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

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

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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

Breitbart News — The Long Game: Bannon Creates Political Coalition to Advance Populist Economic Nationalist Agenda and Smash the Establishment

Former White House strategist and current Breitbart News executive chairman Steve Bannon has teamed up with conservative donors Robert and Rebekah Mercer to promote insurgent candidates to challenge the GOP establishment and create an organizational apparatus to advance the populist and economic nationalist policies championed by those candidates....

Breitbart News

The Long Game: Bannon Creates Political Coalition to Advance Populist Economic Nationalist Agenda and Smash the Establishment

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

Pam and Russ Martens — The Right Wing Group Behind Donald Trump’s Rise Aims to Keep Fear Alive

Citizens United and the Koch Bros.

Donald Trump played a minor role by promoting birtherism.

The pieces are starting to fit together.  "Draining the swamp"?

Wall Street On Parade
The Right Wing Group Behind Donald Trump’s Rise Aims to Keep Fear Alive
Pam Martens and Russ Martens

See also

But let’s be clear. Trump is not a Keynesian. He is taking a page straight out of Reaganomics. When Reagan came to office, he embarked on a huge tax cut. At the same time, finance was given a free hand and business was deregulated aggressively. As Reagan’s advisers argued, lower tax rates and fewer regulations would create more incentives for business to invest and consumers to spend, and therefore the federal budget deficit will not rise significantly as incomes and tax receipts grow. But while GDP grew under Reagan, unions were undermined and the minimum wage, adjusted for inflation, was mostly allowed to sink. Above all, incomes became much more unequal, the beginning of an income gap, that has continued growing, with only a couple of interruptions until recently, and that has specifically hurt the white working class. The top 1 percent now earns 18 percent of all income—double what it did when Reagan entered office.

Like Reagan, Trump says he will undertake large tax cuts for businesses and individuals. According to the Tax Policy Center, these cuts could reduce tax revenues by $7 trillion over the next ten years. Yet he has offered few plans about how he might cut the budget to reduce the flow of red ink. To the contrary, he plans to raise military spending (like Reagan did), embark on a huge infrastructure program, and—encouragingly—promises not to cut Medicare or Social Security. Instead Trump—supported by one of his main economic advisers, Peter Navarro of the University of California at Irvine—is claiming, like Reagan before him, that the tax cuts will produce a huge pop in economic growth, and therefore that tax revenues will rise rapidly.

The New York Review of Books
Trump: What the Market Is Really Saying

Jeff Madrick