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posted by Fnord666 on Monday May 15 2017, @05:24AM   Printer-friendly
from the psyops dept.

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."


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  • (Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @09:02AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @09:02AM (#509868)

    Daily Mail's historical support for the far right.

    Statements like that are the actual problem. Daily Mail is a tabloid that is sold en masse to... mass. You know? - The blue collar workers and fast food restaurants. The branding of this poor class as 'far right' to facilitate suppressing of their voice, is how polarization starts (or how it started).

    I am commenting as AC, because I don't really blame the middle class either. Just like there are people who want to regulate education because they are afraid a larged pool of educated poor class will take away their jobs, there are people who don't like to read and hold education in contempt.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @09:26AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @09:26AM (#509885)

    > I am commenting as AC, because I don't really blame the middle class either.

    lolwut?
    Are you afraid "the middle class" is going to hunt down your nic and spam it or something?
    Its bizzaro logic like that which confirms that anything else you wrote is also highly suspect.

    • (Score: 2) by choose another one on Monday May 15 2017, @01:55PM

      by choose another one (515) Subscriber Badge on Monday May 15 2017, @01:55PM (#510011)

      >> I am commenting as AC, because I don't really blame the middle class either.
      >lolwut?

      Says another personality shard of AC...

      >Are you afraid "the middle class" is going to hunt down your nic and spam it or something?

      Not until they legalize hunting again...