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sunonmars

(8,656 posts)
Tue Mar 20, 2018, 03:29 PM Mar 2018

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




https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/20/cambridge-analytica-execs-boast-of-role-in-getting-trump-elected?CMP=share_btn_tw

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.

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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”.

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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.”

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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.

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“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.”


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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.”

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Achilleaze

(15,543 posts)
1. Dirty Donnie* don't need no stinkin fancyass 'Anal-ickita' to calculate his own nicknames
Tue Mar 20, 2018, 03:34 PM
Mar 2018

He came by them the old-fashioned way: shirking, lying, cheating, stealing, betraying, etc.

* aka Comrade Casino, republican Draft-Dodger-in-Chief

BigmanPigman

(51,430 posts)
4. MSNBC is covering this same story right now.
Tue Mar 20, 2018, 03:37 PM
Mar 2018

Fuckerberg had a company meeting and was not there. He is hiding out. He lost about $6 billion today, but still has only $69 billion. England is trying to track him down too.

Cicada

(4,533 posts)
5. Manafort used lock her up to win in Ukraine
Tue Mar 20, 2018, 04:00 PM
Mar 2018

Manafort’s pro Russian candidate defeated Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko by claiming she broke the law. Asfter she was defeated she was charges and sent to prison for years. As was predictable that destroyed democracy in the Ukraine. Yulia’s supporters revolted, ran Manafort’s guy to exile in Russia. The revolution weakened Ukraine so Russia invaded the east and got what they wanted, ports for their Navy and oligarch businesses. Criminalizing political differences is the surest fasted way to destroy democracy. Manafort was paid more than $100 million to destroy Ukraine for Russia, paid into Cyprus banks, used to launder Russian money to the West. Manafort worked for a Trump for free? I bet money from Russia kept going to his Cyprus secret accounts as he again got a pro Russia candidate chanting lock her up elected. Trump voters are the classic “useful idiots” in the West the soviets have tricked for years. Google useful idiot to see the history. And Russia wins if Hillary goes to jail, they win if Trump goes to jail. Either way tens of millions of Americans will go ballistic, viewing democracy as a failure. Very smart plays by Russia, first in Ukraine then repeated in the USA.

 

LanternWaste

(37,748 posts)
8. Hate 'em or not, these guys are good.
Tue Mar 20, 2018, 04:13 PM
Mar 2018

Hate 'em or not, these guys are good. The intersection of tech and politics in campaigning.

They got the lowest common denominators to vote in a specific direction, then got the less-than-clever demographic to believe everyone was duped (more validating to me if all of us are fools, rather than just me), and are now getting the I'm-more-clever-than-thou demographic to focus solely on Facebook (one tool) rather than the process in its entirety.

 

poboy2

(2,078 posts)
9. ran all the digital campaign, the television campaign and our data informed all the strategy
Tue Mar 20, 2018, 04:22 PM
Mar 2018

Last edited Tue Mar 20, 2018, 11:04 PM - Edit history (1)



Executives claimed they “ran all the digital campaign, the television campaign and our data informed all the strategy” for President Trump.

In the third part of a Channel 4 News investigation into Cambridge Analytica, bosses also talked about:

The full scale of their pivotal work in Trump’s election win
How they avoid Congressional investigations into their foreign clients
Setting up proxy organisations to feed untraceable messages onto social media
Using a secret email system where messages self-destruct and leave no trace
Cambridge Analytica’s involvement in the “Defeat Crooked Hilary” brand of attack ads

procon

(15,805 posts)
10. The only way Republicans can win elections is by lying, cheating and stealing.
Tue Mar 20, 2018, 04:53 PM
Mar 2018

As the demographics keep shifting away from what sort of folks can find something positive in the GOPs message, they will have to use even more underhanded schemes to retain power.

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