>And disheartening that people continue to gravitate to a political party that proudly announces desires to abuse this data.

The same party that promotes distrust in the government (that is justified by the abuse the same party does when in power).

Amazing, innit.

You're playing party politics. That's the risk you take: that the party has goals beyond your (dareisay naive) utopian ideals for civic engagement.

Parties are not universally evil, when I malign them in this way it is in full acknowlegment that organization is the nearly singular path to "effect on target" as regards society-scale politics. What I mean is the party per se becomes a superorganism that has always as its first priority self-preservation (a la homeostasis) and it is very worth remembering this when subsuming oneself into their structure.