Oxford Study: Political Data Mining Companies are Manipulating Elections Around the World — Sharmini Peries interviews Samantha Bradshaw

An extensive new Oxford University study shows that governments, political parties, and NGOs spend well over half a billion dollars around the world to influence elections and public opinion, most of it in a completely unregulated and secretive manner. We speak to the study’s co-author, Samantha Bradshaw….

TRNN
Oxford Study: Political Data Mining Companies are Manipulating Elections Around the World

Sharmini Peries interviews Samantha Bradshaw, senior fellow at the Canadian International Council, where she researches computational propaganda, and a doctoral candidate at the Oxford Internet Institute, where her dissertation is on the government use of social media to spread disinformation.

Adam Ramsay — The Spin War: Cambridge Analytica and Privatized Military Propaganda

Only two years after Tim Berners Lee invented the World Wide Web, he wrote a sentence which, for me, teaches us more about the Cambridge Analytica story than much of the punditry that we've seen since: "just as wealth is no longer measured by the ostentation of wealth but by the secret circulation of capital, so war is not measured by being unleashed but by its speculative unfolding in an abstract, electronic and informational space."

Must-read. Details how the British ruling class is maintaining empire. Why Trumpgate and Russiagate are parts of the same canard, using a decoy to distract.

Mint Press
The Spin War: Cambridge Analytica and Privatized Military Propaganda – You can’t understand the Cambridge Analytica scandal until you understand what its parent company does.

Adam Ramsay

Patrick Cockburn — It’s wishful thinking to blame Clinton’s loss on Cambridge Analytica; Cambridge Analytica has now joined Russia at the top of a list of conspirators who may have helped Trump defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016, leaving the real reasons unexamined

Many people who hate and fear Donald Trump feel that only political black magic or some form of trickery can explain his election as US President. They convince themselves that we are the victims of a dark conspiracy rather than that the world we live in is changing, and changing for the worse.

Cambridge Analytica has now joined Russia at the top of a list of conspirators who may have helped Trump defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016. This is satisfactory for Democrats as it shows that they ought to have won, and delegitimises Trump’s mandate.

In the Russian and Cambridge Analytica scandals, dodgy characters abound who claim to have a direct line to Putin or Trump, or to have secret information about political opponents or a unique method of swaying the voting intentions of millions of Americans.

The most doubtful evidence is treated as credible....

The Independent (UK

It’s wishful thinking to blame Clinton’s loss on Cambridge Analytica; Cambridge Analytica has now joined Russia at the top of a list of conspirators who may have helped Trump defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016, leaving the real reasons unexamined

Patrick Cockburn

Moon of Alabama — Cambridge Analytica And The Manipulation Of People

MoA-ites correctly distrust every word emanating from the mealy mouthed Guardian because it has been used in a vicious campaign to advance the interests of Zionists to the point where the well being of Guardian readers has been relegated below the interests of apartheid Israel.

Nevertheless having a bit of a shufti at the loudly trumpeted Facebook-Cambridge Analytica expose is an essential act for anyone who wants to try to get a grip on how populations are being deliberately manipulated.

There is a relatively easy to digest video here where Christopher Wyllie, a computer scientist, outlines the birth of Cambridge Analytica, Alexander Nix, the CEO and the method used to sell the development of the corporation to Steve Bannon, CA's first customer and Robert Mercer, the Wall Street financier who underwrote the cost of setting up the corporation.

I recommend spending the 13 minutes required to watch the video because Wyllie's summation of what they did and why is horrifying. Lines such as "If you want to change the way a person votes you have to change the culture the person lives within." and "to change a culture, first you have to smash the existing one then grab the pieces and mold it into the shape you want the culture to be"....

Moon of Alabama
Cambridge Analytica And The Manipulation Of People

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See also

Reuters
Cambridge Analytica CEO claims influence on U.S. election, Facebook questioned
Eric Auchard and David Ingram

Greg Palast — 3 Dangers In The Blow-Up Over Cambridge Analytica, Trump’s Computer Gurus

First, this is not a "bad apple" story. The dark art of dynamic psychometric manipulation in politics was not pioneered by Cambridge Analytica for Trump, but by i360 Themis, the operation founded by the Koch brothers.…

The second danger is to forget that the GOP has been using computer power to wipe away voting rights of Black and Hispanic voters for years — by "caging," "Crosscheck," citizenship challenges based on last name (Garcia? Not American!?!) and more — a far more effective use of cyberpower than unconsciously manipulating your behavior through Facebook ads.

