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Category: Politics

How Saudi Arabia and UAE bought influence inside the Trump White House

How Saudi Arabia and UAE bought influence inside the Trump White House

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The New York Times reports: A cooperating witness in the special counsel investigation worked for more than a year to turn a top Trump fund-raiser into an instrument of influence at the White House for the rulers of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, according to interviews and previously undisclosed documents. Hundreds of pages of correspondence between the two men reveal an active effort to cultivate President Trump on behalf of the two oil-rich Arab monarchies, both close American…

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‘Lone DNC hacker’ Guccifer 2.0 exposed as a Russian intelligence officer

‘Lone DNC hacker’ Guccifer 2.0 exposed as a Russian intelligence officer

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The Daily Beast reports: Guccifer famously pretended to be a “lone hacker” who perpetrated the digital DNC break-in. From the outset, few believed it. Motherboard conducted a devastating interview with Guccifer that exploded the account’s claims of being a native Romanian speaker. Based on forensic clues in some of Guccifer’s leaks, and other evidence, a consensus quickly formed among security experts that Guccifer was completely notional. “Almost immediately various cyber security companies and individuals were skeptical of Guccifer 2.0 and…

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Incoming national security adviser John Bolton played role in NRA-Russian gun rights alliance

Incoming national security adviser John Bolton played role in NRA-Russian gun rights alliance

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NPR reports: Incoming White House national security adviser John Bolton recorded a video used by the Russian gun rights group The Right to Bear Arms in 2013 to encourage the Russian government to loosen gun laws. The episode, which has not been previously reported, illustrates the common cause that Russian and American gun rights groups were forming in the years leading up to the 2016 election through former National Rifle Association President David Keene. Keene appointed Bolton to the NRA’s…

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A history of hype behind Cambridge Analytica

A history of hype behind Cambridge Analytica

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Nigel Oakes, the founder of Cambridge Analytica’s parent company, SCL Group, once described his work in this way: “We use the same techniques as Aristotle and Hitler. We appeal to people on an emotional level to get them to agree on a functional level.” As an Old Etonian, his ties to royalty, the aristocracy, and the rich and famous, seemed to foster (at least in his own mind) the notion that he had the skills and connections required for shaping…

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Zuckerberg breaks silence without answering key questions

Zuckerberg breaks silence without answering key questions

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Who are you sharing your life with? #regulatefacebook pic.twitter.com/r7B7Ajkt0V — Jim Carrey (@JimCarrey) March 20, 2018 Alexis C Madrigal writes: Two years and four months after Facebook found out that Cambridge Analytica might have illicitly pulled user data from its platform, and five days after the latest round of stories about the political consultancy’s electioneering, Mark Zuckerberg finally made a statement about the situation. Despite Facebook previously contesting that it was a “data breach,” Zuckerberg offered up the exact solutions…

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After poisoning of former Russian spy in UK, Trump calls Putin to congratulate him

After poisoning of former Russian spy in UK, Trump calls Putin to congratulate him

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Russian state TV is predictably joyous over Trump's congratulatory call to Putin. One day earlier, Kremlin spokesman Peskov used a proverb "Utro vechera mudrenee," which can be loosely translated as "Better sleep on it." State TV host says: "Trump got scared of Peskov & called." pic.twitter.com/0KKbnz9aN1 — Julia Davis (@JuliaDavisNews) March 21, 2018 The Washington Post reports: President Trump did not follow specific warnings from his national security advisers Tuesday when he congratulated Russian President Vladi­mir Putin on his reelection…

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Steve Bannon oversaw Cambridge Analytica’s collection of Facebook data

Steve Bannon oversaw Cambridge Analytica’s collection of Facebook data

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The Washington Post reports: Conservative strategist Stephen K. Bannon oversaw Cambridge Analytica’s early efforts to collect troves of Facebook data as part of an ambitious program to build detailed profiles of millions of American voters, a former employee of the data-science firm said Tuesday. The 2014 effort was part of a high-tech form of voter persuasion touted by the company, which under Bannon identified and tested the power of anti-establishment messages that later would emerge as central themes in President…

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TV executives eager to boost ratings did more than Cambridge Analytica to elect Trump

TV executives eager to boost ratings did more than Cambridge Analytica to elect Trump

