamming. Thus far nothing like this has happened but the argument that I read was based on a lot of what ifs and this could happen even though it hasn't happened yet.