Cambridge Analytica dismantled for good? Nope: It just changed its name to Emerdata The company formerly known as Cambridge Analytica shocked the media today when it announced an immediate shutdown and liquidation of its business. That "shutdown," however, may be short-lived as official documents indicate those behind the controversial analytics company will be launching as a new firm with a less-toxic brand …
Sort of like when Blackwater become Xe Academi, lose the name with the tainted rep but the same people will run it and the same shady stuff like continue to be done.
I'm sure CA's Facebook user lists will be used at the new company, but it will be kept very hush-hush / need to know so only a handful of high level employees will know and they won't go bragging about it to customers. Instead they'll serve up some spiel about "proprietary AI algorithms that produce results at least as good as what CA did with the Facebook user lists <wink wink>"
No way they'll delete it, that data is too valuable. Besides that data has probably been sold to / traded to / stolen by other firms doing similar work by now, they will see it as a competitive necessity to keep using it.
Cambridge Analytica didn't do anything wrong.
They played by FB rules.
And remember that FB *gave* Obama access freely to the same data.
Yet w Trump's team *buying* access? Everyone is up in arms.
Lets be fair and place blame on the punters who didn't think or care that the free service(s) they got were really stealing their data.
Let me get this straight....
Are you ok with FB capturing data about you and capturing data not just on FB users but others because sites like El Reg link their js code?
Are you therefore OK when they freely share this information w Obama's team?
The researcher who sold the data to CA is the one who broke the rules w FB. Not CA. Nor Trump campaign which paid CA to use the data.
So what's the outrage?
IMHO if you're dumb enough to have FB account... then you have no reason to be outraged. If you don't have a FB account, then you have a reason to be outraged. But lets be clear. Not CA or Trump but at FB
Meanwhile in Cam Anal's offices.....
Nix: We are really in the s*** here, no amount of Ukranian entertainment units are going to get us out of this mess.
Minion: Should we deploy some analytics and advertising gizmo wizadry to get across the message that what we do isnt that bad compared to chucking kittens in a blender and really polish that turd sir?
Nix: No, we need something more powerful than that, something that can only be found in a trailerpark, something born of an unholy union between close relatives and livestock.
Minion: Are you sure sir? Really?
Nix: Yes, call Gumby, he can save the day..............
... about Trump or Obama.
This is a UK tech site, not the Faux News site - we don't care who did worse, we're just pissed off that F*ckbook allowed anyone to do it at all!
This isn't a political issue, it's a moral one! You know what morals are, right? You can tell the difference, yeah? You're not some simpleton with their head up their arse about their personal bogeyman on the other team and who has absolutely no perspective whatsoever and not the least clue what's going on, are you?
"Cambridge Analytica didn't do anything wrong.
They played by FB rules."
That's two different things. CA did do wrong, even though they played by Facebook's rules. Facebook also did (and does) wrong on the same issue.
But let's not forget that the Facebook thing is only a small part of CA's wrongdoing. Even if we ignore it completely, they were clearly engaging in behavior that was wrong however you look at it, and in violation of laws. Have we forgotten the video of the CEO admitting that?
The original headline was, as can be seen here...
Cambridge Anal. plugged once and for all? Maybe not
And as amusing as that was, it was going to set off a few too many corporate web and email filters. Hope people enjoyed it while they could.
C.
True, the company name was a gift.
But "Emerdata" seems immune to such frivolity.
It's aserious company name, where serious people do serious business in an above-board and thoroughly transparent way. No dodgy databases here, nosir.
Is it just me that keeps typing it as "enemadata" ?
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It does sound like a wiki for Emmerdale, where people can get into real detail about Alan Turner's Range Rover, Seth's sideburns and when Eric Pollard used to peddle antiques from a Citroen ZX.
Alan Turing drove a Range Rover?
I'd be happy just looking at pictures of Jasmine all day - never could watch the show without subtitles.(Though not as bad as those shows with scottish accents that they have to re-dub for the U.S.A. market)
That's the way that scum like this operate.