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Ross Douthat writes: No doubt all the activity on Facebook and the apparent use of Facebook’s data had some impact, somewhere, on Trump’s surprise victory. But the media format that really made him president, the one whose weaknesses and perversities and polarizing tendencies he brilliantly exploited, wasn’t Zuckerberg’s unreal kingdom; it wasn’t even the Twitter platform where Trump struts and frets and rages daily. It was that old pre-internet standby, broadcast and cable television, and especially TV news. Start with…

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Cambridge Analytica says it ran ‘all’ of Trump’s digital campaign

Cambridge Analytica says it ran ‘all’ of Trump’s digital campaign

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  Channel 4 News reports: Mr Nix boasted about Cambridge Analytica’s work for Trump, saying: “We did all the research, all the data, all the analytics, all the targeting, we ran all the digital campaign, the television campaign and our data informed all the strategy.” Separately, Mr Turnbull described how the company could create proxy organisations to discreetly feed negative material about opposition candidates on to the Internet and social media. He said: “Sometimes you can use proxy organisations who…

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Facebook is in the business of data surveillance

Facebook is in the business of data surveillance

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Following reports on Cambridge Analytica’s harvesting of 50 million personal profiles, Paul Grewal, a vice president and deputy general counsel at Facebook, wrote that “the claim that this is a data breach is completely false.” Zeynep Tufekci writes: Grewal is right: This wasn’t a breach in the technical sense. It is something even more troubling: an all-too-natural consequence of Facebook’s business model, which involves having people go to the site for social interaction, only to be quietly subjected to an…

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The Cambridge Analytica-Facebook debacle: A legal primer

The Cambridge Analytica-Facebook debacle: A legal primer

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Andrew Keane Woods writes: If you’re [Aleksandr] Kogan, or Cambridge Analytica, expect lawsuits, public hearings and general regulatory hell. Maybe, in the extreme, jail time. If you’re Facebook, expect lawsuits, public hearings, and general regulatory hell. Maybe, in the extreme, the end of the firm as we know it. Facebook is hoping to pin this on two bad apples: Kogan and Cambridge Analytica. And bad apples they were. But this is a dangerous strategy. For Facebook, the claim that it…

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China’s new frontiers in dystopian tech

China’s new frontiers in dystopian tech

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Rene Chun writes: Dystopia starts with 23.6 inches of toilet paper. That’s how much the dispensers at the entrance of the public restrooms at Beijing’s Temple of Heaven dole out in a program involving facial-recognition scanners—part of the president’s “Toilet Revolution,” which seeks to modernize public toilets. Want more? Forget it. If you go back to the scanner before nine minutes are up, it will recognize you and issue this terse refusal: “Please try again later.” China is rife with…

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Cambridge Analytica uncovered: Secret filming reveals election tricks

Cambridge Analytica uncovered: Secret filming reveals election tricks

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  The Guardian reports: The company at the centre of the Facebook data breach boasted of using honey traps, fake news campaigns and operations with ex-spies to swing election campaigns around the world, a new investigation reveals. Executives from Cambridge Analytica spoke to undercover reporters from Channel 4 News about the dark arts used by the company to help clients, which included entrapping rival candidates in fake bribery stings and hiring prostitutes to seduce them. In one exchange, the company…

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Facebook’s rules for accessing user data lured more than just Cambridge Analytica

Facebook’s rules for accessing user data lured more than just Cambridge Analytica

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The Washington Post reports: Facebook last week suspended the Trump campaign’s data consultant, Cambridge Analytica, for scraping the data of potentially millions of users without their consent. But thousands of other developers, including the makers of games such as FarmVille and the dating app Tinder, as well as political consultants from President Barack Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign, also siphoned huge amounts of data about users and their friends, developing deep understandings of people’s relationships and preferences. Cambridge Analytica — unlike…

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How Facebook’s stock structure gives Mark Zuckerberg the freedom to ignore his critics

How Facebook’s stock structure gives Mark Zuckerberg the freedom to ignore his critics

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Troy Wolverton writes: If Mark Zuckerberg were a normal CEO, he might — emphasis on might— be fearing for his job right now. At a typical company, a scandal the likes of the one involving Cambridge Analytica’s illegitimate harvesting and possession of data on 50 million Facebook users might have directors asking some uncomfortable questions of the executive team. Those questions might be particularly pointed if that same company and executive team had already been at the center of a…

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