Inside the World of Cambridge Analytica

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Re: Inside the World of Cambridge Analytica

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Mar 20, 2018 9:12 am

Cambridge Analytica = Nix= Mercer = Strategic Communication Laboratories

Stole the personal data from Facebook and is still in possession of the data of 50 million people.....what they did or didn't do with it is another matter......and they are STILL in possession of that STOLEN data


but later today we just might find out more about trump

Channel 4 announced they’re airing another undercover film today where Cambridge Analytica say they won the election for Donald Trump and describe how.

Polly Sigh

Staff claim Cambridge Analytica and the Mercers ignored US ban on foreigners working on elections & employed non-American citizens in apparent violation of federal law, despite receiving a legal warning about the risks.
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Cambridge Analytica Chief/Trump Data Guru asked Wikileaks Assange to help find Hillary’s 33K deleted emails
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https://twitter.com/dcpoll/status/975859633876324352


RepAdamSchiff and other House Intel Democrats say that Avi Berkowitz — who worked w/Kush & Parscale on the Trump digital op — may have been sent by Kush to meet with then- Russian ambassador Kislyak in December 2016

HPSCI Minority Report
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Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Inside the World of Cambridge Analytica

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Mar 20, 2018 9:27 am

Now there's a Facebook whistleblower. Data harvested not from tens of millions or users, but hundreds of millions....

'Utterly horrifying': ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine

Paul LewisLast modified on Tue 20 Mar 2018 08.47 EDT
Sandy Parakilas says numerous companies deployed these techniques – likely affecting hundreds of millions of users – and that Facebook looked the other way


Sandy Parakilas in San Francisco. ‘It has been painful watching. Because I know that they could have prevented it.’ Photograph: Robert Gumpert

Hundreds of millions of Facebook users are likely to have had their private information harvested by companies that exploited the same terms as the firm that collected data and passed it on to Cambridge Analytica, according to a new whistleblower.

Sandy Parakilas, the platform operations manager at Facebook responsible for policing data breaches by third-party software developers between 2011 and 2012, told the Guardian he warned senior executives at the company that its lax approach to data protection risked a major breach.

“My concerns were that all of the data that left Facebook servers to developers could not be monitored by Facebook, so we had no idea what developers were doing with the data,” he said.

Parakilas said Facebook had terms of service and settings that “people didn’t read or understand” and the company did not use its enforcement mechanisms, including audits of external developers, to ensure data was not being misused.

Parakilas, whose job it was to investigate data breaches by developers similar to the one later suspected of Global Science Research, which harvested tens of millions of Facebook profiles and provided the data to Cambridge Analytica, said the slew of recent disclosures had left him disappointed with his superiors for not heeding his warnings.

“It has been painful watching,” he said. “Because I know that they could have prevented it.”


Everything you need to know about the Cambridge Analytica exposé – video explainer
Asked what kind of control Facebook had over the data given to outside developers, he replied: “Zero. Absolutely none. Once the data left Facebook servers there was not any control, and there was no insight into what was going on.”

Parakilas said he “always assumed there was something of a black market” for Facebook data that had been passed to external developers. However, he said that when he told other executives the company should proactively “audit developers directly and see what’s going on with the data” he was discouraged from the approach.

He said one Facebook executive advised him against looking too deeply at how the data was being used, warning him: “Do you really want to see what you’ll find?” Parakilas said he interpreted the comment to mean that “Facebook was in a stronger legal position if it didn’t know about the abuse that was happening”.

He added: “They felt that it was better not to know. I found that utterly shocking and horrifying.”

Parakilas first went public with his concerns about privacy at Facebook four months ago, but his direct experience policing Facebook data given to third parties throws new light on revelations over how such data was obtained by Cambridge Analytica.

Facebook did not respond to a request for comment on the information supplied by Parakilas, but directed the Guardian to a November 2017 blogpost in which the company defended its data sharing practices, which it said had “significantly improved” over the last five years.

“While it’s fair to criticise how we enforced our developer policies more than five years ago, it’s untrue to suggest we didn’t or don’t care about privacy,” that statement said. “The facts tell a different story.”

‘A majority of Facebook users’

Parakilas, 38, who now works as a product manager for Uber, is particularly critical of Facebook’s previous policy of allowing developers to access the personal data of friends of people who used apps on the platform, without the knowledge or express consent of those friends.

That feature, called Friends Permission, was a boon to outside software developers who, from 2007 onwards, were given permission by Facebook to build quizzes and games – like the widely popular FarmVille – that were hosted on the platform.

The apps proliferated on Facebook in the years leading up to the company’s 2012 initial public offering, an era when most users were still accessing the platform via laptops and computers rather than smartphones.

Facebook took a 30% cut of payments made through apps, but in return enabled their creators to have access to Facebook user data.

Parakilas does not know how many companies sought Friends Permission data before such access was terminated around mid-2014. However, he said he believes tens or maybe even hundreds of thousands of developers may have done so.

It has been painful watching, because I know they could have prevented it
Parakilas estimates that “a majority of Facebook users” could have had their data harvested by app developers without their knowledge. The company now has stricter protocols around the degree of access third parties have to data.

Parakilas said that when he worked at Facebook it failed to take full advantage of its enforcement mechanisms, such as a clause that enables the social media giant to audit external developers who misuse its data.

Legal action against rogue developers or moves to ban them from Facebook were “extremely rare”, he said, adding: “In the time I was there, I didn’t see them conduct a single audit of a developer’s systems.”

Facebook announced on Monday that it had hired a digital forensics firm to conduct an audit of Cambridge Analytica. The decision comes more than two years after Facebook was made aware of the reported data breach.

During the time he was at Facebook, Parakilas said the company was keen to encourage more developers to build apps for its platform and “one of the main ways to get developers interested in building apps was through offering them access to this data”. Shortly after arriving at the company’s Silicon Valley headquarters he was told that any decision to ban an app required the personal approval of the chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, although the policy was later relaxed to make it easier to deal with rogue developers.

While the previous policy of giving developers access to Facebook users’ friends’ data was sanctioned in the small print in Facebook’s terms and conditions, and users could block such data sharing by changing their settings, Parakilas said he believed the policy was problematic.

“It was well understood in the company that that presented a risk,” he said. “Facebook was giving data of people who had not authorised the app themselves, and was relying on terms of service and settings that people didn’t read or understand.”

It was this feature that was exploited by Global Science Research, and the data provided to Cambridge Analytica in 2014. GSR was run by the Cambridge University psychologist Aleksandr Kogan, who built an app that was a personality test for Facebook users.

The test automatically downloaded the data of friends of people who took the quiz, ostensibly for academic purposes. Cambridge Analytica has denied knowing the data was obtained improperly and Kogan maintains he did nothing illegal and had a “close working relationship” with Facebook.

While Kogan’s app only attracted around 270,000 users (most of whom were paid to take the quiz), the company was then able to exploit the Friends Permission feature to quickly amass data pertaining to more than 50 million Facebook users.

“Kogan’s app was one of the very last to have access to friend permissions,” Parakilas said, adding that many other similar apps had been harvesting similar quantities of data for years for commercial purposes. Academic research from 2010, based on an analysis of 1,800 Facebooks apps, concluded that around 11% of third-party developers requested data belonging to friends of users.

If those figures were extrapolated, tens of thousands of apps, if not more, were likely to have systematically culled “private and personally identifiable” data belonging to hundreds of millions of users, Parakilas said.

The ease with which it was possible for anyone with relatively basic coding skills to create apps and start trawling for data was a particular concern, he added.

Parakilas said he was unsure why Facebook stopped allowing developers to access friends data around mid-2014, roughly two years after he left the company. However, he said he believed one reason may have been that Facebook executives were becoming aware that some of the largest apps were acquiring enormous troves of valuable data.

He recalled conversations with executives who were nervous about the commercial value of data being passed to other companies.

“They were worried that the large app developers were building their own social graphs, meaning they could see all the connections between these people,” he said. “They were worried that they were going to build their own social networks.”

