Slate "Potential Lawsuit Could Reveal How Trump Targeted Voters on Facebook and If Theres Any

[NRaleighLiberal]

Connection to Russia"

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2017/10/06/possible_british_lawsuit_could_reveal_how_cambridge_analytica_targeted_voters.html

by April Glaser

Donald Trump wouldn’t have won the 2016 election if it weren’t for Facebook. That’s according to Theresa Hong, one of the main brains behind the digital arm of his presidential campaign. Hong was referring to the fact that Facebook allowed political campaigns to target ads to voters based on data that the social media network collects on users. And Trump’s campaign was masterful at it, in large part thanks to Cambridge Analytica, the data-targeting team that worked to make sure Trump made it to the White House.

While Facebook, Twitter, and Google are now under scrutiny—with Congress and the FBI investigating how Kremlin-backed accounts spread election ads on various online platforms—it’s worth considering how the Trump camp used social networks as well. We already know that Donald Trump Jr. solicited information from Russians in possible violation of election law, but we don’t know the extent of any potential such collusion. A new legal push in the United Kingdom could reveal how exactly Cambridge Analytica—and by extension the Trump campaign—was able to target voters the way that it did, and whether any links to the Russian targeting campaign might exist.

The Trump campaign spent $85 million on Facebook advertising and promotion, and according to Hong, Facebook and Google both sent liaisons to the Trump campaign and Cambridge Analytica to help them better use the tech companies’ ad targeting tools.

Cambridge Analytica is actually the spinoff of a company called SCL, a British behavioral research and communications firm that works with governments and corporations. The company claims to have “up to 5,000 data points on over 230 million American voters,” which it uses to create psychological profiles to “effectively engage and persuade voters using specially tailored language and visual ad combinations,” that appeal to each person on an emotional level.

snip - lots more to read at the above link

[Justice]

1. I am watching this closely as I do a fair amount of work in data privacy

I've long thought about the fact that CA resides in a country that protects personal data of its citizens, but not of others and didn't think we had any recourse.


I admit, I was surprised by this case. "Britain’s Data Protection Act, a subject can ask where a company gets such personal data, why the data is being processed, and who the data is being shared with." I thought you had to be a resident or citizen of UK in order to ask about data - turns out it is anyone.

I am going to look at making request to CA. At this point, he only got the profile, not the underlying data.