While the pundits are looking Eastward towards Russia, the real culprits of Brexit and Trump’s blitzkrieg are going South.

Cambridge Analytica to close down after Facebook data scandal | NBC News |

In Wednesday’s statement, the company said that the deluge of media reports on its data acquisition were “unfounded accusations,” and claimed it was being “vilified for activities that are not only legal, but also widely accepted as a standard component of online advertising.”

In a report by Gizmodo’s Melanie Ehrenkranz, who broke the story, SCL chairman Julian Wheatland said the decision to shutter the firm came after damage to the company’s reputation stemming from its data collection scandal, which led the firm to bleed clients.

More below the fold …

Cambridge Analytica has deep ties to the Trump campaign and White House. Former Trump White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, who also served as the chief executive of Trump’s election campaign, helped launch Cambridge Analytica. Republican billionaire Robert Mercer and his daughter, Rebekah, were Cambridge Analytica’s primary source of funding [NYT]. The Mercers were simultaneously the founders and primary donors to Make America Number 1, a super PAC run by Bannon and Kellyanne Conway, before the two joined the Trump campaign.

Rebekah Mercer and her sister Jennifer joined the board of a new data gathering company called Emerdata on March 16, but it is unclear what their roles will be.  

○ Meet The Man Behind Cambridge Analytica, Who Made Trump President

The bandwagon rolls on under a new disguise …

○ Cambridge Analytica 2.0 Linked to Erik Prince

Leaked: Cambridge Analytica’s blueprint for Trump victory | The Guardian |

The blueprint for how Cambridge Analytica claimed to have won the White House for Donald Trump by using Google, Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube is revealed for the first time in an internal company document obtained by the Guardian.

The 27-page presentation was produced by the Cambridge Analytica officials who worked most closely on Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

A former employee explained to the Guardian how it details the techniques used by the Trump campaign to micro-target US voters with carefully tailored messages about the Republican nominee across digital channels.

Intensive survey research, data modelling and performance-optimising algorithms were used to target 10,000 different ads to different audiences in the months leading up to the election. The ads were viewed billions of times, according to the presentation.

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Intensive survey research, data modelling and performance-optimising algorithms were used to target 10,000 different ads to different audiences in the months leading up to the election. The ads were viewed billions of times, according to the presentation.

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None of the techniques described in the document are illegal. However, the scandal over Cambridge Analytica’s acquisition of data from more than 50 million Facebook users is lifting the lid on an industry that has learned how to closely track the online footprint and daily lives of US voters.

Despite the advances made in data-led political campaigning, these were techniques that, according to the presentation, Trump did not have access to when Cambridge Analytica joined his campaign in early June 2016.

One of the first things Cambridge Analytica did, she said, was work with data supplied by the party’s data trust and other data acquired through an initiative called Project Alamo.

The document contains very little information about how the campaign used Facebook data. One page, however, suggests Cambridge Analytica was able to constantly monitor the effectiveness of its messaging on different types of voters, giving the company and the campaign constant feedback about levels of engagement on platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Snapchat.

○ Democracy Unplugged, Regime Change and Project Alamo

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