‘They treated it like a PR exercise’

Parakilas said he lobbied internally at Facebook for “a more rigorous approach” to enforcing data protection, but was offered little support. His warnings included a PowerPoint presentation he said he delivered to senior executives in mid-2012 “that included a map of the vulnerabilities for user data on Facebook’s platform”.

“I included the protective measures that we had tried to put in place, where we were exposed, and the kinds of bad actors who might do malicious things with the data,” he said. “On the list of bad actors I included foreign state actors and data brokers.”

Frustrated at the lack of action, Parakilas left Facebook in late 2012. “I didn’t feel that the company treated my concerns seriously. I didn’t speak out publicly for years out of self-interest, to be frank.”

That changed, Parakilas said, when he heard the congressional testimony given by Facebook lawyers to Senate and House investigators in late 2017 about Russia’s attempt to sway the presidential election. “They treated it like a PR exercise,” he said. “They seemed to be entirely focused on limiting their liability and exposure rather than helping the country address a national security issue.”

It was at that point that Parakilas decided to go public with his concerns, writing an opinion article in the New York Times that said Facebook could not be trusted to regulate itself. Since then, Parakilas has become an adviser to the Center for Humane Technology, which is run by Tristan Harris, a former Google employee turned whistleblower on the industry.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/m ... are_btn_tw


Steve Bannon, trump's Campaign CEO and WH Chief Strategist, was VP of Cambridge Analytica, which is under an active search warrant at this very moment.

Cambridge Analytica is going up in flames, which means Parscale, Bannon, Mercer, Kushner, trump also are

this is firm Bannon was VP of. that as paid over $15 mn by trump campaign. what did Bannon, Kushner, Parscale know of violating FEC law?


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I have today written to @facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg calling on him to give oral evidence to @CommonsCMS following recent reports in @guardian and @nytimes

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Staff claim Cambridge Analytica ignored US ban on foreigners working on elections
In the 2014 midterm elections and the Trump campaign, firm was staffed mainly by young Britons and Canadians
Carole Cadwalladr and Emma Graham-Harrison
Sat 17 Mar 2018 18.00 EDT Last modified on Sun 18 Mar 2018 05.43 EDT

Cambridge Analytica worked on Donald Trump’s election campaign, despite having mainly non-US employees. Photograph: Leah Millis/Reuters
Cambridge Analytica employed non-American citizens to work on US election campaigns in apparent violation of federal law, despite receiving a legal warning about the risks.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/201 ... -political
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Inside the World of Cambridge Analytica

Postby Rory » Tue Mar 20, 2018 10:45 am

[quote="stillrobertpaulsen » Mon Mar 19, 2018 2:31 pm"][/quote]


The Narrative is "Russia hacked the election, and Trump committed Treason". Let's not beat around the Dubya. Let's not pretend that interfered, or meddled, or sought to gain influence, or any other weasel worded bs holds any water on the lizard brain level we are ultimately anchored to.

CA, blows that hypothesis out of the water. Unless there's some new spin The Kremlin, sent their best data analyst, Volodya "put in the vote for Trump on Nov 8th", or that Putin called them and begged them to do a stellar job this time, because he really wants Donnie to win, there's no link that Russia = Cambridge Analytica = hacked the election = improbably got Trump over the line. A Russian national worked for them! Bfd. Mercer liked Russia that one time! Give me a break.

It's horseshit. The Russia stuff was tenuous at best - a DNC op to deflect from their staggering incompetence in the general, an ass saving effort of gross recklessness that puts us closer to war footing with an angry atomic bear. This narrative in the media was instantly hijacked by the darkest, most sinister ghouls in the War Party. The same voices being signal boosted here, every fucking day for 18 months.

The DNC hacked the primaries - there's evidence aplenty to nail these fuckers for felonies for the rest of their adult lives and what are we talking about instead - the best we got with russia is Muller indicted 13 Ivans at a clickbait farm in Petrograd? Jesus fucking christ almighty.
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Re: Inside the World of Cambridge Analytica

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Mar 20, 2018 10:51 am

Vladeck, now a professor at Georgetown Law, said violations of the consent decree could carry a penalty of $40,000 per violation, meaning that if news reports that the data of 50 million people were shared proves true, the company’s possible exposure runs into the trillions of dollars.


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Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Inside the World of Cambridge Analytica

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Mar 20, 2018 4:01 pm

Cambridge Analytica created the “Defeat Crooked Hilary” attack ads, that were funded by the Make America Number 1 super-PAC. Coordination between an official election campaign & any outside groups is ILLEGAL under US election law.


How Cambridge Analytica created "Crooked Hillary" & cheated US election laws

Cambridge Analytica: Undercover Secrets of Trump's Data Firm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_cont ... y-9iciNF1A

Channel 4 News
Published on Mar 20, 2018

An investigation by Channel 4 News has revealed how Cambridge Analytica claims it ran ‘all’ of President Trump’s digital campaign - and may have broken election law. Executives were secretly filmed saying they leave ‘no paper trail’.



BREAKING: Cambridge Analytica suspends CEO, Alexander Nix

And was immediately hired by the Trump 2020 campaign. :P jk

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How Cambridge Analytica created "Crooked Hillary" & cheated US election laws

Cambridge Analytica execs boast of role in getting Trump elected

Execs from firm at heart of Facebook data breach say they used ‘unattributable and untrackable’ ads, according to undercover expose

Carole CadwalladrLast modified on Tue 20 Mar 2018 15.37 EDT
Senior executives from the firm at the heart of Facebook’s data breach boasted of playing a key role in bringing Donald Trump to power and said they used “unattributable and untrackable” advertising to support their clients in elections, according to an undercover expose.

In secretly recorded conversations, Cambridge Analytica’s CEO, Alexander Nix, claimed he had met Trump “many times”, while another senior member of staff said the firm was behind the “defeat crooked Hillary” advertising campaign.

“We just put information into the bloodstream of the internet and then watch it grow, give it a little push every now and again over time to watch it take shape,” said the executive. “And so this stuff infiltrates the online community, but with no branding, so it’s unattributable, untrackable.”

Caught on camera by an undercover team from Channel 4 News, Nix was also dismissive of Democrats on the House intelligence committee, who had questioned him over Russian meddling in the 2016 campaign.

Senior managers then appeared to suggest that in their work for US clients, there was planned division of work between official campaigns and unaffiliated “political action groups”.

That could be considered coordination – which is not allowed under US election law. The firm has denied any wrongdoing.

Cambridge Analytica said it had a firewall policy in place, signed by all staff and strictly enforced.

The disclosures are the latest to hit Cambridge Analytica, which has been under mounting pressure since Sunday, when the Observer reported the company had unauthorised access to tens of millions of Facebook profiles – and used them to build a political targeting system.

In Tuesday’s second instalment of an undercover investigation by Channel 4 News in association with the Observer, Nix said he had a close working relationship with Trump and claimed Cambridge Analytica was pivotal to his successful campaign.

“We did all the research, all the data, all the analytics, all the targeting. We ran all the digital campaign, the digital campaign, the television campaign and our data informed all the strategy,” he told reporters who were posing as potential clients from Sri Lanka.

The company’s head of data, Alex Tayler, added: “When you think about the fact that Donald Trump lost the popular vote by 3m votes but won the electoral college vote that’s down to the data and the research.

“You did your rallies in the right locations, you moved more people out in those key swing states on election day. That’s how he won the election.”

Another executive, Mark Turnbull, managing director of Cambridge Analytica’s political division, was recorded saying: “He won by 40,000 votes in three states. The margins were tiny.”

Turnbull took credit for one of the most well known and controversial campaigns of the last presidential campaign, organised by the political action group Make America Number 1.

“The brand was ‘Defeat Crooked Hillary’. You’ll remember this of course?” he told the undercover reporter. “The zeros, the OO of crooked were a pair of handcuffs ... We made hundreds of different kinds of creative, and we put it online.”

Turnbull said the company sometimes used “proxy organisations”, including charities and activist groups, to help disseminate the messages – and keep the company’s involvement in the background.

When the undercover reporter expressed worries that American authorities might seize on details of a dirty campaign, Nix said the US had no jurisdiction over Cambridge Analytica, even though the company is American and is registered in Delaware.