The third danger is to overplay the importance of cyberwar techniques in elections. Cambridge Analytica worked for Ted Cruz in the GOP primary AGAINST Trump — and what happened. That Hillary Clinton arrogantly defended NAFTA in Michigan, did not deign to visit Wisconsin once during the campaign, never visited or met with jobless auto workers at a closed plant in Ohio, as Trump did — this had more to do with her loss than computer geeks playing mad scientist in Britain.…

Greg Palast
3 Dangers In The Blow-Up Over Cambridge Analytica, Trump’s Computer Gurus

See also

Zero Hedge
Edward Snowden: Facebook Is A Surveillance Company Rebranded As "Social Media"

Tyler Durden 

Andrew Cockburn — Vladimir Putin: Computer Genius?

The title is snark. The post is actually about modeling behavior and its pitfalls and shortcomings. Short and worthwhile.

Truthdig
Vladimir Putin: Computer Genius?

Andrew Cockburn

Carole Cadwalladr — British courts may unlock secrets of how Trump campaign profiled US voters

In recent weeks, investigators looking at how people acting on behalf of Russia targeted American voters have focused on Trump’s data operation. But although the FBI obtained a court order against Facebook to make it disclose evidence, the exact way in which US citizens were profiled and targeted remains largely unknown.

But British data protection laws may provide some transparency on the company at the heart of Trump’s data operation – Cambridge Analytica – and how it created profiles of 240 million Americans. In January, Carroll discovered he – and a group of other citizens – had the right under UK law to ask for his personal data back from the company, and when it failed to supply it, he started filing pre-trial actions to sue the company under British law. The lawsuit is the result of a unique situation, according to Ravi Naik of Irvine Thanvi Natas, the British solicitor who is leading the case. It arose because although Cambridge Analytica is largely owned by Trump’s biggest donor, hedge-fund billionaire Robert Mercer, and though its vice-president at the time of the US election was Trump’s former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, the company was spun out of an older British military and elections contractor, SCL, with which it still shares staff, directors and a London office....

David Carroll, an associate professor at Parsons School of Design in New York, has discovered a transatlantic legal mechanism that he hopes will give him access to information being sought by both the FBI and the Senate intelligence committee....

“There are so many disturbing aspects to this. One of the things that really troubles me is how the company can buy anonymous data completely legally from all these different sources, but as soon as it attaches it to voter files, you are re-identified. It means that every privacy policy we have ignored in our use of technology is a broken promise. It would be one thing if this information stayed in the US, if it was an American company and it only did voter data stuff. 

But, he argues, “it’s not just a US company and it’s not just a civilian company”. Instead, he says, it has ties with the military through SCL – “and it doesn’t just do voter targeting”. Carroll has provided information to the Senate intelligence committee and believes that the disclosures mandated by a British court could provide evidence helpful to investigators.

It isn't just "Russia" that is involved in the attempt to "manipulate democracy."

There is a saying in the media world, "If it is free, you are the product."

The Guardian
British courts may unlock secrets of how Trump campaign profiled US voters
Carole Cadwalladr

also

News headlines, articles and videos like these highlight the fear and concern which many in our society have over the rising power of the surveillance state. Moore’s Law and the continuing exponential advancement of computing and telecommunications capabilities are (arguably) inexorably drawing us as a culture closer to the singularity. While transformative and unprecedented global digital sharing is empowered by these technological changes, the rise of the surveillance state and manipulative corporations like Cambridge Analytica (which allegedly was a prime mover supporting the electoral surprises of Brexit in June 2016 and the Trump presidential victory in November 2016) are also empowered entities in our culture landscape which we can ill afford to ignore. 

This brings us to the oft cited slogan from Spiderman, “With great power comes great responsibility.”

Moving at the Speed of Creativity
Rights and Responsibilities in an Age of Surveillance
Wesley Fryer
See also

AlterNet
Forget All Those Selfies—Tinder Has Amassed a Lot of Data on Millions Looking For a Hook Up
Sophie Linden

Then there is the censorship threat.

Russia Insider
SYRIANGIRL's Facebook Ban Linked to Russia-gate Twitter Purge? - an Exclusive Interview
Charles Bausman

Zero Hedge
"The Bombs Are Still Falling" - MSNBC Urges Government Censorship Of Social Media "To Protect Democracy"

Tyler Durden

Hannes Grassegger and Mikael Krogerus — The Data That Turned the World Upside Down

"Every message that Trump puts out is data-driven." Fascinating article on massaging Big Data.

Persuasion gone exponential.

Motherboard
The Data That Turned the World Upside Down

Hannes Grassegger and Mikael Krogerus