Monday, March 19, 2018

Cambridge Analytica, who stands accused of stealing data from over 50 million Facebook users, is working overtime to stop media outlets from issuing reports revealing their tactics.

Courtesy of The Hill: 

Cambridge Analytica is trying to prevent an undercover report by London’s Channel 4 News that shows the firm’s CEO Alexander Nix speaking candidly about the firm’s practices from airing, according to the Financial Times. 

Reporters for Channel 4 posed as prospective clients and secretly filmed a number of meetings with the firm. 

The Financial Times's report did not make clear how the data firm was working to stop the report from airing. 

Cambridge Analytica also threatened to sue the Guardian to stop this story about the guy who blew the whistle on their Facebook data theft from being published: 

The Observer also received the first of three letters from Cambridge Analytica threatening to sue Guardian News and Media for defamation. We are still only just starting to understand the maelstrom of forces that came together to create the conditions for what Mueller confirmed last month was “information warfare”. But Wylie offers a unique, worm’s-eye view of the events of 2016. Of how Facebook was hijacked, repurposed to become a theatre of war: how it became a launchpad for what seems to be an extraordinary attack on the US’s democratic process. 

Wylie oversaw what may have been the first critical breach. Aged 24, while studying for a PhD in fashion trend forecasting, he came up with a plan to harvest the Facebook profiles of millions of people in the US, and to use their private and personal information to create sophisticated psychological and political profiles. And then target them with political ads designed to work on their particular psychological makeup. 

“We ‘broke’ Facebook,” he says. 

And he did it on behalf of his new boss, Steve Bannon.

Clearly that didn't work.

In another piece by the Guardian that I am sure Cambridge Analytica would like to make go away, we learn that the guy who orchestrated the data mining on Facebook has ties to Russia: 

Aleksandr Kogan, the Cambridge University academic who orchestrated the harvesting of Facebook data, had previously unreported ties to a Russian university, including a teaching position and grants for research into the social media network, the Observer has discovered. Cambridge Analytica, the data firm he worked with – which funded the project to turn tens of millions of Facebook profiles into a unique political weapon – also attracted interest from a key Russian firm with links to the Kremlin. 

Energy firm Lukoil, which is now on the US sanctions list and has been used as a vehicle of government influence, saw a presentation on the firm’s work in 2014. It began with a focus on voter suppression in Nigeria, and Cambridge Analytica also discussed “micro-targeting” individuals on social media during elections. 

The revelations come at a time of intense US scrutiny of Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election, with 13 Russians criminally charged last month with interfering to help Donald Trump.

Man no matter what the story, it always links back to Russia in some way or another. 

By the way Robert Mueller has requested all emails between the Trump campaign and Cambridge Analytica, so this party is far from over.

Interesting that not only is the Trump White House all super double secret about what they are up to, but so is just about everybody who helped them to get there in the first place.

20 comments:

  1. Anonymous11:32 AM

    To help keep things in perspective, a newsworthy story in itself: " Cambridge Analytica, a company created by Robert Mercer, a billionaire patron of right-wing outlets like Breitbart News, has been swallowing up all the data they can get. "

    https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/16/15657512/cambridge-analytica-christopher-wylie-facebook-trump-russia

    ReplyDelete
  2. Rick Perrot11:34 AM

    Ooops!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous11:44 AM

    "CA has psychological profiles of 230 million Americans.
    on '50 MILLION AMERICANS, which is about a quarter of American Facebook users. Remember when it all started?
    "Christopher Wylie, who helped found Cambridge and worked there until late 2014, said of its leaders: “Rules don’t matter for them. For them, this is a war, and it’s all fair.”

    “They want to fight a culture war in America,” he added. “Cambridge Analytica was supposed to be the arsenal of weapons to fight that culture war.”
    "Nix said that “they understand behavioural microtargeting in the context of elections” but that they were “failing to make the connection between voters and their consumers”. The work, he said, would be “shared with the CEO of the business”, a former Soviet oil minister and associate of Putin, Vagit Alekperov."
    "“She loved me. She was like, ‘Oh we need more of your type on our side!’”