“I’m absolutely convinced that they have no jurisdiction,” he told the purported client. “So if US authorities came asking for information, they would simply refuse to collaborate. “We’ll say: none of your business.”

Turnbull added. “We don’t talk about our clients.”

Speaking to Channel 4 News before seeing the undercover film, Hillary Clinton said: “There was a new kind of campaign that was being run on the other side, that nobody had ever faced before. Because it wasn’t just all about me. It was about how to suppress voters who were inclined to vote for me … when you have a massive propaganda effort to prevent people from thinking straight, because they’re being flooded with false information.”

In the report, Nix also implied that it was possible to mislead authorities by omission, discussing his appearance in front of the House intelligence committee, for its inquiry into possible Russian election meddling.

The Republicans only asked three questions, which took five minutes, he told the reporter. And while the Democrats spent two hours questioning him, he claimed they were so far out of their depths that he didn’t mind responding.

“We have no secrets. They’re politicians, they’re not technical. They don’t understand how it works,” he said, when asked about whether he was forced to testify.

He went on to describe how political candidates are manipulated.

“They don’t understand because the candidate never, is never involved. He’s told what to do by the campaign team.” The reporter asks if that means the candidate is just a puppet, and Nix replies simply: “Always.”

In another exchange, Tayler describes an apparently planned division of spending on the campaign trail, with the candidate organising “positive” messages, with negative attack ads left to the super Pacs, which may engage in unlimited political spending independently of the campaigns.

“As part of it, sometimes you have to separate it from the political campaign itself ... campaigns are normally subject to limits about how much money they can raise. Whereas outside groups can raise an unlimited amount.”

“So the campaign will use their finite resources for things like persuasion and mobilisation and then they leave the ‘air war’ they call it, like the negative attack ads to other affiliated groups.”

This raises questions over whether Cambridge Analytica blurred the boundaries between official campaign groups, which have spending limits, and unaffiliated political action groups or super Pacs.

The latter can spend as much as they want but must not coordinate with the candidate they support.

The Campaign Legal Center has accused Cambridge Analytica over allegations of illegal coordination of this nature.

It has filed evidence with the FEC alleging that the super Pac Make America Number 1 made illegal contributions to Trump’s campaign, “engaging in unlawful coordinated spending by using the common vendor Cambridge Analytica”.

Cambridge Analytica said it had never claimed to have won the election for Donald Trump.

“This is patently absurd. We are proud of the work we did on that campaign, and have spoken in many public forums about what we consider to be our contribution to the campaign.”

It said there was no evidence of coordination between the Make America Number 1 super Pac and the Trump campaign. The company said it was not under investigation.

It has accused the Channel 4 News undercover investigation of grossly misrepresenting how the company conducts its business.

However, speaking to the BBC on Monday, Nix said he had “huge amounts of regret that we undertook this meeting and spoke with a certain amount of hyperbole”.

On Tuesday the website Politico reported that Trump’s 2020 campaign was moving to distance itself from Cambridge Analytica. A campaign official told Politico it had no existing contracts with the firm and no plans to hire it in the future.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/201 ... are_btn_tw


Facebook now down $60 billion...
Becoming clearer why on Friday Facebook instructed lawyers to try and stop guardian breaking this story..


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Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Inside the World of Cambridge Analytica

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Tue Mar 20, 2018 4:42 pm

Rory » Tue Mar 20, 2018 9:45 am wrote:
stillrobertpaulsen » Mon Mar 19, 2018 2:31 pm wrote: But as to Cambridge Analytica falling outside the purview of the whole narrative, I'm going to need more than just intuition. What's your evidence?



The Narrative is "Russia hacked the election, and Trump committed Treason". Let's not beat around the Dubya. Let's not pretend that interfered, or meddled, or sought to gain influence, or any other weasel worded bs holds any water on the lizard brain level we are ultimately anchored to.

CA, blows that hypothesis out of the water. Unless there's some new spin The Kremlin, sent their best data analyst, Volodya "put in the vote for Trump on Nov 8th", or that Putin called them and begged them to do a stellar job this time, because he really wants Donnie to win, there's no link that Russia = Cambridge Analytica = hacked the election = improbably got Trump over the line. A Russian national worked for them! Bfd. Mercer liked Russia that one time! Give me a break.

It's horseshit. The Russia stuff was tenuous at best - a DNC op to deflect from their staggering incompetence in the general, an ass saving effort of gross recklessness that puts us closer to war footing with an angry atomic bear. This narrative in the media was instantly hijacked by the darkest, most sinister ghouls in the War Party. The same voices being signal boosted here, every fucking day for 18 months.

The DNC hacked the primaries - there's evidence aplenty to nail these fuckers for felonies for the rest of their adult lives and what are we talking about instead - the best we got with russia is Muller indicted 13 Ivans at a clickbait farm in Petrograd? Jesus fucking christ almighty.


Rory, I'm willing to give you whatever time you need to find the necessary evidence around which to construct your argument. RI always works best when we keep our arguments issue-based. But in the meantime, I'm willing to address your conjecture and demonstrate how flimsy it is:

Rory » Tue Mar 20, 2018 9:45 am wrote:The Narrative is "Russia hacked the election, and Trump committed Treason". Let's not beat around the Dubya. Let's not pretend that interfered, or meddled, or sought to gain influence, or any other weasel worded bs holds any water on the lizard brain level we are ultimately anchored to.


No, I disagree completely with how you frame the terms of The Narrative as it operates in the actual activities of the actors involved as opposed to MSM spin. Fuck MSM; 100% of our members have rejected that lens - that's one of the main reasons this board exists - so what is The Narrative in terms of what we know actually happened? To do that, you need accurate chronology. First, and I know you already know this, the investigation didn't start with "the election." So let's throw that phrase out of The Narrative; yes, we're anchored to a lizard brain, but let's take what evolution has given us and understand events beyond that base level. Second, the hacking was not the only factor to initiate the investigation.

Let me break down the chronology backwards:

(I'm including MSM links strictly to document when events occurred, not because I promote or expect anyone to buy their fucking spin!)

*The Mueller investigation, which is really the only real investigation that matters as far as criminal culpability actually being prosecuted in this very real multi-pronged scandal, only exists because Trump fired FBI director James Comey in May 2017.

*Prior to being fired, the FBI investigation into the possible criminality of links between the Trump campaign and Russia began with the revelations that George Papadopolous told top Australian diplomat Alexander Downer in May 2016 that Russia had informed the Trump campaign it had thousands of stolen emails that could damage Hillary Clinton.

To wrap it up, The Narrative as it pertains to the investigation, should be framed as questions, not answers:

Did Trump campaign links with Russia involve criminal activities?

If so, who were the campaign members and Russians involved, and what were the crimes?

Rory » Tue Mar 20, 2018 9:45 am wrote:CA, blows that hypothesis out of the water. Unless there's some new spin The Kremlin, sent their best data analyst, Volodya "put in the vote for Trump on Nov 8th", or that Putin called them and begged them to do a stellar job this time, because he really wants Donnie to win, there's no link that Russia = Cambridge Analytica = hacked the election = improbably got Trump over the line. A Russian national worked for them! Bfd. Mercer liked Russia that one time! Give me a break.


Please, no. This is not only conjecture, it's riddled with the type of hyperbole I would spout after a few beers in a bar. I'll give you an example:

Yeah right, Guccifer 2.0 is Romanian! Like he only does business with his fellow citizens, there's no way he could be involved with Russians in his line of work or cover for them! Yeah, I'm so sure, just splooge in my face and tell me it's Cool Whip!

As I said before, this scandal is multi-pronged. It's possible that you are correct, even though you provided no evidence to bolster your case. But it really doesn't matter, Cambridge Analytica doesn't have to have a direct Russian link to be connected with the greater criminal investigation. But there's tangential evidence seemslikeadream posted here that indicates you might not be correct. Hopefully the investigation will sort that out.

