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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: 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