    Your type?

    “The gays. She loved the gays. So did Steve [Bannon]. He saw us as early adopters. He figured, if you can get the gays on board, everyone else will follow. It’s why he was so into the whole Milo [Yiannopoulos] thing.”


    Read more at https://wonkette.com/631417/shit-meets-fan-for-cambridge-analytica-and-facebook-bout-goddamn-time#FZWQk3J6AJQhSSjk.99

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous11:48 AM

    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/stock-futures-drop-fed-caution-115553153.html

    "Facebook shares tumbled 7.1 percent as Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg faced calls from both U.S. and European lawmakers to explain how a consultancy that worked on President Donald Trump's election campaign gained access to data on 50 million Facebook users."

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous12:13 PM

    https://crooksandliars.com/2018/03/video-cambridge-analytica-boss-we-could

    CRIMEa! "“send some girls around to the candidate’s house”; mentioning that that Ukrainian girls “are very beautiful, I find that works very well”. "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.”
    "Because it's essential that RATFUCKing like this be done with no accountability, paper trail, or other incriminating information, Cambridge Analytica takes precautions.

    "Many of our clients don’t want to be seen to be working with a foreign company," " in countries like the United States it's illegal, so there's that.) "So...we can set up fake IDs and websites, we can be students doing research projects attached to a university, we can be tourists, there’s so many options we can look at." "“We entirely refute any allegation that Cambridge Analytica or any of its affiliates use entrapment, bribes, or so-called “honey-traps” for any purpose whatsoever," they wrote. "We routinely undertake conversations with prospective clients to try to tease out any unethical or illegal intentions." "They reportedly also insisted that there's nothing illegal about opposition research." "consider that Stephen K. Bannon was an officer of that company until he went inside the White House."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous1:04 PM

      The video at the above link is an absolute MUST watch.

      Here is a direct link to youtube:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=mpbeOCKZFfQ

      UK reporters went undercover and filmed the sales pitch from Cambridge Analytica. WOW!

      Delete
  6. Anonymous12:17 PM

    Cambridge Analytica Execs Bragged Of Using Fake News, Sex To Sway Elections

    The admissions were recorded during a probe into the firm, which was hired by President Trump’s 2016 campaign.

    https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/cambridge-analytica-under-cover-interviews_us_5aafebc3e4b0697dfe19352b

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous12:32 PM

    British Lawmaker Tells Zuckerberg to Testify About Facebook Data Breach

    https://www.politicususa.com/2018/03/19/zuckerberg-testify-uk.html

    ReplyDelete
  8. Project Alamo huh12:40 PM

    Therese Hong quietly deletes her social media and disappears...

    https://twitter.com/LyssAnthrope/status/905644947360980992

    "Theresa Hong says the name Project Alamo come from Cambridge Analytica: the Alamo Data set"




    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous1:03 PM

      Hit delete for 404!!!

      https://medium.com/@alamocitychick/latest

      Internet is for ever biches!

      https://web.archive.org/web/20180218063419/https://medium.com/@alamocitychick/latest

      Delete
    2. Anonymous1:30 PM

      the bich is bak!

      Delete
  9. Anonymous1:05 PM

    ‘This is all we’ve got’: Young white supremacists are down to their last fundraising platform

    "We have been de-platformed from all major payment systems and other payment platforms."

    https://thinkprogress.org/makersupport-and-white-supremacists-729a273afb9c/

    ReplyDelete
  10. Anonymous1:14 PM

    Cambridge CEO caught on take claiming to use sex workers to get politicians in compromised situations.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous1:32 PM

      horney trap$

      Delete
    2. Anonymous1:34 PM

      https://giphy.com/gifs/colbertlateshow-donald-trump-stephen-colbert-3oeHLDFn5mMHZb5ngs/fullscreen