Rory » Tue Mar 20, 2018 9:45 am wrote:It's horseshit. The Russia stuff was tenuous at best - a DNC op to deflect from their staggering incompetence in the general, an ass saving effort of gross recklessness that puts us closer to war footing with an angry atomic bear.


Was Papadopoulos part of this presumed DNC op? Was Guccifer 2.0? Again, where's your evidence?

Rory » Tue Mar 20, 2018 9:45 am wrote:This narrative in the media was instantly hijacked by the darkest, most sinister ghouls in the War Party. The same voices being signal boosted here, every fucking day for 18 months.


Be careful with that insinuation, Rory. There is not one solitary RI member who has advocated or encouraged war against Russia. Any MSM link posted here regarding Trump/Russia has been to provide documentation of events in real time for members to read and/or discuss. I defy you to show a post where a member supported the War Party. I'm willing to bet money that never happened.

Rory » Tue Mar 20, 2018 9:45 am wrote:The DNC hacked the primaries - there's evidence aplenty to nail these fuckers for felonies for the rest of their adult lives


No disagreement there! I've covered that on my blog. Multiple threads discussed that here when it happened. But as there's no active investigation (Shame Donnie and Beauregard! Don't you care?) discussion on that topic has naturally dwindled here.

Rory » Tue Mar 20, 2018 9:45 am wrote:and what are we talking about instead - the best we got with russia is Muller indicted 13 Ivans at a clickbait farm in Petrograd? Jesus fucking christ almighty.


Not necessarily the best - just the first - and hopefully not the last. But you obviously have a problem with the fact we are talking about the investigation. Usually when I have a problem with the subject matter of a thread - I don't read it. I'll only moderate it if asked. You not only read threads you don't think are worthy of discussion, you comment profusely! Quite frequently those comments have a very disruptive quality.

I mention this because I know you're capable, when you care enough about the subject, to give considerate, thought-provoking discussion that doesn't bait, that doesn't attack on a personal level. I've been on your case lately because I care about you. If you read something on RI that elicits an eye-roll in you that you feel is only worthy of sarcastic snark, I recommend leaving that thread and clicking on another more worthy of your intellect. Selfish disclosure, it would make my job a whole lot easier! Thank you.
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Re: Inside the World of Cambridge Analytica

Postby Rory » Tue Mar 20, 2018 4:53 pm

Let's just say in lieu of a reply here, I'll just stop posting on the main board.
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Re: Inside the World of Cambridge Analytica

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Tue Mar 20, 2018 5:15 pm

Rory » Tue Mar 20, 2018 3:53 pm wrote:Let's just say in lieu of a reply here, I'll just stop posting on the main board.


I can respect that, for the time being. To reiterate, I do hope to see you providing more fruitful discussion on other RI threads in the future. Take care.
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Re: Inside the World of Cambridge Analytica

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Mar 20, 2018 6:15 pm

James Resists


@bjamesv
14h14 hours ago
More

The current CA and SCL Grp websites may have removed content from their portfolio about...what else...ELECTIONS.

Specifically, project history of international elections.

I captured some SCL Grp screenshots back in Dec '16. Judge for yourself about their self-described efforts.

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Here is some more removed content from the SCL Grp website (screenshots from Dec 2016). Again, you judge for yourself about what these folks do.

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And here's what Cambridge Analytica was saying a year and a half ago:
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https://twitter.com/bjamesv/status/975908535925182464


Trump-Russia investigators probe Jared Kushner-run digital operation
BY PETER STONE AND GREG GORDON
McClatchy Washington Bureau

July 12, 2017 05:49 AM
Updated July 12, 2017 02:24 PM

By Peter Stone and Greg GordonMcClatchy Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON
Jared Kushner, senior advisor to President Donald Trump and also the president’s son-in-law, shown here arriving with wife Ivanka Trump for the president’s speech in Krasinski Square, in Warsaw, Poland on July 6th. Kushner ran the digital operation during Trump’s presidential campaign last year.
Jared Kushner, senior advisor to President Donald Trump and also the president’s son-in-law, shown here arriving with wife Ivanka Trump for the president’s speech in Krasinski Square, in Warsaw, Poland on July 6th. Kushner ran the digital operation during Trump’s presidential campaign last year. Alik Keplicz AP
Investigators at the House and Senate Intelligence committees and the Justice Department are examining whether the Trump campaign’s digital operation – overseen by Jared Kushner – helped guide Russia’s sophisticated voter targeting and fake news attacks on Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Congressional and Justice Department investigators are focusing on whether Trump’s campaign pointed Russian cyber operatives to certain voting jurisdictions in key states – areas where Trump’s digital team and Republican operatives were spotting unexpected weakness in voter support for Hillary Clinton, according to several people familiar with the parallel inquiries.

Also under scrutiny is the question of whether Trump associates or campaign aides had any role in assisting the Russians in publicly releasing thousands of emails, hacked from the accounts of top Democrats, at turning points in the presidential race, mainly through the London-based transparency web site WikiLeaks.

Rep. Adam Schiff of California, ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told McClatchy he wants to know whether Russia’s “fake or damaging news stories” were “coordinated in any way in terms of targeting or in terms of timing or in terms of any other measure … with the (Trump) campaign.”

By Election Day, an automated Kremlin cyberattack of unprecedented scale and sophistication had delivered critical and phony news about the Democratic presidential nominee to the Twitter and Facebook accounts of millions of voters. Some investigators suspect the Russians targeted voters in swing states, even in key precincts.

Russia’s operation used computer commands knowns as “bots” to collect and dramatically heighten the reach of negative or fabricated news about Clinton, including a story in the final days of the campaign accusing her of running a pedophile ring at a Washington pizzeria.

One source familiar with Justice's criminal probe said investigators doubt Russian operatives controlling the so-called robotic cyber commands that fetched and distributed fake news stories could have independently "known where to specifically target … to which high-impact states and districts in those states."

All of the sources spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation, led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, is confidential.

Top Democrats on the committees investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election have signaled the same.

Schiff said he wants the House panel to determine whether Trump aides helped Russia time its cyberattacks or target certain voters and whether there was “any exchange of information, any financial support funneled to organizations that were doing this kind of work.”

Trump son-in-law Kushner, now a senior adviser to the president and the only current White House aide known to be deemed a “person of interest” in the Justice Department investigation, appears to be under the microscope in several respects. His real estate finances and December meetings with Russia’s ambassador and the head of a sanctioned, state-controlled bank are also being examined.

Kushner’s “role as a possible cut-out or conduit for Moscow’s influence operations in the elections,” including his niche overseeing the digital operations, will be closely looked at, said the source knowledgeable about the Justice Department inquiry.

Kushner joined Donald Trump Jr. and Trump campaign Chairman Paul Manafort at a newly disclosed June 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower in New York.. The meeting, revealed by The New York Times, followed emails in which Trump Jr. was told the lawyer for the Russian government would provide him with incriminating information on Clinton and he replied “If it’s what you say I love it.”

That disclosure could only serve to heighten interest in whether there was digital collaboration.

Mike Carpenter, who in January left a senior Pentagon post where he worked on Russia matters, also has suspicions about collaboration between the campaign and Russia’s cyber operatives.

“There appears to have been significant cooperation between Russia’s online propaganda machine and individuals in the United States who were knowledgeable about where to target the disinformation,” he said, without naming any American suspects.

Trump has repeatedly repudiated or equivocated about the finding of four key intelligence agencies – the FBI, CIA, National Security Agency and the Directorate of National Intelligence – that Russian cyber operatives meddled with the U.S. election.

Last Friday, during their first face-to-face meeting, Trump questioned Putin about Russia’s role in the election meddling and Putin denied culpability, said Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who was present. Trump then said the two countries should find ways to move forward in their relationship, Tillerson said.

A Russian official who was at the meeting said the two sides agreed to form a working group to address cybersecurity, including interference in other countries’ internal affairs. However, Trump backtracked Sunday night, saying in a tweet that he doesn’t believe such an effort can happen.

There appears to have been significant cooperation between Russia’s online propaganda machine and individuals in the United States who were knowledgeable about where to target the disinformation.

