Random, day-to-day reflections of what it means to live as a member of the human race on a planet which has become as vulnerable as a human body.
Cecile Pineda's books are available from Independent Publishers Group.
Sunday, April 1, 2018
Cambridge Analytica Cracks Facebook and Our Electoral System
by Roger Herried
Updated Note:
The original Cambridge Analytica (CA) research article done by Roger missed a critical CBS story and interview the day after the Guardian story came out.
This missed news story would suggest that the impacts of the role of CA's tactics on the election didn't play as great a role as the article states. However, this doesn't mean that the use of psychographic profiling during elections or the broader impacts of our broken electoral system have gone away, or worse, are being ignored by the msm.
*****
“We ‘broke’ Facebook,” and swung the Brexit vote — Chris Wylie And did it on behalf of Robert Mercer and Steve Bannon.
The
piece has extensive links to content meant to enhance this article. Its
an attempt to broaden the discussion about privacy and our badly broken
electoral system.
The 3–17–18 rehash of the Cambridge Analytica story by The Guardian’s Observer Magazine and the New York Times
may have finally set off a dramatic chain reaction that could reshape
this country’s electoral and media institutions like no other.
A
Canadian PhD (Chris Wylie) and Steve Bannon came together to form
Cambridge Analytica with funding from Robert Mercer allowing it to
obtain the raw data from 50 million Facebook users from Professor
Aleksandr Kogan of Cambridge University, and distill the list down to 17
million candidates, using computer driven psychological profiling that
micro-targeted them with ads either to switch their vote to Trump or not
vote at all. There was an immediate skeptical response from the left
that there is no proof that profiling tactics actually worked. One
author even bought Bannon’s claim that the database wasn’t used (here is politifacts response). There have been calls for Facebook to contact those affected — or investigate to see if they were impacted.
How many people even remember that Facebook was caught just a few years ago with their phone app that allowed them to record your conversations? Or even more dramatic that by 2014 Facebook had already been conducting experiments on its users on how to manipulate users mood, even going so far as to openly claim
that Facebook would become one of the most powerful political election
tools ever. And lest we not forget, the Trump campaign gave Facebook $70
million during the final weeks of the 2016 election with Facebook’s
employees actually embedding at Trump’s digital headquarters set up by
Jared Kushner.
The first decent alternative media piece on the scale of the Cambridge Analytica (CA) hack and Facebook’s involvement was written by Roberto J. González
at Counterpunch. Facebook’s model of selling people’s personal
information to advertisers is only the tip of the iceberg on this as
there can be no doubt that they are also giving it to government
agencies. Many more have since followed for example:
Buried in the original Guardian piece by Carole Cadwalladr
was Chris Wylie’s explicit details about the scandal that exposes CA’s
public claims as lies that led to their CEO being fired within days. It
laid out the even more explosive details about the SCL Group
(the UK military cyber warfare group and connections that CA was based
on) and how two Cambridge University psychologists (Kosinski &
Stillwell) designed the Facebook quiz that could be used to quantify
five personality traits — Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion,
Agreeableness and Neuroticism that could be used to build personalized
ads, attacking an estimated 17 million voters the same way that Reagan
and the Stanford Research Institute came up with strategies to split off
union workers in 1980 but in a much more targeted way (see below for
more background on this.
But then Mathew Hindman was able to interview Aleksandr Kogan,
the Cambridge professor who gave Cambridge Analytica the massive
database he’d taken with Facebook’s permission. He gave Hindman details
on how the data mining (psychographic profiling) worked and how good it
was in identifying party affiliation or the individuals personal
psychology. For a bit of mind bend, go google psychographic profiling or
read this article that includes below CA profile data sheet.
