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The Guardian has an interesting article describing how Robert Mercer, Steve Bannon and Nigel Farage used techniques developed within the military to influence Britain's vote to exit the EU. Although it appears that the companies involved (AggregateIQ and Cambridge Analytics) are private companies, they have deep roots within the military.
The article describes Britain as a "managed democracy", with major decisions controlled by a US Billionaire.
[ n1: The article is an interesting read, including a reference to how in 2013, Google Founder Eric Schmidt's daughter Sophie suggested Cambridge Analytics get in touch with Palantir, Peter Thiel's data mining contractor for the GCHQ and many US military and intelligence agencies. Sophie currently works at Uber. According to a former employee, in 2013 Cambridge Analytics was just a "psychological warfare firm [...] before we became this dark, dystopian data company". ]
It was with AggregateIQ that Vote Leave (the official Leave campaign) chose to spend £3.9m, more than half its official £7m campaign budget. As did three other affiliated Leave campaigns: BeLeave, Veterans for Britain and the Democratic Unionist party, spending a further £757,750. “Coordination” between campaigns is prohibited under UK electoral law, unless campaign expenditure is declared, jointly. It wasn’t.
[...] The Electoral Commission has written to AggregateIQ. A source close to the investigation said that AggregateIQ responded by saying it had signed a non-disclosure agreement. And since it was outside British jurisdiction, that was the end of it. Vote Leave refers to this as the Electoral Commission giving it “a clean bill of health”.
[...] I asked David Banks, Veterans for Britain’s head of communications, why they spent the money with AggregateIQ. “I didn’t find AggegrateIQ. They found us. They rang us up and pitched us. There’s no conspiracy here. [...] Their targeting was based on a set of technologies that hadn’t reached the UK yet. A lot of it was proprietary, they’d found a way of targeting people based on behavioural insights."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by kaszz on Monday May 15 2017, @06:08AM (10 children)
The problem is that non-transparent and non-elected billionaires interferes with the democratic process. They might in fact be declared enemy of the state.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday May 15 2017, @07:39AM (3 children)
The problem is that non-transparent and non-elected billionaires interferes with the democratic process.
How? All the stuff mentioned so far has been quite within the democratic process. As usual with these things, I think the problem is rather that you don't understand what a democratic process is.
They might in fact be declared enemy of the state.
Sounds promising to me. Not seeing the alleged downside here.
(Score: 2) by jimshatt on Monday May 15 2017, @10:07AM
Of course, gray area and quite hard to prove. But still.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Monday May 15 2017, @02:36PM (1 child)
The UK doesn't have a first amendment.
Because money is not considered free speech, there are laws limiting expenditures on campaigns.
But to answer your question: democracy requires transparency. This was anything but transparent.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday May 16 2017, @02:02AM
But to answer your question: democracy requires transparency. This was anything but transparent.
The obvious rebuttal to that is the secret ballot.
Let us note here that no one has the power or authority in a democratic society to determine what you are thinking, particularly not to punish you for those thoughts. So the human brain is another black box which is required in this land of transparency.
The UK doesn't have a first amendment.
Because money is not considered free speech, there are laws limiting expenditures on campaigns.
We already know that the UK's lack of a first amendment is anti-democratic. So that doesn't go far in any argument about the preservation of democracy.
And my view is that laws limiting expenditures are similarly anti-democratic. We can see that in the story where various wealthy parties apparently have found ways around these laws. Sure, there is considerable speculation that this is illegal behavior, but I doubt anyone will be punished for it (which is the standard of whether something is actually illegal). And when the rules and enforcement change to make the latest generation of such manipulations illegal, they'll evolve new strategies to work around these obstacles. So ultimately such rules are merely ways to tilt the political field to the advantage of the wealthy. But that is the point of democracy right? /sarc
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @10:56AM
That's enough about the EU!
Certainly an enemy of nation states, those in the 3rd world trapped in poverty by protectionist trade policies and any foreign entity having to collect EU purchase tax when they sell to EU consumers. Anyways - that's enough about the EU!
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @01:51PM
Yes, let's declare George Soros enemy of the state. Send in Seal Team Six, and put one between his droopy eyes.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday May 15 2017, @02:59PM
I generally agree with you, and the influence of business interests within many western democracies is getting out of control.
On the other hand, there's definitely some significant "spin" here -- just look at the headline: "Military... Techniques" -- ooh, scary authoritarian stuff! "Psychological Techniques" -- ack, I won't even know if I'm being influenced?! Are they hypnotizing me?
Here's the reality (as weirdly noted by Runaway in a post below): there have been coalitions between corporations and governments and psychologists for at least the past 75 years. Almost all advertising today -- political or otherwise -- uses "psychological techniques." I'm sure some of them were developed in military sources, but I'm not sure what that adds to this story other than a greater chance of incompetence. (Recall that PSYOP crap dealing with ESP and all sorts of other weirdness was intensively pursued by military "psychological" research for decades.)
I'm not at all saying this isn't a significant story. But the story is perhaps who did was using influence, how much they were investing, etc. -- NOT that there were (spooky! scary!) "military psychological techniques" involved.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @03:50PM (1 child)
exactly how is this different from every election / referendum ever held? Is it just because it went the opposite way to your liking?
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday May 15 2017, @05:05PM
The problem is that they are non-transparent and have no democratic legitimacy. Some of these people don't even live in the country nor are they citizens.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 16 2017, @07:36AM
Suppose I tell a few friends on Facebook to BREXIT. Have I interfered with the democratic process?
What if I carefully select ethnically British people who seem to be in danger of losing their jobs?
To what extent have I interfered with the democratic process? How much of an enemy of the state am I? Do I have to influence a million people to qualify? Might 42 be enough? Does it matter if BREXIT wins or not?
If I'm a billionaire (eh, thousand millionaire?) spending 5 million pounds to stop BREXIT, am I an enemy of the state? What if I spend it in favor of BREXIT? What if the other side has 10 people each spending 7 million pounds, for a total of 14x what I'm spending, so I haven't even managed to even things up?