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Thread: Data owns the (electoral) future

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    Council Member davidbfpo's Avatar
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    Default Data owns the (electoral) future

    A lengthy article on the theme that:
    A shadowy global operation involving big data, billionaire friends of Trump and the disparate forces of the Leave campaign influenced the result of the EU referendum.
    It is from The Guardian, but parts of the jigsaw assembled have appeared elsewhere and in particular the idea of a 'Plutocratic Insurgency' (threads amalgamated just on:Plutocratic Insurgency ).

    Another thread points more at Russian-directed cyber / information operations. Perhaps we need to look closer to home? Awhile back now one person named, Steve Tatham appeared here a couple of times re Afghanistan and IIRC SWJ articles. See for SWJ:http://smallwarsjournal.com/search/node/tatham

    It also reveals a critical and gaping hole in the political debate in Britain. Because what is happening in America and what is happening in Britain are entwined. Brexit and Trump are entwined. The Trump administration’s links to Russia and Britain are entwined. And Cambridge Analytica is one point of focus through which we can see all these relationships in play; it also reveals the elephant in the room as we hurtle into a general election: Britain tying its future to an America that is being remade - in a radical and alarming way - by Trump. There are three strands to this story. How the foundations of an authoritarian surveillance state are being laid in the US. How British democracy was subverted through a covert, far-reaching plan of coordination enabled by a US billionaire. And how we are in the midst of a massive land grab for power by billionaires via our data. Data which is being silently amassed, harvested and stored. Whoever owns this data owns the future.
    Link:https://www.theguardian.com/technolo...cked-democracy
    Last edited by davidbfpo; 05-08-2017 at 07:51 PM.
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    So was the Brexit vote entirely the work of UK citizens or from outside money and personnel/companies.....

    Again with information warfare one has to chase the money to fully understand who is behind any referendum movements these days.....

    A valid question remains though was Brexit a dry run for the US elections....

    BTW...CA/SLC is trying to sue the Guardian to stop an investigative article on their involvement in Brexit from being published.....claiming EU law protection which no one ever has heard of including EU themselves........
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    Last edited by davidbfpo; 05-15-2017 at 08:17 AM. Reason: Moved from Russian Cyber thread.

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    GOP firm leaks personal data on >198 million US voters incl home address, birthdate & phone numbers‼️

    APPEARS GOP has no explanation on just how they aquired 198M individual datasets....

    http://gizmodo.com/gop-data-firm-acc...-ne-1796211612


    Political data gathered on more than 198 million US citizens was exposed this month after a marketing firm contracted by the Republican National Committee stored internal documents on a publicly accessible Amazon server.

    The data leak contains a wealth of personal information on roughly 61 percent of the US population. Along with home addresses, birthdates, and phone numbers, the records include advanced sentiment analyses used by political groups to predict where individual voters fall on hot-button issues such as gun ownership, stem cell research, and the right to abortion, as well as suspected religious affiliation and ethnicity. The data was amassed from a variety of sources—from the banned subreddit r/fatpeoplehate to American Crossroads, the super PAC co-founded by former White House strategist Karl Rove.

    Deep Root Analytics, a conservative data firm that identifies audiences for political ads, confirmed ownership of the data to Gizmodo on Friday.
    Dulles, VA & Alexandria, VA., Aug 13 - A leading center-right data organization, Deep Root Analytics (DRA), announced today a partnership with FourthWall Media™, the largest independent source of cable set top box viewing data. Deep Root is the first Republican analytics firm to leverage FourthWall’s TV viewing data to micro-target political campaign television advertising. FourthWall Media, through its MassiveData division, maintains a panel of 4.7 million individuals in over 1.8 million homes.

    “Television continues to be campaigns’ dominant communications medium, but it has typically been the least data-driven,” said Alex Lundry, Co-founder of DRA. “Campaign resources are a precious commodity, so it is important that political television buying decisions be better informed by data. We need to approach big media with big data. Big data allows us to target our most important voting segments with messages that not only inform and influence, but create passion. Integrating FourthWall’s exclusive data with Deep Root’s unique blended media database will help campaigns target their paid media in a far more effective way than they had previously. What FourthWall’s exclusive second-by- second viewership data gives us is the ability to spend our advertising dollars more effectively and to target our message into individual homes for maximum political impact.”

    In the upcoming election cycle, Republican candidates and conservative causes will be more successful if they can better target critical voters with the right message,” said Sara Fagen, Co-founder of DRA. “When we combine our unique voter segmentation with FourthWall’s second-by-second viewing data, we can dynamically match a voter’s interest in issues with their viewing habits to build persuasion models that allow us to more effectively and cost-efficiently make our case to the American people. This is a critical advantage the GOP needs going forward and we look forward to working with FourthWall to employ their unique data.”

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    Quote Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09 View Post
    GOP firm leaks personal data on >198 million US voters incl home address, birthdate & phone numbers‼️

    APPEARS GOP has no explanation on just how they aquired 198M individual datasets....

    http://gizmodo.com/gop-data-firm-acc...-ne-1796211612

    HOW is it possible that a single "GOP big data firm" literally parks the personal data of virtually ALL American voters on an Amazon cloud server without any security to speak of...not even password enabled.....

    Let's not even get into the issues of Privacy law violations....

    The bigger question is WHERE did they get ALL the personal voter data even on Democratic voters??????