From their statement:
"Cambridge Analytica has been the subject of numerous unfounded accusations"
True. And numerous well-founded accusations, which they conveniently ignore.
"despite the Company’s efforts to correct the record"
I've seen a lot of these attempts -- and they were absolutely pitiful and insulting.
"has been vilified for activities that are not only legal, but also widely accepted as a standard component of online advertising in both the political and commercial arenas,"
(in addition to being vilified for their illegal and non-widely-accepted behaviors)
They're not wrong in claiming that many of the nefarious things they were up to were legal and common practice. However, they're wrong in thinking that is an effective defense -- these are activities that they should be vilified for. The sad thing, in my view, is that most of the other organizations that do similar things are not being vilified as well.
Hopefully that will change.
This is Whataboutism, which is bad. Just because X happened in the past doesn't mean X is OK in future.
Any campaign that lifted people's private profile info via a seemingly innocent app is v naughty, and now Facebook's been pressured into tearing up its APIs and reviewing 3rd-party software connecting to its platform. No doubt, it'll find some other way to monetize its vast amount of intelligence on people while keeping within the letter of the law and EULAs.
C.
And the rightwing press? The New York Post? Fox? C'mon dude, Infowars is that way -------->
To be clear, if someone told me in 2012 that Facebook was looking the other way while millions of profiles were being slurped, I'd have run the thing and be waiting for the Drudge Report traffic to flow in.
C.
The Guardian didn't ignore it:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/17/obama-digital-data-machine-facebook-election
"Barack Obama's re-election team are building a vast digital data operation that for the first time combines a unified database on millions of Americans with the power of Facebook to target individual voters to a degree never achieved before.
Every time an individual volunteers to help out – for instance by offering to host a fundraising party for the president – he or she will be asked to log onto the re-election website with their Facebook credentials. That in turn will engage Facebook Connect, the digital interface that shares a user's personal information with a third party.
Advertisement
Consciously or otherwise, the individual volunteer will be injecting all the information they store publicly on their Facebook page – home location, date of birth, interests and, crucially, network of friends – directly into the central Obama database.
"If you log in with Facebook, now the campaign has connected you with all your relationships," a digital campaign organiser who has worked on behalf of Obama says."
Note the "consciously or otherwise"....
Michael Habel» he was a lazy do nothing president...
Let me get this right:
John F. Kennedy was a womanizer who stole the election from Nixon;
LBJ was a war-monger who landed the US into a war they couldn't win so that the following administration would look bad;
Nixon was set up by LBJ and villified by Hollywood;
Carter will go to Hell for giving away the Panama Canal.
Ronald Reagan was the best goddamn thing ever to happen to the World and anyone who says otherwise is a godless commie;
G. Bush Senior served his country well;
Clinton's time in office was a national disgrace. He should have sentenced to TREASON!!!!! as he rightly deserved.
G. Bush Junior was a war hero;
Obama was a lazy-do-nothing president;
Trump is the man to bring back Pride to this land of Justice and Supremacy, uproads built by you and me;
Am I right?
History Lesson: Nixon actually undermined US negotiations which would have ended the war in 1968 or 69, but instead managed to extend the war until 1973 wasting talent and treasure all to get elected. All in violation of laws that prohibit private parties from negotiating on behalf of the government. In fact they announced a peace plan just prior to the 1972 election which cemented his victory. And Hubert Humphrey was like Hillary. Not a good candidate.
A candidate needs charisma. Hillary and Hubert had none.
That's some serious mental gymnastics and confirmation bias right there. Apparently you're just willing to look the other way if Republican president did something wrong. You don't support everything someone does just because they have the same beliefs as you. You support the person and not the actions. If they do something wrong you call them out. Otherwise it would be like your best friend telling you they want to sell their belongings and get addicted to heroin and you tell them, I'll support you no matter what you want to do! Come on.
