What a stench … the cesspool opens up. Politics of dirty tricks, honey traps, fake news, false allegations, involve ex-spies … do I recall Fusion GPS hired by Republicans to attack candidate Donald Trump during the primaries. The “hot” items of the “investigation” combined with the dodgy Steele dossier was bought by the Democrats. How stupid can one get.
Cambridge Analytica exited the Brexit campaign to enter US politics in Austin Texas under the banner of Robert Mercer, Breitbart and Steve Bannon. What a talent, I feel the uneasiness of Tricky Dicky turning in his grave. What a potential of social media, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram … all of them to destroy democracy … oh no, according to the Democats it’s Russia we should fear … FAKE, FAKE
Propaganda from all sides in the MSM, how will the young ones cope when the fair and truthful reports are few and far in between?
Cambridge Analytica boasts of dirty tricks to swing elections | The Guardian |
Bosses tell undercover reporters how honey traps, spies and fake news can be used to help clients
The company at the centre of the Facebook data breach boasted of using honey traps, fake news campaigns and operations with ex-spies to swing election campaigns around the world, a new investigation reveals.
Executives from Cambridge Analytica spoke to undercover reporters from Channel 4 News about the dark arts used by the company to help clients, which included entrapping rival candidates in fake bribery stings and hiring prostitutes to seduce them.
In one exchange, the company chief executive, Alexander Nix, is recorded telling reporters: “It sounds a dreadful thing to say, but these are things that don’t necessarily need to be true as long as they’re believed.”
More below the fold …
The company, and Nix, are under pressure from politicians in the US and the UK to explain how it handled the data and what role the information played in its campaigns, if any.
Cambridge Analytica has sold itself as the ultimate hi-tech consultant, winning votes by using data to pinpoint target groups and design messages that will appeal powerfully to their interests, although it denies using Facebook information in its work.
But in the undercover investigation by Channel 4 News, in association with the Observer, executives claimed to offer a much darker range of services.
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Another option, Nix suggested, would be to create a sex scandal. “Send some girls around to the candidate’s house, we have lots of history of things,” he told the reporter. “We could bring some Ukrainians in on holiday with us, you know what I’m saying.”He said these were hypothetical scenarios, but suggested his ideas were based on precedent. “Please don’t pay too much attention to what I’m saying, because I’m just giving you examples of what can be done, what has been done.”
Any work may have stayed out of the spotlight partly because Cambridge Analytica works hard to cover traces of its operations, Nix said, using a shifting network of names and front groups.
“We’re used to operating through different vehicles, in the shadows, and I look forward to building a very long-term and secretive relationship with you,” Nix told the source in a first phone call.
Cambridge Analytica sometimes contracts under a different name, so that there are no records of its involvement, Turnbull said. That does not only protect the company, but also makes its work more efficient, he is recorded saying.
“It has to happen without anyone thinking it’s propaganda, because the moment you think `that’s propaganda’ the next question is: `Who’s put that out?'”
No 10 ‘very concerned’ over Facebook data breach by Cambridge Analytica
Downing Street has expressed its concern about the Facebook data breach involving the analytics company that worked with Donald Trump’s campaign team and that affected tens of millions of people.
No 10 weighed in on the row as almost $20bn (£14bn) was wiped off the social network company’s market cap in the first few minutes of trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange, where Facebook opened down more than 3%. By midday, the company’s share price losses had multiplied to more than $40bn, making the day its worst in more than five years.
Theresa May’s spokesman said she backed an investigation by the information commissioner, which was prompted by a whistleblower who told the Observer how Cambridge Analytica had harvested millions of Facebook profiles to influence voters through “psychographic” targeting.
In the US, a state attorney general has called for investigations, greater accountability and regulation, while the head of the parliamentary committee in the UK investigating fake news accused Cambridge Analytica and Facebook of misleading MPs, with the secretary of state for digital, culture, media and sport warning of an end to the “wild west” of technology firms.
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Cambridge Analytica said: “In 2014 we received Facebook data and derivatives of Facebook data from another company, GSR, that we engaged in good faith to legally supply data for research. After it subsequently became known that GSR had broken its contract with Cambridge Analytica because it had not adhered to data protection regulation, Cambridge Analytica deleted all the Facebook data and derivatives, in cooperation with Facebook.
See also my previous diary – Election of Trump: Cambridge, Aleksandr Kogan .
An earlier diary … Bigger than Putin.