Mike Carpenter, former senior Pentagon official who specialized on Russia matters

As more has been learned about the breadth of the Russian cyber onslaught, congressional Democrats have shown growing resolve to demand that the Republican-controlled intelligence committees fully investigate ways in which Trump associates may have conspired with the Russians.

Among other things, congressional investigators are looking into whether Russian operatives, who successfully penetrated voting registration systems in Illinois, Arizona and possibly other states, shared any of that data with the Trump campaign, according to a report in Time.

“I get the fact that the Russian intel services could figure out how to manipulate and use the bots,” Virginia Sen. Mark Warner told Pod Save America recently. “Whether they could know how to target states and levels of voters that the Democrats weren’t even aware (of) really raises some questions … How did they know to go to that level of detail in those kinds of jurisdictions?”

The Russians appear to have targeted women and African-Americans in two of the three decisive states, Wisconsin and Michigan, “where the Democrats were too brain dead to realize those states were even in play,” Warner said.

Twitter’s and Facebook’s search engines in those states were overwhelmed, he said, meaning they couldn’t discern fake news from real news.

“On your news feed, you suddenly got … ‘Hillary Clinton’s sick’ or ‘Hillary Clinton’s stealing money from the State Department,’” said Warner.

It started even before Trump locked up the nomination. Throughout the Republican primary elections in early 2016, Russia sent armies of bots carrying pro-Trump messages and deployed human “trolls” to comment in his favor on Internet stories and in social media, former FBI special agent Clint Watts told Congress weeks ago.

Watts, now a cybersecurity specialist with the Foreign Policy Research Institute, said the targets included former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham.

As Donald Trump was locking up the Republican presidential nomination in May 2016, a U.S. intelligence intercept picked up Russians discussing ways to spread news damaging to Clinton, two people familiar with the matter said.

No one has proved that Russia’s attack influenced the vote count in the Nov. 8 general election., but it wouldn’t have taken much to tip the results and change the course of history.

Clinton lost the decisive states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania by a combined 77,744 votes out of 13.9 million ballots cast. She could have won Michigan if 5,353 Trump voters had gone for her instead, Wisconsin if 11,375 votes had flipped to her and Pennsylvania if 22,147 Trump voters had instead picked her.

Kushner’s pivotal role in the Trump cyber effort was underscored by his hiring in 2015 of Brad Parscale, a Texas-based digital guru who previously had done work for the Trump Organization, said two GOP operatives familiar with the campaign.

Parscale’s company raked in about $90 million for work targeting many states with paid advertisements, social media messages and other cyber tools.

As the Trump campaign’s top digital director, Parscale ran much of the operation from his San Antonio offices. He is expected to appear before at least one of several congressional committees investigating aspects of Russia’s interference in the election.

Parscale could not be reached for comment.

CNN quoted him last month as dismissing suggestions that Russian-directed online bots would have been effective in swinging votes to Trump. He said the campaign did not find Twitter -- where those bots mainly functioned – to be an effective tool.

Washington attorney Abbe Lowell, who was recently hired to be Kushner’s chief defense counsel and has “a reputation as a guy you hire if you're going to do battle with the government,” according to one former federal prosecutor, declined to comment on the Russia inquiries facing Kushner.

Shortly after his name arose in the inquiry, Kushner publicly volunteered to tell Congress about his Russia contacts and to answer questions about all issues for which he’s being scrutinized. Another of Kushner’s lawyers, Jamie Gorelick, says he will cooperate with both congressional and Justice Department investigations.

However, no interview date has been set, and Kushner’s attorneys decline to say whether he has produced records sought by the Senate Intelligence Committee.


House Intelligence Committee to compel Cambridge Analytica ex-CEO, Alexander Nix. "Serious questions about the truthfulness of his testimony."

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Carole Cadwalladr


This is an important point that @guardian's legal superbrain, @ladywell23 has had to grapple with over months. Cambridge Analytica exists only on paper. Alexander Nix is CEO of SCL Elections. From which he hasn't been suspended.

Look. This is in Cambridge Analytica's own words (from when it was trying to sue us). It's a shell company with no employees. What exactly has Alexander Nix been suspended from???

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https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/stat ... 4656642048


Cambridge Analytica executives created a company in 2017 with the Executive Director & Deputy Chairman of Erik Prince’s Frontier Services Group
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Mar 18
Cambridge Analytica executives created a company with the Executive Director & Deputy Chairman of Erik Prince’s Frontier Services Group
This has been a big weekend for news on the data firm that claimed to help get Donald Trump elected — Cambridge Analytica and the U.K. parent company SCL Group Limited. And now there’s one more twist, connecting SCL and Cambridge Analytica to someone else grabbing recent headlines, Erik Prince.
Filings on U.K. Companies House show that the two top executives at Cambridge Analytica are Directors of a company along with one of Erik Princes’ closest business partners.
On August 11, 2017, the company Emerdata Limited was incorporated in the U.K., and listed SCL Chairman Julian Wheatland as Director and 25–50% owner, and Cambridge Analytica Chief Data Officer, Alexander Tayler, was also listed as 25–50% owner. Both have since been removed as significant owners, but Wheatland is listed as an active Director, along with Alexander Nix, the Chief Executive of Cambridge Analytica.

Emerdata was orignally located at 16 Great Queen Street London, the address for Fladgate LLP, which is listed in ICIJ’s Panama Papers database. But on February 18, 2018, Emerdata changed it’s address to Pkf Littlejohn 1 Westferry Circus Canary Wharf London, the same address for SCL Group.
A few days ago the filings for Emerdata were updated, and noted three new Directors, including, Mr Ahmad Ashraf Hosny Al Khatib, Ms Cheng Peng, and Mr Johnson Chun Shun Ko, all appointed on January 23, 2018.
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A tip from @brexit_sham identified that one of the new Emerdata Limited directors, Mr Johnson Chun Shun Ko, is a very close business partner of Erik Prince.
Erik Prince is Executive Director and Chairman of Hong Kong listed Frontier Services Group “a leading provider of integrated security, logistics and insurance services for clients operating in frontier markets.”
The Executive Director and Deputy Chairman of Frontier is Mr. Ko Chun Shun, the same Johnson Chun Shun Ko who is a Director of Emerdata with Julian Wheatland and Alexander Nix of Cambridge Analytica. The address for Mr. Johnson Chun Shun Ko in the Emerdata listing is 3901 39 Floor, Far East Finance Centre, 16 Harcourt Road, Admiralty, Hong Kong, the same address as the Hong Kong headquarters for Frontier.


Erik Prince was also named chairman of DVN Holdings, a company controlled by Hong Kong businessman Johnson Ko Chun-shun and state-owned Citic Group.
DVN shares surge as former Blackwater owner named chairman

Shares of DVN Holdings, controlled by Hong Kong businessman Johnson Ko Chun-shun and state-owned Citic Group, surged…
http://www.scmp.com
A Forbes profile lists Johnson Ko as #49 of Hong Kong’s 50 richest people, and notes that he is “executive director of boutique investment firm Reorient Group, where he brought in Alibaba’s Jack Ma and other investors in a $350 million deal in August.”
It is not known if Erik Prince has any direct connection to Emerdata Limited or to Julian Wheatland or Alexander Nix or to Cambridge Analytica.
However, writer Ann Marlowe reported in an August 2016 article on Cambridge Analytica that for ten years, until 2015, the largest investor in SCL was U.K. property mogul Vincent Tchenguiz. Marlowe further identified that Tchenguiz had a connection with Paul Manafort’s business partner Dimitry Firtash, as Tchenguiz was an investor in a company called Zander Group, which was part owned by a subsidiary of Firtash’s Group DF. And while Vincent Tchenguiz sold his shares in Cambridge Analytica’s parent SCL Group in 2015, the current SCL chairman Julian Wheatland, was formerly an executive of Tchenguiz’s Consensus Business Group.
Marlowe has also identified that a December 2017 Haaretz article about Erik Prince described his ties to Israeli financier Dorian Barak, who “tried to interest Prince in investing in an African rail project — with the Spanish infrastructure company Eurofinsa — and in a joint investment with the Tehran-born, British-Jewish billionaire Vincent Tchenguiz.”
There is no indication that Prince pursued a deal with Vincent Tchenguiz.
However, through Emerdata Limited, there is a business connection between two top executives of Cambridge Analytica, Julian Wheatland and Alexander Nix, and Erik Prince’s business partner Mr. Ko Chun Shun.
Many questions are raised by this partnership. What is the business purpose of Emerdata Limited? And what is the business relationship between Emerdata Directors Julian Wheatland and Alexander Nix who also head up Cambridge Analytica, and Erik Prince’s business partner, Mr. Ko Chun Shun? And, most interestingly, is there any direct connection between Cambridge Analytica and Erik Prince?

