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Updated: March 29, 2018
by Greg Palast
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Greg Palast’s website, Mar. 19, 2018
March 21, 2018
These companies have thousands of data points on YOU!!!
Greg Palast on Mar 18, 2018
The dark art of dynamic psychometric manipulation in politics was not pioneered by Cambridge Analytica for Donald Trump, but by organizations such as i360 Themis, founded by the Koch brothers, and Data Trust, Karl Rove’s data mining operation.
There are two dangers in the media howl over Trump’s computer gurus Cambridge Analytica, the data-driven psy-ops company founded by billionaire brown-shirts, the Mercer Family.
The story is that Cambridge Analytica, once directed by Steve Bannon, by shoplifting Facebook profiles to bend your brain, is some unique “bad apple” of the cyber world.
That’s a dangerously narrow view. In fact, the dark art of dynamic psychometric manipulation in politics was not pioneered by Cambridge Analytica for Trump, but by i360 Themis, the operation founded by… no points for guessing… the Brothers Koch.
Mark Swedlund, himself an expert in these tools, explained in the film The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, that i360 dynamically tracks you on 1800 behaviors, or as Swedlund graphically puts it [see clip above]:
“They know the last time you downloaded porn and
whether you ordered Chinese food before you voted.”
Swedlund adds his expert conclusion: “I think that’s creepy.”
The Koch operation and its competitor, DataTrust, use your credit card purchases, cable TV choices and other personal info — which is far more revealing about your inner life than the BS you put on your Facebook profile. Don’t trust DataTrust: This cyber-monster is operated by Karl Rove, “Bush’s Brain,” who is principally funded by Paul Singer, the far Right financier better known as The Vulture.
Way too much is made of the importance of Cambridge Analytica stealing data through a phony app. If you’ve ever filled out an online survey, Swedlund told me, they’ve got you — legally.
The second danger is to forget that the GOP has been using computer power to erase the voting rights of Black and Hispanic voters for years — by “caging,” “Crosscheck,” citizenship challenges based on last name (Garcia? Not American!!), the list goes on — a far more effective use of cyberpower than manipulating your behavior through Facebook ads.
Just last week, Kris Kobach, Secretary of State of Kansas and Trump’s chief voting law advisor, defended his method of hunting alleged “aliens” on voter rolls against a legal challenge by the ALCU. Kobach’s expert, Jessie Richman, uses a computer algorithm that can locate “foreign” names on voter rolls. He identified, for example, one “Carlos Murguia” as a potential alien voter. Murguia is a Kansas-born judge who presides in a nearby courtroom.
It would be a joke, except that Kobach’s “alien” hunt has blocked one in seven new (i.e. young) voters from registering in the state. If Kobach wins, it will, like his Crosscheck purge program and voter ID laws, almost certainly spread to other GOP controlled states. This could ultimately block one million new voters, exactly what Trump had in mind by pushing the alien-voter hysteria.
The Cambridge Analytica story was first reported by The Guardian and Observer in 2015. Did we listen? Did any US paper carry the story the British paper worked on for years? So, my first reaction reading this story was nostalgia — for the time when I was a reporter with The Guardian and Observer investigations team. We could spend a year digging deep into complex stories, working with crazy insiders. There, in 2000, I uncovered another cyber-crime: Using database matching to purge felons from Florida voter rolls. (None, in fact, were felons; most were Democrats.)
I moved back to America, but found I had to give up any hope of doing true, deep investigative reports for newspapers in my own country. US papers will sometimes re-report Guardian news, but American media almost never initiates deep investigation. And THAT, fear of digging out the truth, is a greater threat to America than Steve Bannon.
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Mercer’s Cambridge Analytica ‘Utterly Sleazy’
TheRealNews on Mar 20, 2018
Britain’s Channel 4 details the dirty tricks that Cambridge Analytica, the data-mining company owned by billionaire Robert Mercer, uses to sway elections around the world. If the story is true, it would mean the company is not only sleazy, but also blatantly criminal, says white-collar criminologist Bill Black.
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Cambridge Analytica Uncovered: Secret filming reveals election tricks
Channel 4 News on Mar. 19, 2018
An undercover investigation by Channel 4 News reveals how Cambridge Analytica secretly campaigns in elections across the world. Bosses were filmed talking about using bribes, ex-spies, fake IDs and sex workers.
Part 2
Cambridge Analytica: Undercover Secrets of Trump’s Data Firm
Channel 4 News on Mar. 20, 2018
An investigation by Channel 4 News has revealed how Cambridge Analytica claims it ran ‘all’ of President Trump’s digital campaign – and may have broken election law. Executives were secretly filmed saying they leave ‘no paper trail’.
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TRNN Documentary: The Real Story of How Bannon and Trump Got to The White House
The Real News Network on November 2, 2017
Steve Bannon was fired from the White House on Friday, August 18th, 2017, but most of the media is missing the story of Robert Mercer, the billionaire that brought Bannon to the White House.
This is the story of Robert Mercer, the far-right billionaire that is a major investor in Cambridge Analytica that data scrubbed Facebook for Trump, brought Bannon to the White House, and made his daughter the major owner of Breitbart News and board member of Cambridge Analytica.
[re-titled “The Bizarre Billionaire that Backed Bannon and Made Trump President – a TRNN Documentary”]
Updated: March 29, 2018
Cambridge Analytica Is Not Alone: i360 and Data Trust Disastrous for Democracy
TheRealNews on Mar 29, 2018
Cambridge Analytica, owned by Robert Mercer, is in the news, but other companies — like the Koch Brothers’ i360 and Karl Rove’s Data Trust — are far more dangerous, says investigative reporter Greg Palast.
From the archives:
Facebook Scandal Blows Away Russiagate by Finian Cunningham
Now Here’s Some Real Interference In Election Campaigns by William Blum
“An Idiot Surrounded by Clowns”: Why Trump (Still) Sits in the White House by Paul Street
Abby Martin and Greg Palast: The Hidden Purging of Millions of Voters
Abby Martin Exposes Steve Bannon
The Only Fake News That Provably Threw The Election To Trump Was Not Russian by Rob Hager
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