Both debates are more than a little bit late, and a good deal of the pontificating anyway misses much of the point. The founder of Facebook seems to be admitting that there was some mistake or misfeasance, whether by Facebook itself, or by Cambridge Analytica, a company specialising in mining personal data for political purposes. Cambridge used data to help the Trump organisation focus propaganda to about 50 million Americans.

A good deal of the expressed public concern, even by regulators such as privacy commissioners and consumer commissioners, seems to express surprise that this sort of thing could go on, or does.

But, as any number of more sober commentators, perhaps most effectively Bernard Keane of Crikey.com has pointed out, what has been happening falls right in the middle of the business model being used by Google, Facebook, and any number of other internet and social media enterprises to make money.

These companies are worth billions, and make billions, precisely because they mine information from what their "customers" – clients, members, users, consumers – voluntarily tell them. They then sell this information to people wanting access to what they find out. They have almost destroyed the old business model of conventional "old media" – newspapers, radio and television—because the market thinks they are better at delivering buyers.

These companies provide platforms by which ordinary consumers can communicate with each other, ask questions, buy goods and services, and express opinions.

The companies monitor the traffic generated, including the networks of contacts that individual consumers have, for what it says about what sorts of goods they are interested in, what they like and do not like, and how they interact with each other. Those who specialise in this sort of analysis, and the algorithms they devise, can tell quite a lot from a pattern of Facebook entries, from the types of friends one has, the other sites visited, the inquiries and searches made for particular types of information, the sorts of clickbait clicked, and the types of quizzes entered.

Analysis about the sort of person you are can be very sophisticated. But much is common sense, given clues we leave about, wittingly or otherwise. As the debate about permitting police and intelligence agencies to monitor computer use to combat terrorism and crime demonstrated, one can make deductions from far more than openly expressed opinions or statements of fact. One can also make deductions from the meta-data (information about sites visited, friendship and contact networks, the sorts of sites from which people obtain news and information, or opinion and analysis, and the types of media consumed). In a politically polarised society such as the US, where many in one side in politics scarcely know, let alone mix with, or share information sources with people of the other side, mere information about political orientation may not be especially valuable. But information about which types of issues are mobilising voters, about trigger points, about the intensity with which opinions are held, and about whether voters are minded to vote is much more useful.

Some don't seem to realise that they have freely given the information being used to identify them as potential travellers on an airline, purchasers of a type of car, or customers for particular brands of deodorant. No doubt they think everyone gets much the same sort of product promotion. They may dimly recall that their joining a particular medium, or using a particular type of search engine, involved ticking a box which acknowledged that such information could be used. But they have very little idea of how sophisticated the use of such data might be, and how skilfully advertisers could use it to target particular types of customer, and to focus different types of customers with messages catering to particular types of need, emotions or attitudes to the product.

That genie has long been out of the bottle. We are at the point where anyone who expressed surprise could only be described as naïve, or of having been asleep for a long time.

Some might not vehemently object to the cunning of internet advertisers in pushing travel products, intimate apparel or soap. But they suddenly become uneasy when they realise that it is being used to shape political opinions, or to surveil and categorise people by their beliefs, instincts and prejudices. Somehow, it is alright to do this in commerce, or, perhaps, to detect any terrorists. But, they fear, it is wrong or unsporting to be collecting such information about civilians in general, or to be using it to shape opinions or votes. Or, if it must occur, it should be subject to greater controls, and far greater accountability.

Certainly everyone has been tut-tutting about the boasting of Cambridge Analytica executives that their analysis helped elect Donald Trump, by delivering critical votes in critical places through advertisements carefully designed to cater for particular emotions, beliefs and feelings. Advertisements they were able to devise by some sort of Facebook data-mining which, according to the reportage and commentaries, has been somewhat improper, illicit or beyond whatever Facebook had licensed.

It has been said that Cambridge Analytica has been looking for Australian customers willing to pay for access to its algorithms. These might not, of course, be from a political party. They could be iron ore miners seeking to kill off a proposed resource rent tax, a business group seeking lower company tax rates, or a pensioner lobby seeking greater benefits. They might even be academics wondering about what factors combined to set opinions, beliefs and emotions on a particular issue, and how "hot" it was in determining political allegiances. Cambridge was able to parlay its information from an initially small group of people extensively studied into much wider conclusions from drawing in their networks and "friends," into an ultimate 50 million Facebook users. Perhaps an academic might want to study, via Facebook analysis, how opinions were formed or altered by discussions with family, friends, neighbours, and informal and formal sources of information, including mainstream media and social media. [Security officers monitoring subversive ideas, and cops investigating criminal conspiracies, have much the same sorts of interest, if about different motivators.]