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    Quote Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09 View Post
    HOW is it possible that a single "GOP big data firm" literally parks the personal data of virtually ALL American voters on an Amazon cloud server without any security to speak of...not even password enabled.....Let's not even get into the issues of Privacy law violations....The bigger question is WHERE did they get ALL the personal voter data even on Democratic voters??????
    The most disturbing part of this isn't the volume & detail of voter info that was compromised......It's the collection of it.

    The leaked info "paints a detailed portrait of virtually all of America’s 200 million voters."https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/06/19/republican-contractor-database-every-voter-exposed-internet-12-days-researcher-says/


    "These political data firms might as well be working for the Russians."
    ...do we know they aren't?

    This is a such an important point: Taken to this extreme level, voter targeting really is a threat to democracy.

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    Quote Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09 View Post
    The most disturbing part of this isn't the volume & detail of voter info that was compromised......It's the collection of it.

    The leaked info "paints a detailed portrait of virtually all of America’s 200 million voters."https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/06/19/republican-contractor-database-every-voter-exposed-internet-12-days-researcher-says/


    "These political data firms might as well be working for the Russians."
    ...do we know they aren't?

    This is a such an important point: Taken to this extreme level, voter targeting really is a threat to democracy.
    Appears that the loss of 198M US voters' personal information and voting information which could provide a rather detailed voter preference which was "stolen" by unknown persons BECAUSE it was left on an open unsecured location on an Amazon cloud server for 21 days was handled by a US defense contractor SCL...

    SCL used to be owned by Trump special advisor Bannon before he sold it to Cambridge Analytica now owned by billionaire Mercer....

    SCL is now being investigated by UK concerning this data breach which effected virtually ALL US voters.....

    UK Information Commissioner opens a formal investigation into the use of data analytics for political purposes:
    https://iconewsblog.wordpress.com/20...al-purposes/#…

    They are investigating as well the connections between the US defense contractor SCL and CA and whether they are actually the same company just different names...

    SCL and CA pride themselves in being "big data" and storage companies YET this was a massive breach and caused by themselves...

    Some of the data sets that SCL had ......
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    IMHO this is one of the worst data breaches in the last ten years of really bad data breaches YET it has not rated much comment in US MSM......

    When coupled with data mining taken from social media on virtually all of these voters it is extremely easy to formulate and distribute targeted political media messaging much in the fashion of informational warfare which is the core of the Russian non linear warfare....

    So it begs a serious question...if hacking of voter databases is considered to be "bad" as that would be seen as "direct meddling in an US election".....WHAT is then the effective use of targeted media directed against voters THAT could in fact get them to change their vote????

    This data held by SCL when coupled with social media big data mining can in fact produce very accurate explicit psychographic scores THAT then can be converted into specific targeting of voters with messaging that "appeals" to their psychological voter profiles.

    We are now seeing a modern Gobbels approach to impacting voting habits...

    When one really takes the time to read the Russian doctrine on information warfare...it clearly states the end goal is the changing of opinions, attitudes and thinking of an entire society just not individuals...

    AND if we look at the latest CBS polling also posted here we are seeing a not so subtle shift by a group of voters which had previously been largely negative towards Russian NOW being accepting of Russia and its current actions....

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    Council Member davidbfpo's Avatar
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    Default Moderator at work

    I have copied four posts to this thread from the Russian Disinformation plus thread, as they clearly fit here and could be lost elsewhere.
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    DHS Official: Russia Targeted 21 States for Election Hacking.
    https://www.wsj.com/articles/russia-...el-1498037401#

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    Schiff to @maddow: House Intel is interested in finding out whether there was Russian support in the Trump campaign's use of data analytics.

    THIS is the same question being raised now in UK....on the Brexit vote

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    Council Member davidbfpo's Avatar
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    Default Did it happen here? Stay calm UK

    Slowly the debate on data capture and electoral politics is moving along in the UK, although to the discomfort of the parties in parliament.

    At the weekend a columnist asked whether Russia had influenced the Brexit Referendum and the General Election:
    Here’s a puzzle: although Britain is the only country to do exactly what Russia wanted it do and leave the EU, there is no British equivalent of the FBI investigation. Journalists have tried to fill the gap.
    Link:https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...ladimir-putin?

    In parallel there is a steady accumulation of information on mysterious cash transfers in the Brexit referendum, ostensibly received by the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in Northern Ireland, from a body few have ever heard of and no-one knows who gave them the money.

    That and more was covered in a recent public conference (podcast and summary):https://www.byline.com/column/74
    Last edited by davidbfpo; 10-24-2017 at 06:14 PM. Reason: 6,200v
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    I am not surprised at all that Russian-sponsored bots have been deployed to serve as foot soldiers in these disinformation campaigns.

    https://www.byline.com/column/67/article/1906

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    Default How FB’s Political Unit Enables the Dark Art of Digital Propaganda

    An article from Bloomberg, which explains near the start:
    Zuckerberg’s social network is a politically agnostic tool for its more than 2 billion users, he has said. But Facebook, it turns out, is no bystander in global politics. What he hasn’t said is that his company actively works with political parties and leaders including those who use the platform to stifle opposition—sometimes with the aid of “troll armies” that spread misinformation and extremist ideologies.
    The initiative is run by a little-known Facebook global government and politics team that’s neutral in that it works with nearly anyone seeking or securing power.
    Link:https://www.bloomberg.com/news/featu...and-crack-down
    Last edited by davidbfpo; 12-26-2017 at 01:37 PM. Reason: 8,141v
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