CA Personal Profile spreadsheet from 5–18–17 Quartz Article
As demonstrated by this story on gerrymandering,
the republican agenda of profiling Americans is far more about voter
suppression than about getting the target to switch preferences — so
Trump’s ongoing attack meme “Crooked Hillary” would be reinforced many
times over when FBI director Comey’s announced their investigation the
week before the election that resulted in nearly a 10 point drop in
support for Clinton. That drop was further exacerbated with publication
of the Wikileaks story describing how Clinton had taken control of the
Democratic National Committee in order to torpedo Bernie Sander’s
campaign. Even so, Sanders received over 40% of democratic primary
votes — so why would the “Crooked Hillary” meme work? This was America’s
dirty political system at work — not “the Russians.”
The Broader View — Our Rigged Electoral Process
This
story isn’t just about how the U.S. came to elect a billionaire
egomaniac as president, but how our electoral system has been destroyed
by America’s elites. It all started with the 1971 Powell memo, moved into second gear during the Reagan era that included the formation of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News Network.
It picked up speed with the theft of the 2000 election that was quickly
followed by 9/11, and has now jumped into high gear. It took Adam
Curtis’ Century of the Self BBC documentary
(that has never been shown by any major U.S. media outlet) to present
the historic role of the corporate media’s use of subversive public
relations tactics to poison our electoral system, not to mention
creating a consumer hell. The video lays out the evolution of public
relations from the days of Edward Bernays and Walter Lippmann (who coined the concept of stereotypes and the role of journalism and an enlightened public) and documents how the Stanford Research Institute
used computer generated databases and psychographic profiling of
self-centered baby boomer behavior to identify Reagan democrats in the
1980 presidential election. It has not stopped since then — even Obama had his big data voter machine.
Like
any two bit magician (anyone remember the Wizard of Oz?) the corporate
media has self censored its own domination of our electoral system and
in turn is desperately trying to distract us with Russiagate. From the
historic role of voter suppression of all kinds (Jim Crow, Political PACs, Gerrymandering, work day voting, negative attack strategies etc.) to Citizen’s United
or the outright theft by the Supreme Court in 2000, the biggest scandal
of all is how the corporate media refuses to address its own role in
shaping this country’s two party fiasco. Back during the McCain Feingold
debates on electoral reform that was broadcast by C-Span, a
representative stood up and said that nothing will change as long as the
media which is the biggest opponent of campaign financial reform (its
biggest profits come during the presidential horse races) controls the
arena the game is played in. Google and Facebook know this as they are
shooting to take over as the delivery vehicle for that big pot of money
but does the American voter have even the slightest clue?
Predictions
suggest that over 50% of political finance money will go to social
media companies like Facebook by 2020. During the 2016 election, the
media was openly claiming that their news coverage of Trump’s behavior
was worth over $5 billion. They even had their own October surprise as another in a long history of such moves for Trump with the Access Hollywood Tapes
but then we had the Wikileaks and Comey investigation of Clinton that
was the main reason (voter suppression) for people not voting for
Crooked Hillary (Trump’s winning meme).
Nearly 40% of eligible voters stayed home — a figure that has remained
at this level or below it for over a century, yet there has been no
attempt to resolve the problem institutionally (imagine if the public
school system ignored the fact that 40% of the country’s kids weren’t
showing up for school).
But the story doesn’t end with its
impact to our electoral institution but also drills into the heart of
the growing fourth amendment crisis around privacy and how nearly an
entire country has been brainwashed into thinking that they have nothing
to hide by letting Facebook collect and sell what we do online.
Apologies, but our privacy as well as the right to bare arms were
originally enshrined because of rogue behavior by the British government
and its chartered corporation, the East India Trading Company. When it
comes to privacy, the dark side as exposed by Wikileaks and Snowden is
willing to both kill opponents and undermine legitimate civil ones and
hide the fact it is going ahead with deploying computer algorithms in military applications, prison systems, jobs and what Google and Facebook think we should read or not read that is pushing us into a negative form of tribalism.
The hackers that could breach our private data on Facebook and other
sites and steal our it are no longer just a bunch of punks but
governments both here and around the world.
