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The Cambridge Analytica Files

posted by martyb on Monday March 19 2018, @12:52PM   
from the psychological-warfare-in-peacetime dept.

fritsd writes:

The Guardian has an article about a whistleblower from Cambridge Analytica, who claims to have devised a strategy to "weaponize" Facebook profiles, in order to use those profile for targeted advertising to sway the US elections in 2016.

The Cambridge Analytica Files: ‘I created Steve Bannon’s psychological warfare tool’: meet the data war whistleblower

(The Guardian headline titles are often crap). I read a few older articles, presumably by the same author: she had a series of articles in March--May 2017 about Cambridge Analytica being used as a weapon to convince British voters to vote for Brexit in the referendum. It seems that her investigative journalism encouraged this wistleblower to "come out" and be interviewed by her.

Here's one: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/the-great-british-brexit-robbery-hijacked-democracy

Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others (Churchill), but when does advertising cross the line into psychological warfare against your own population?

Additional coverage at The Register

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Original Submission

• Foreign interests Foreign interests (Score: 5, Interesting) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday March 19 2018, @01:33PM (1 child)

  by GreatAuntAnesthesia (3275) on Monday March 19 2018, @01:33PM (#654876) Journal

  Also worth noting - in both the Brexit and US elections, this Cambrige Analytica service seems to have breached regulations regarding soliciting campaign contributions & assistance from foreign individuals.

  Starting Score:	1		point
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• Re:Foreign interests (Score: 5, Informative) by c0lo on Monday March 19 2018, @02:17PM

  by c0lo (156) on Monday March 19 2018, @02:17PM (#654899) Journal

  Also worth noting - in both the Brexit and US elections, this Cambrige Analytica service seems to have breached regulations regarding soliciting campaign contributions & assistance from foreign individuals.

  That's the continuation of a very good tradition that saw Boris Yeltsin re-elected back in 1996 [wikipedia.org].

  Russia's electoral law limited campaign spending to $3 million for each candidate. The Communist Party did not have the financial resources to overspend the limit. However, estimates of the funds spent by the Yeltsin campaign range from $700 million to $2 billion. A huge amount of money was raised by oligarchs and other business interests. An even larger sum was made available indirectly by the West. Urged by the United States, the International Monetary Fund granted a $10.2 billion loan to Russia in February and enabled the government to spend huge sums paying long-owed back wages and pensions to millions of Russians, with some overdue checks arriving shortly before the June election

  US even hired consultants for the campaign [theguardian.com]

  --
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford

  Parent