      Delete
  11. Anonymous1:28 PM

    teXXXa$$ teddy the KINK cruZZer

    https://www.rawstory.com/2018/03/ted-cruz-also-worked-cambridge-analytica-2016-now-texas-democrats-using/

    ReplyDelete
  12. Anonymous1:37 PM

    "… [W]e just put information into the bloodstream of the internet, and then, and then watch it grow, give it a little push every now and again … like a remote control. It has to happen without anyone thinking, “that’s propaganda,” because the moment you think “That’s propaganda,” the next question is, “Who’s put that out?”
    "We entirely refute any allegation that Cambridge Analytica or any of its affiliates use entrapment, bribes, or so-called “honey-traps” for any purpose whatsoever … We routinely undertake conversations with prospective clients to try to tease out any unethical or illegal intentions …"<RiiiggghhttT

    Read more at https://wonkette.com/631445/cambridge-analytica-did-not-use-ukrainian-prostitutes-as-honeyp-oh-you-mean-them#dfPCRoHHZ0uMRerj.99

    ReplyDelete
  13. Anonymous3:34 PM

    https://www.politicususa.com/2018/03/19/dianne-feinstein-cambridge-analytica.html

    "March 18, 2018

    Honorable Charles Grassley
    Chairman
    Committee on the Judiciary
    United States Senate
    Washington, D.C. 20510

    Dear Chairman Grassley:

    The New York Times and the Observer of London reported allegations from a whistleblower that voter-profiling firm Cambridge Analytica exploited information from more than fifty million Facebook users without their knowledge or permission. Cambridge Analytica then used that information to target voters and shape public opinion on behalf of President Trump’s campaign, raising additional questions about the role of the company and its associates in influencing the 2016 election.
    These reports detail allegations of an egregious breach of privacy and trust. The private information of more than 50 million Americans is reported to have been taken from social media accounts, without notice or consent, to game the political system. In addition, these reports outline serious allegations that foreign actors engaged with a U.S. campaign to create and implement a widespread influence operation that targeted American voters based on the personal information harvested from these accounts. Such activity implicates campaign finance laws and a broader conspiracy to defraud the United States, matters that fall squarely within this Committee’s oversight jurisdiction.

    As you know, last year I sent a number of letters seeking information from Cambridge Analytica and some of the individuals named in these media reports, including Brad Parscale, Dan Scavino, and Steve Bannon. These requests have been ignored, and the Committee has taken no additional action.

    These reports raise serious allegations, and the American people need to know how this happened, who knew about it, why steps were not taken sooner to bring it to an end, and what can be done to protect their privacy and the integrity of our elections going forward. I urge the Committee to get to the bottom of these questions by holding hearings on these matters, compelling the production of documents as well as the attendance of relevant witnesses. As a first step, I ask the Committee to follow up on pending requests and identify additional information and witnesses the Committee should hear from. I hope we can commence a bipartisan effort to investigate what actually happened.

    Sincerely,

    Dianne Feinstein
    Ranking Member
    Committee on the Judiciary"

    ReplyDelete
  14. Proud to have never done Facebook, Twitter, Imagur, Photobucket, Instagram and all that shit.

    Facebook stock plummeted today. It will recover but may never be the same.

    And don’t forget that Trump’s 2020 Campaign Manager Brad Parscale was in the center of Facebook and Cambridge Analytica and the campaign. So was Kushner.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Anonymous5:34 AM

    MIaluppa I'm (mostly) with you. I am on Twitter, where I follow strangers (mostly academics) with similar interests. Simple matter to block, mute or unfollow if they become annoying (usually by posting too many selfies or personal stuff).

    I was on FB for a week, maybe a dozen years ago. I was horrified even than at the personal information people were posting, especially about their young kids. Why would I even give Zuckerman my DOB? That's something known to my doctor and my bank (I make one up for the internet world).

    Well, I'm here to say you can live a full and complete life without FB. Those distant relatives stay distant unless you and they are motivated to email, text or - gasp- write letters.

    ReplyDelete

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