https://medium.com/@wsiegelman/cambridg ... 03f27f84a2




A quick clarification, I removed "in 2017" in article title - Emerdata was incorporated in 2017 and Erik Prince's business partner Chun Shun Ko was appointed Director on January 28, 2018, which is noted in article, so this is a recent business partnership

UPDATE: Emerdata Ltd created by SCL/Cambridge Analytica's Julian Wheatland, with Erik Prince's business partner Chun Shun Ko appointed director Jan '17 - just added Rebekah Mercer & Jennifer Mercer as directors, along w/Alexander Nix HT @SoftWarmKitties https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/comp ... 8/officers


CA folks - something going on with Wheatland's Emerdata, Mercers just became directors, along with Erik Prince's business partner

https://twitter.com/WendySiegelman/stat ... 7390920704
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Inside the World of Cambridge Analytica

Postby Jerky » Tue Mar 20, 2018 6:34 pm

You're right. That was uncalled for.

Please remove my reply, as I cannot anymore.

J.
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Re: Inside the World of Cambridge Analytica

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Tue Mar 20, 2018 7:13 pm

Done, Jerky. I appreciate the retraction.

:backtotopic:
"Huey Long once said, “Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism.” I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security."
-Jim Garrison 1967
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Re: Inside the World of Cambridge Analytica

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Mar 21, 2018 7:32 am

Uh oh. Paddy Power suspends betting on Cambridge Analytica closing. Some interesting odds still available, however. 5/1 on Zuckerberg stepping down?!? Those odds not high...

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Polly Sigh

Mike Flynn's amended disclosure reveals payments from Mercer's Cambridge Analytica

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https://www.apnews.com/a250d1088af44a3b8b55275dc97de608


Trump campaign manager & WH Chief Strategist Steve Bannon oversaw Cambridge Analytica’s collection of Facebook data AND the company's effort to ID & test anti-establishment messages that later emerged as central themes in Trump’s campaign speeches.

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Cambridge Analytica: High Tech Mind Manipulation and Your Vote

Cambridge Analytica
Do Americans have the slightest idea of the extent to which they are manipulated? That seems to be the big — and so far unexplored — question as scandal continues to explode around Facebook and a UK-based data company.

The news is dominated currently by Cambridge Analytica, the data company that helped propel Donald Trump into the White House. It is in hot water this week, following reports that it harvested information from 50 million Facebook users without their consent.

New stunning stories keep coming from the UK’s Channel 4. On Tuesday, these revelations resulted in the suspension of the company’s chief executive Alexander Nix. Previously, we learned that top Cambridge Analytica officials, including Nix, were caught on hidden cameras discussing dirty and possibly illegal campaign tricks — such as using beautiful women or fake businessmen to entrap rival candidates.

The secretly recorded videos, which you can see below, pull back the curtain on modern political campaigns.

More than anything, however, they show that the spread of social media, and the resulting reams of data that users willingly hand to companies like Facebook, allow campaigns to manipulate people into voting a certain way.

Here are a few striking examples of Cambridge Analytica executives caught by Channel 4 News as they boast about exploiting voters’ digital profiles in order to effectively manipulate them:

If you’re collecting data on people and you’re profiling them, that gives you more insight that you can use to know how to segment the population, to give them messaging about issues that they care about, and language, and imagery that they’re likely to engage with. And we use that in America, and we use that in Africa. That’s what we do as a company.

The two fundamental human drivers when it comes to taking information onboard effectively are hopes and fears, and many of those are unspoken and even unconscious. You didn’t know that was a fear until you saw something that just evoked that reaction from you. And our job is to get, is to drop the bucket further down the well than anybody else, to understand what are those really deep-seated underlying fears, concerns. It’s no good fighting an election campaign on the facts, because actually it’s all about emotion.

Cambridge Analytica staff also had even more egregious things to say, promising or implying all manner of nefarious undertakings, including the following:

We’ll have a wealthy developer come in, somebody posing as a wealthy developer…

[Second exec speaking:] I’m a master of disguise [laughter].

They will offer a large amount of money, to the candidate, to finance his campaign in exchange for land, for instance. We’ll have the whole thing recorded on cameras. We’ll blank out the face of our guy, and then post it on the internet.

Send some girls around to the candidates house. We have lots of history of things.

We’ve just used a different organization to run a very, very successful project in an Eastern European country where they did a really… no-one even knew they were there. They just drift, they were just ghosted in, did the work, ghosted out and produced, really, really good material. So we have experience in doing this.

We subcontract to them. We use some British companies, we use some Israeli companies. Very effective in intelligence gathering.
https://whowhatwhy.org/2018/03/21/cambr ... your-vote/


Here’s a Photo of Cambridge Analytica’s CEO With the Russian Ambassador to the UK
One of these men boasted of blackmailing politicians. The other is Putin’s representative.
MOTHER JONES WASHINGTON BUREAUMAR. 20, 2018 2:32 PM


Alexander Nix, the CEO of Cambridge Analytica, made splashy headlines this week when Britain’s Channel 4 News broadcast undercover video of Nix and a colleague boasting that their firm entraps politicians through sting operations using fake businessmen offering bribes and covert seduction schemes involving Ukrainian women. Nix’s company, which is best known for its work with Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, has also been in the news for sneakily acquiring data on as many as 50 million Facebook users for its own secretive purposes. Cambridge Analytica denied wrongdoing in the Channel 4 investigation. But the hidden-camera video was quite damning.

The footage, though, was a bit grainy. So here is a clearer shot of Nix, snapped during a polo match in which he played on July 28, 2016. He happens to be posing with Alexander Yakovenko, the Russian ambassador to the United Kingdom. The photo was taken days after Democratic National Committee files and emails hacked by Russian intelligence were dumped online by WikiLeaks at the start of the Democratic Party’s convention. The previous month, the Trump campaign had hired Nix’s company, and by this point, it had been widely reported that Russian intelligence was behind the DNC hack.

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Tony Ramirez / Images of Polo
The photograph was part of a series of snaps on a website presenting polo photos for purchase.

Journalists, researchers, and congressional investigators have wondered about any ties between Cambridge Analytica and Russia. This photo is hardly evidence of an untoward connection. But last year a Huffington Post article on Robert and Rebekah Mercer, the super-wealthy, right-wing backers of Cambridge Analytica, did note that Rebekah, at one meeting with Nix, was highly impressed by Nix’s polo skills, gushing about his prowess and asking him to show cellphone photos of himself on horseback
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/20 ... to-the-uk/


Facebook scandal: I am being used as scapegoat – academic who mined data
Cambridge University researcher Aleksandr Kogan says he is being unfairly blamed by Facebook and Cambridge Analytica

Matthew Weaver
Wed 21 Mar 2018 07.39 EDT First published on Wed 21 Mar 2018 04.12 EDT

Kogan harvested the personal details of 50 million Facebook users via a personality app. Composite: Guardian Design Team
The academic at the centre of Facebook’s data breach claims he has been unfairly scapegoated by the social network and Cambridge Analytica, the firm that acquired the information.

Cambridge Analytica execs boast of role in getting Trump elected

Aleksandr Kogan, a Moldovan-born researcher from Cambridge University, admits harvesting the personal details of 30 million Facebook users via a personality app he developed.

He then passed the data to Cambridge Analytica who assured him this was legal, he said.

Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie told the Observer that the data Kogan obtained was used to influence the outcome of the US presidential election, a charge the firm denies.

