Worth starting a separate thread about this?
Their involvement appears to permeate through everything in the last few years. Trump, Brexit, elections around the world. Looks like this story could run and run...
Will this be the last straw? Will people start taking their own privacy seriously?
Thoughts?
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Comments
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Oops, wrong thread
I want to echo what @PragueAddick said better than I will, this was around a year of investigative journalism by The Guardian/Observer (and the New York Times as well). Regardless of what you think of their Editorial Boards or Op-Ed sections, it is so important that if you can you pay for journalism. It helps funds things like this.
They also laid out how they can evade scrutiny using outside contractors & secure emails that shred after 2 hours.
Channel 4 excellent at picking up how the democratic vote is manipulated & rules twisted & broken. It won’t overturn previous votes but tries to prevent the same thing happening in the same way next time.
Compelling stuff.
Is it just like a bit of PR but done in a dodgy way?
I've never really been into social media - I've got a facebook page (but probably only post on there a couple of times a year) and not into twitter. Just can't see why you'd want to share the minutiae details of your life & why anyone would want to know about them. It seems like CA have picked up on the ways all these things are linked & can get people to divulge stuff that is very interesting to political parties, large corporations, governments etc. Well folks, you all wanted your "friends" to "like" you....
As I see it there are several strands to their wrongdoing. Important to start from the standpoint that there is nothing wrong with using social media to target messages more accurately than mass media advertising can do. That is fundamentally what Facebook and Google offer as businesses. However
- CA have gained access to data people who have not given their permission. They may have your detials because you are simply a friend on Facebook of someone who supports Trump, or Jacob Rees- Mogg. Or worse you simply played a game on a Facebook App with such a person.
- CA boasted that having got this massive cache they sent suitable targets messages which were manifestly fake news.
- Where they don't have enough fake news, they create some, using entrapment. Sending Ukrainian girls around to the house of the targetted politician works very well accoring to Nix, on camera. Yes, I should think it does...
- they are likely to have driven a coach and horse through the electoral budget rules in the US, and for sure in the UK (since these rules are overwhelmed by the new developments in social media)
- although it is not in the current story, the Guardian will be back to Dominic Cummings (Leave EU head honcho) with some more questions about his involvement with CA. Bet the house on that.
PS, I welcome corrections or additions to above, I am still struggling to take it all in.
What about Killary and her emails?
Nix is a small cog in this, but has other outlets for his shady dealings as a director, along with members of the Mercer family in Emerdata Limited, recently set up. Regardless of whether their power is real or bravado, I suspect these businesses will fall away, but the players will continue their practices in the shadows.