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Companies learning to flip elections perfected their tactics in smaller or emerging countries, such as Latvia, Trinidad, or Nigeria, before turning to markets involving elections in developed nations. Paul Mason suggests that while at the moment there is a lot of angst from people being reminded of how their harvested data is used, it is really the union of private espionage, cracking, and "black ops" capabilities that should be setting off alarms.
Disturbingly, both CA and SCL have high-level contracts with governments, giving them access to secret intelligence both in the US and the UK. SCL is on List X, which allows it to hold British secret intelligence at its facilities.
It now appears that techniques they used in Ukraine and Eastern Europe to counteract Russian influence, and against Islamist terrorism in the Middle East, were then used to influence elections in the heart of Western democracy itself.
Let's be clear about what we're facing. A mixture of free market dogmatism plus constraints imposed by the rule of law has led, over the past decades, to the creation of an alternative, private, secret state.
When it was only focused on the enemies and rivals of the West, or hapless politicians in the global south, nobody minded. Now it is being used as a weapon to tear apart democracy in Britain and the US we care — and rightly so.
From New Statesman: We need to destroy the election-rigging industry before it destroys us
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday March 28 2018, @01:41AM (3 children)
Looks interesting. Odd, though, that this author focuses on the Koch brothers, but I see no mention of Soros. In effect, we have two ideologically opposed rich families fighting for control of the US political machine. Where's the book that exposes that warfare? For that reason, the author is somewhat suspect - there might be some tacit approval of Soros' actions and methods.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 28 2018, @04:46AM (2 children)
Soros does not actually exist. He is creation of the Kock Bros, the Mercer Family, Adelson, and Bill Gates and Peter Thiel. Why, do you think, there is one billionaire bête noire of the right, but dozens of billionaire scumbags trying to subvert democracy through Cambride Analytics and like? Could it be, Runaway, that you are the one who is bamboozled, the victim of fraud and misinformation? Could it not be that you are just enough of an idiot to be taken in by all the bullshit, and then repeat it on an internet forum? Is that even remotely possible?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday March 28 2018, @02:03PM (1 child)
No, 'cause I'm not taken in by your inanities, or your insanity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 28 2018, @11:42PM
Of course not, Comrade Runaway! But that is the first requirement of successful propaganda, the blithe ignorance of the victim that it is propaganda, and immunizing them from all attempts by others to rescue them.