The truth is, of course, that major political parties have been doing close surveillance of individual Australian voters for quite some time. Cambridge is probably exaggerating its role and its success, but such surveillance works.

The big parties use proprietary software to add to basic information provided by electoral rolls. They get extra demographic information, broken into small zones, from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Other information about education, employment status, employment sector, approximate income, household assets, and the make-up of the family, are fairly readily obtainable in this day and age.

This can be supplemented with information, and contact details, gathered by members and party officials, tame telephone polling at which guileless people (thinking themselves to be responding anonymously) answer questions about their previous and future voting intentions, the issues they care about, and their feelings about political leaders. More is garnered from participation in public events, from party door-knocking, and responses to invitations for participation in different types of event. They probably amalgamate with it information and intelligence gathered from associated entities, such as trade unions, and from their own campaigns. There is also some readily accessible information (obtainable, inter alia from politicians' electoral offices without misusing access to the data files of government agencies) about the receipt of benefits, grants and subsidies. No good or bad turn done to a voter goes unrecorded.

To this is added very sophisticated polling data gathered by experienced and very professional pollsters employed by the various parties. These have long been practised at shaping messages, and road-testing the forms they take, as well as in devising different forms of the message for particular audiences. The messages sent out, even in conventional media or in mail outs, robo-phonecalls, or blitzes in particular areas, are strategised for what is known about the audience for particular messages, and for the capacity of particular messages to settle or unsettle voting intentions. Sometimes the messages come in stages, by which voters are gently detached from previously firmly held opinions to a more neutral position, than lured into a new view more favourable to a particularly party.

The end-up point is that the average MP knows more about you than ASIO, the cops, or Woolworths. And any piece of knowledge she or he can exploit, will be exploited. Not necessarily successfully, of course, just as we don't buy all of the goodies on offer to us. Many of us are so inured to a barrage of messages that nothing penetrates.

We do not know how much the parties are using data gleaned from Facebook or other social media, in major part because the parties simply will not say. They have already exempted themselves from any disclosure obligations under the Privacy Act. They are under no general duty – as others in government or commerce are – to use information only for the purposes for which it was obtained and for which permission was given. Although almost all of the work of political parties is funded by the taxpayer – whether through general grants or pooled allowances paid to parliamentarians – the parties are not public bodies. Nor are they subject to the scrutiny or inspection of the privacy commissioner, or anyone else with a function or duty to investigate abuse. The law of Australia is advancing to the point where one can expect the discovery of some sort of constitutional "right" to privacy almost any day now. But we are not there yet. And when we do get close, one can expect that the big political machines will yet again exempt themselves from its operation, with much the same bipartisan spirit with which they agree on political salary increases.

I should be very surprised, frankly, if much of the data obtained from Cambridge algorithms, or the type of data mining being used on social media, was much more sophisticated than that already in use here. Australia has compulsory voting; many of the democracies with which we compare ourselves have voluntary voting, and struggle to get 50 or 60 per cent participating in an election. Overseas, as much, or more, energy is focused on motivating people to bestir themselves to vote as in urging them to vote for a particular party or candidate. Here, most people will vote, and messages are tailored accordingly. There is still an intensive focus on getting messages that work, and on neutralising messages from the other side.

But, I suspect, the operatives here are generally surer about the motivators which will win best, or lose worst. That is not to say that political messages are more sophisticated, or less focused on the emotional or the visceral. Indeed I think that the quality of the sloganising, dumbed down monolithic messages, and appeals to the heart and head of voters deteriorates by the election. And mass communications – and perhaps the much-dreaded "mainstream media" is in any event alert for nuance, different statements to different audiences, and different stresses and priorities in different regions, to blunt some of the efforts to press each individual's vote in an individual way.

Is it all too late? Do Australians care that Facebook has helped make them an open book? Did its utility, or vanity, blind us to the risks? Did panic mongering about the threats of terrorism, or refugees, drug syndicates or paedophiles soften us up for routine invasion of our most intimate secrets, relationships, and thoughts?

In any event, would it be impossible now to impose controls and limits, or to hold potential abusers to account, because of the way that globalisation and communications have rendered irrelevant the national borders supposedly being protected by Peter Dutton?

These have been questions canvassed last year by Professor Genevieve Bell, of the ANU, in her Boyer lectures, and by many other observers.

My own view is that the public has as yet no urgent view about what has been given away and how vulnerable it is. We could retreat, but not back to where we were before the computer, before the internet and before the genius of platforms such as Facebook.

But I cannot see the present crop of major party politicians convincingly whipping up much indignation, or creating the circumstances by which better balances are set. This is one for consumer action, and going over the heads of politicians. Perhaps through social media, or Twitter?

Jack Waterford is a former editor of The Canberra Times.

Jwaterfordcanberra@gmail.com