Play Video 13:04
Cambridge Analytica whistleblower: 'We spent $1m harvesting millions of Facebook profiles' – video
Kogan told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Wednesday that he was being unjustly blamed for the scandal.

He said: “My view is that I’m being basically used as a scapegoat by both Facebook and Cambridge Analytica. Honestly we thought we were acting perfectly appropriately. We thought we were doing something that was really normal.”

Last week Facebook announced it was suspending Cambridge Analytica and Kogan from the platform, pending further investigation over misuse of data. Facebook insists Kogan violated its platform policy by transferring data his app collected to Cambridge Analytica. It also said he had specifically assured Facebook that the data would never be used for commercial purposes.

Kogan said the scandal raised questions about the business model of social networking companies. Kogan said: “The project that Cambridge Analytica has allegedly done, which is use people’s Facebook data for micro-targeting, is the primary use case for most data on these platforms. Facebook and Twitter and other platforms make their money through advertising and so there’s an agreement between the user of ‘hey, you will get this amazing product that costs billions of dollars to run and in return we can sell you to advertisers for micro-targeting’.”

Kogan also disputed Cambridge Analytica’s claim that he had approached them with the idea.

He said: “That is a fabrication. They approached me; in terms of the usage of Facebook data they wrote the terms of service for the app. They provided the legal advice that this was all appropriate. So I’m definitely surprised by their comments and I don’t think they are accurate.”

He pointed out that it paid up to $800,000 to recruit about 200,000 people to use it. He said: “I have never profited from this in anyway personally. This money was paid mostly … for the participants – each person was paid $3 to $4 (£2.10 to £2.80), so that’s where really the money went.”

Kogan said he was told that the scheme was legal but accepts he should have questioned the ethics of the exercise.

He said: “They [Cambridge Analytica] communicated that this would be a fully commercial project and that terms of service would be ones that allowed a broad licence for usage. What was communicated to me strongly is that thousands and maybe tens of thousands of apps were doing the exact same thing. And this was a pretty normal use case of Facebook data.”

Cambridge Analytica denies using the Facebook data during the Trump campaign.

Kogan said: “We were assured by Cambridge Analytica that everything was perfectly legal and within the limits of the terms of service. One of the great mistakes I did here was that I just didn’t ask enough questions.

While at Cambridge Kogan accepted a position at St Petersburg State University, and also took Russian government grants for research.

Kogan laughed off suspicions that he is linked to the Kremlin. He said: “This one is pretty funny … anyone who knows me knows I’m a very happy-go-lucky goofy guy, the last one to have any real links to espionage.”

Wylie claims most of the personal information harvested by Kogan’s app had been taken without authorisation. He said Cambridge Analytica used it to build a powerful software program to predict and influence choices at the ballot box.

Kogan said he had no knowledge of how the information was subsequently used. He said he would feel “horrible” if the data had helped influence the election. “Mr Trump is not somebody whose values align well with mine,” he said.

He also doubts it could have been useful. Kogan, who works at Cambridge University’s psychology department, said: “The accuracy of this data has been extremely exaggerated. In practice my best guess is that we were six times more likely to get everything wrong about a person as we were to get everything right about a person. I personally don’t think micro-targeting is an effective way to use such data sets.

“It could have only hurt the campaign. What Cambridge Analytica has tried to sell is magic. And it made claims that this is incredibly accurate and it tells you everything there is to tell about you, but the reality is that it’s not that. If you really work through the statistics … those claims quickly fall apart.”

Cambridge Analytica’s chief executive, Alexander Nix, who was suspended on Tuesday, told MPs in February that his company did not use Facebook data in its work.

In a statement published on Saturday, the company denied any wrongdoing and said it did not harvest Facebook data, and none was used in the 2016 presidential election. It said it fully complied with Facebook’s terms of service and it had deleted all the data it received from Kogan’s company.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/201 ... are_btn_tw
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Inside the World of Cambridge Analytica

Postby Grizzly » Wed Mar 21, 2018 1:32 pm

I think a lot of this dross if someone doesn't look deeper into SCL (Strategic Communication Laboratories) originally a private British Military behavioural research group. That has now moved to Arlington VA.

https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/S ... boratories

Dispatches
Notes from different corners of the world.
Sept. 19 2005 6:31 AM
You Can't Handle the Truth
Psy-ops propaganda goes mainstream.
By Sharon Weinberger
http://www.slate.com/technology/2018/03 ... ccess.html
Download the MP3 audio version of this story here, or sign up to get all of Slate's free daily podcasts.
A live "ops center" in a country SCL won't identify.
A live "ops center" in a country SCL won't identify

LONDON—Over the past 24 hours, seven people have checked into hospitals here with telltale symptoms. Rashes, vomiting, high temperature, and cramps: the classic signs of smallpox. Once thought wiped out, the disease is back and threatening a pandemic of epic proportions.

The government faces a dilemma: It needs people to stay home, but if the news breaks, mass panic might ensue as people flee the city, carrying the virus with them.

A shadowy media firm steps in to help orchestrate a sophisticated campaign of mass deception. Rather than alert the public to the smallpox threat, the company sets up a high-tech "ops center" to convince the public that an accident at a chemical plant threatens London. As the fictitious toxic cloud approaches the city, TV news outlets are provided graphic visuals charting the path of the invisible toxins. Londoners stay indoors, glued to the telly, convinced that even a short walk into the streets could be fatal.

This scenario may sound like a rejected plot twist from a mediocre Bond flick, but one company is dead set on making this fantasy come to life.

Strategic Communication Laboratories, a small U.K. firm specializing in "influence operations" made a very public debut this week with a glitzy exhibit occupying prime real estate at Defense Systems & Equipment International, or DSEi, the United Kingdom's largest showcase for military technology. The main attraction was a full-scale mock-up of its ops center, running simulations ranging from natural disasters to political coups.

Just to the right of the ops center, a dark-suited man with a wireless microphone paces like a carnival barker, narrating the scenarios. Above him a screen flashes among scenes of disaster, while to his right, behind thick glass, workers sit attentively before banks of computer screens, busily scrolling through data. The play actors pause only to look up at a big board that flashes ominously between "hot spots" like North Korea and Congo.

While Londoners fret over fictitious toxins, the government works to contain the smallpox outbreak. The final result, according to SCL's calculations, is that only thousands perish, rather than the 10 million originally projected. Another success.

Of course, the idea of deluding an entire city seems, well, a bit like propaganda.

"If your definition of propaganda is framing communications to do something that's going to save lives, that's fine," says Mark Broughton, SCL's public affairs director. "That's not a word I would use for that."

Then again, it's hard to know exactly what else to call it. (Company literature describes SCL's niche specialties as "psychological warfare," "public diplomacy," and "influence operations.") The smallpox scenario plays out in excruciating detail how reporters would be tapped to receive disinformation, with TV and radio stations dedicated to around-the-clock coverage. Even the eventual disclosure is carefully scripted.

In another doomsday scenario, the company assists a newly democratic country in South Asia as it struggles with corrupt politicians and a rising insurgency that threatens to bubble over into bloody revolution. SCL steps in to assist the benevolent king of "Manpurea" to temporarily seize power.

Oh, wait, that sounds a lot like Nepal, where the monarchy earlier this year ousted a corrupt government to stave off a rising Maoist movement. The problem is, the SCL scenario also sounds a lot like using a private company to help overthrow a democratically elected government. Another problem, at least in Nepal, is that the king now shows few signs of returning to democracy.

The company, which describes itself as the first private-sector provider of psychological operations, has been around since 1993. But its previous work was limited to civil operations, and it now wants to expand to military customers.

If SCL weren't so earnest, it might actually seem to be mocking itself, or perhaps George Orwell. As the end of the smallpox scenario, dramatic music fades out to a taped message urging people to "embrace" strategic communications, which it describes as "the most powerful weapon in the world." And the company Web page offers some decidedly creepy asides. "The [ops center] can override all national radio and TV broadcasts in time of crisis," it says, alluding to work the company has done in an unspecified Asian country.