NSA Political Cyber warfare Plan — Ed Snowden release
If
the MSM truly wanted to educate the public about the historic evidence
of vote tampering in a true and honest way, it would have to start with
this country’s long standing interference in other country’s elections
or at least start to tabulate some of the other, more egregious examples
of foreign interference. For example back in the months just prior to
Obama’s election foreign nationals from India
flooded democratic representatives across the U.S. in an aggressive
campaign to remove the US ban on India over its nuclear weapons program.
Those bribes worked and democrats caved in to the republican strategy.
The ongoing Russiagate (Bill Moyer’s Timeline)
campaign by part of the liberal media is a desperate attempt to remove
Trump and for that reason alone is a worthy project if it actually ousts
him, but also because it keeps a spotlight on our electoral
system — where it should be the job of the alternative press to fill in
the missing narratives — items this piece barely brings into play.
During
the 2008 presidential election, the Obama campaign hoodwinked the
progressive left with its own unique play on identity politics. But from
the day he excommunicated Rev. Wright up until his chief staff Rahm
Emanuel pulled the plug on the massive blog that had millions of users
who had been promised a direct line of input to the Obama
administration, an immense hole in the future of social media was ripped
open almost before it ever got off ground. Major sites like Newsvine
(that was bought by MSNBC and then shut down) had immense numbers of
democratic activists that were able to shoot down the criminal tactics
of republicans almost on a daily basis, resulting in a far different way
to stop the traditional dirty tricks the right wing has long been known
for. The star chamber tactics at Newsvine against the left,
environmentalists and union organizers was a sobering example of the
DNC’s own dirty politics.
The Cambridge Analytica scandal is
an important symbolic event that should be taken seriously on its
face — as it represents the growing power of social media and the loss
of privacy that our society should have never have been forced to opt
into. And last but not least, during the last budget bill, the media
completely buried the importance of an attached rider called the CLOUD Act.
This act is even worse than the Patriot Act because it is designed to
get around government spying laws by allowing foreign allies to do the
dirty work our own laws block them from doing.
What can be done?
Consider closing your Facebook account down — or strip it of all your personal information.
Move toward “meaningful transparency” by ensuring that users “have access to and control over their data”;
Protect
users’ personal information by providing “end-to-end encryption” that
would prevent corporate and government surveillance;
Cease collecting and storing data that “isn’t necessary for your product or business”;
Provide
equal protections to all communities and stop collecting “information
that is vulnerable to misuse,” like immigration status and political
views; and
Support
“laws that require a warrant before the government can demand
information about your users” and “reforms that curtail mass
surveillance.”
3.
Don’t use Facebook for political organizing — let representatives from
formal groups do the organizing — go elsewhere that promises not to
track your political activity
6. Support public ownership of internet service providers that agree to do opt out vs. opt in data collection
7. Demand that all social media sites have an opt out policy and that they never sell or release your data
8. Tell your friends about the Cloud Act and demand its removal.
9. Learn how to delete your browser cookies on a regular basis — leave cookies in place for sites that have passwords.
10. Support digital rights groups like Electronic Frontiers Foundation.
11.
Don’t rely on any one search engine (google — Yahoo or Bing) for
searches. Note that all of them inject tracking services every time you
do a search. Duck Duck Go is an alternative search Engine.
12.
Post a statement up on Facebook that you don’t want your data sold to
anyone. Many people don’t watch commercial TV because they are acutely
aware of that model’s design to sell you as product to advertisers. The
same goes for Facebook and any site that has fallen into the Google and
hundreds of other tracking companies — the above privacy badger can be
used to shut down the most invasive of them.
13.
If you do any kind of activist work — please learn the ropes about
Virtual Private Networks (VPN)’s and that you will need to bypass the 5–9–14 spy networks to be serious.
14. Make sure you use strong passwords and be careful of password managers as hackers are learning how to break into them.
The Nature Conservancy pointed out hat under the new budget, the line item supporting the Land and Water Conservation Fund and other conservation wins total an increase of $25 million.
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