The government's use of deception in the service of national security is not new. During World War II, for example, Allied forces conducted a massive misinformation campaign, called Operation Fortitude, designed to hide plans for the Normandy invasion. More recent efforts have met with controversy, however. In 2002, the Pentagon shuttered its brand new Office of Strategic Influence after public outcry over its purported plans to spread deceptive information to the foreign press.

Government deception may even be justified in some cases, according to Michael Schrage, a senior adviser to the security-studies program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "If you tell the population that there's been a bio-warfare attack, hospital emergency rooms will be overwhelmed with people who sincerely believe they have all the symptoms and require immediate attention," Schrage says.

The problem, he adds, is that in a democracy, a large-scale ruse would work just once.

The U.S. government has generally sought to limit disinformation; some agencies—such as the CIA—are explicitly prohibited by law from misleading domestic press. And while the CIA is fond of concealment, it takes pride in the belief that truth is necessary for an open government, a sentiment chiseled into the agency's lobby.
A successful outcome means thousands, not millions, will die in a catastrophe.
A successful outcome means thousands, not millions, will die in a catastrophe

What makes SCL's strategy so unusual is that it proposes to propagate its campaign domestically, at least some of the time, and rather than influence just opinion, it wants people to take a particular course of action. Is SCL simply hawking a flashier version of propaganda?

The spokesman's answer: "We save lives."

Yes, Broughton acknowledges, the ops center is not exactly giving the truth, but he adds, "Is it not worth giving an untruth for 48 hours to save x million people's lives? Sometimes the means to an end has to be recognized."

Who buys this stuff? Broughton declined to mention many specific clients, noting that disclosing SCL's involvement—particularly in countries with a free and open media—could make its campaigns less effective. However, he says that post-apartheid South Africa has employed SCL. So has the United Nations, he says.

The company's Web site is even vaguer, mentioning international organizations and foreign governments. A Google search produces only a handful of hits, mostly linked to the company's Web site. The company's work is based on something that even the spokesman admits you "won't find on the Web": the Behavioral Dynamics Institute, a virtual lab led by Professor Phil Taylor of Leeds University.

But the company, which is funded by private investors, is now taking on a higher profile, and visitors flocked to the flashy setup here at the show. "Basically, we're launching ourselves this week on the defense market and homeland security market at the same time," Broughton explained.

If SCL has its way, its vision of strategic communications—which involves complex psychological and scientific data—could be used to shape public response to tsunamis, epidemics, or even the next Hurricane Katrina.

Well aware that the company may face controversy, particularly with its push into the defense market, Broughton emphasizes the company's role in saving lives.

"It sounds altruistic," he said. "There is some altruism in it, but we also want to earn money."




The U.S. government has generally sought to limit disinformation; some agencies—such as the CIA—are explicitly prohibited by law from misleading domestic press.


:hourglass:

My,my... How times change.
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Re: Inside the World of Cambridge Analytica

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Mar 21, 2018 3:49 pm

Cambridge Analytica was offered politicians' hacked emails, witnesses say

Hackers offered personal data about future Nigerian president and future PM of St Kitts and Nevis, sources say

Carole CadwalladrWed 21 Mar 2018 14.59 EDT

The data analytics firm that worked on the Donald Trump election campaign was offered material from Israeli hackers who had accessed the private emails of two politicians who are now heads of state, witnesses have told the Guardian.

Multiple sources have described how senior directors of Cambridge Analytica – including its chief executive, Alexander Nix – gave staff instructions to handle material provided by computer hackers in election campaigns in Nigeria and St Kitts and Nevis.

They claim there were two episodes in 2015 that alarmed members of staff and led them to refuse to handle the data, which they assumed would have been obtained illegally.

SCL Elections, Cambridge Analytica’s parent company, denied taking possession of or using hacked or stolen personal information from such individuals for any purpose in either campaign.

The revelations are the latest to focus attention on Cambridge Analytica, whose activities are being investigated in the US by the special counsel Robert Mueller as part of his inquiry into possible Russian collusion in the 2016 US presidential election.

The firm is under pressure to explain how it came to have unauthorised access to millions of Facebook profiles. Politicians in the US and UK have accused it of giving misleading statements about its work, and the information commissioner has demanded access to the company’s databases.

In all, the Guardian and Observer has spoken to seven individuals with knowledge of Cambridge Analytica and its campaign in Nigeria in early 2015.

Hired by a Nigerian billionaire to support the re-election of Goodluck Jonathan, Cambridge Analytica was paid an estimated £2m to orchestrate a ferocious campaign against his rival, the opposition leader Muhammadu Buhari. Jonathan lost out to Buhari in the presidential race. There is no suggestion Jonathan knew of the covert operation.

Staff working on the campaign say in early 2015 they met Israeli cybersecurity contractors in Cambridge Analytica’s offices in Mayfair, London. Employees say they were told the meeting was arranged by Brittany Kaiser, a senior director at the firm.

The Guardian and Observer have been told the Israelis brought a laptop from their office in Tel Aviv and handed employees a USB stick containing what they believed were hacked personal emails.

Sources said Nix, who was suspended on Tuesday, and other senior directors told staff to search for incriminating material that could be used to damage opposition candidates, including Buhari.

“It made everyone feel really uncomfortable,” said one source. “They wanted people to load it into their email programs.”

People “freaked out”, another employee said. “They wanted to have nothing to do with it.”


Everything you need to know about the Cambridge Analytica exposé – video explainer

One member of the campaign team told the Guardian and Observer that the material they believed had been hacked included Buhari’s medical records. “I’m 99% sure of that. Or if they didn’t have his medical records they at least had emails that referred to what was going on.”

When news of the London meeting filtered back to Cambridge Analytica staff working on the ground in Nigeria, it caused panic, the source said. Local security advisers told the firm’s team to leave the country immediately because if opposition supporters found out, they could turn on them.

“What is clear is that the security of their employees didn’t even seem to have occurred to them,” said one former employee. “It was a very serious situation and they had to evacuate immediately.”

An SCL Elections spokesperson said team members working on the Nigeria campaign remained in the country throughout the original campaigning period, and left in accordance with the company’s campaign plan.

The Guardian has seen an email from Nix dated 26 January 2015, referring to the “Israeli team”.

It says: “Although it is outside of our remit, I have asked for an update on what the Israeli team has been working on and what they will be delivering between now and the election.”

In a second episode in early 2015, sources said the same Israeli team that had worked on the Nigeria campaign obtained private information of the St Kitts and Nevis politician Timothy Harris. At the time he was an opposition leader, and is now prime minister.

Sources have said staff did not want to handle what appeared to be stolen material. “Nobody wanted to have anything to do with it,” one employee said.

A statement from SCL Elections said: “During an election campaign, it is normal for SCL Elections to meet with vendors seeking to provide services as a subcontractor. SCL Elections did not take possession of or use any personal information from such individuals for any purposes. SCL Elections does not use ‘hacked’ or ‘stolen’ data.”

The statement added: “Members of the SCL Elections team that worked on the Nigeria campaign remained in country throughout the original campaigning period, although the election was rescheduled and SCL was not retained for the entirety of the extended campaign period.

“Team members left in accordance with the company’s campaign plan. Team members were regularly briefed about security concerns prior to and during deployment and measures were taken to ensure the team’s safety throughout.”

The revelations will add to the questions facing Cambridge Analytica and the techniques it uses to influence elections for its clients.

In the UK, the Electoral Commission and the Information Commissioner’s Office are investigating the firm for breaches of electoral and data protection law.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/201 ... are_btn_tw
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Inside the World of Cambridge Analytica

Postby DrEvil » Thu Mar 22, 2018 4:44 am

The Guardian and Observer have been told the Israelis brought a laptop from their office in Tel Aviv and handed employees a USB stick containing what they believed were hacked personal emails.

Sources said Nix, who was suspended on Tuesday, and other senior directors told staff to search for incriminating material that could be used to damage opposition candidates, including Buhari.

“It made everyone feel really uncomfortable,” said one source. “They wanted people to load it into their email programs.”


So in other words Israeli intelligence have access to everything at CA.
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