Trump is the man to bring back the Pride to the US? You have GOT to be kidding. He is a national embarrassment. He paid off someone he had an affair with. If Bill Clinton had paid off Monica would you have been supportive, then? He is constantly embarrassing the US on twitter and does his best to divide the country. No president Democrat or Republican has ever embarrassed this country like Trump.
You can't divide the country into two groups like liberal and conservative. Have you met all 300 million+? No? Then you have no idea where people sit on issues. If you don't want other's beliefs forced on you then why is it you expect other people to put up with the same? Stop worrying about what other people are doing.
"Healtcare Insurance. A place where the Goverment, has had no right to get into."
Too true. Insurance should be left in the private sector, the government should just provide healthcare, not insurance.
"Great the NHS is working for you. But, thats not how its done over there, and for good reason too."
The reason being, what, those who can't afford decent healthcare don't deserve it?
The reason being, what, those who can't afford decent healthcare don't deserve it?
That's exactly it. In the country when men are Real Men, etc. it's against the Constitution As Written to suggest that the government should actually have some stake in the welfare of the people. It says in The Declaration "the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," nothing about the Common Good or the welfare of the people.
The rednecks and even the middle classes are still laboring under the massive myth that all you need to do it work extra hard and you too can be $ucce$$full. Why do they like Trump? Because he's a caricature of what they think a "self-made" rich guy is [with all that absolutely dreadful gilding and gold plating everywhere!]
Of course it's it the 1%'s interest to perpetrate that mobility myth - they need the peasants to work and not think about it - same reason they destroyed trade unions.
Oh, there are exceptions, of course, but see https://xkcd.com/1827/
And in a Christian Nation such as the USofA, it's great and worthy and noble to give to the poor, but they don't deserve it, and are a bunch of whiny losers who refuse to work
That reason being Richard fucking Nixon was in bed with Kaiser Permanente.
We NEED a universal healthcare system, and we don't have it, and people - like myself - are at risk of, or actually ARE, suffering any or all of the following as a result of medical care being out of their reach:
Financial Ruination from which not even bankruptcy is salve
Half-assed or worse healthcare
Being summarily dumped on the streets in a hospital gown for want of ability to pay
Death
We NEED a universal healthcare system, and we don't have it, and people - like myself - are at risk of, or actually ARE, suffering any or all of the following as a result of medical care being out of their reach:
Doesn't this argument tend to provoke scorn from other Americans that you're trying to sponge? This is serious if probably poorly expressed question.
The biggest argument for universal healthcare is that it is significantly cheaper and more effective than private. So much so that the champion of small government, economic liberalism The Economist is championing it.
Private health insurance is a drag on the US economy. A universal healthcare system is where we're going to end up and Mr. Trump set that in motion by undermining the ACA, which sort of needed to be undone. Without the public option (Meidcare buy in) to create competition in markets where there is none, the ACA will never work.
Yes, this. In the US, there are very nearly no actual liberals in government or the media. That has been the case since at least the '80s. The range goes from "left-leaning centrist" to "extreme conservative".
In the US, there are very nearly no actual liberals in government or the media.
In the US, nearly all serious participants in civic life are liberals, in the original, technical, political-science sense of "people who believe that civil rights are foundational in a system of government". Free-speech advocates are liberals. Gun-rights advocates are liberals. Small-government advocates are liberals. States-rights advocates are liberals. Religious-freedom advocates are liberals. Those various liberals often disagree with one another, frequently vehemently; but they're all liberals in technical sense.
I don't know what mysterious definition of "liberal" you're using, but it doesn't seem to be any better supported than other vague popular uses of the term. So your claim is basically "no one in the US belongs to a group I have not defined", which is rather pointless.
My point is it was ignored when a Liberal did it, but let a conservative do it and suddenly we need to fix the problem. There's a hypocrisy problem here.
Forget it I sussepect this Rag has that insuffrable Metro Euro Onion loving Liberal bent to it, and anyone that even dares to mutter a word about, how President Trump was the type of leader the USoA so desperately needed after Reagan. And, the Commenttards will burn you severely for it.
Breath a word of defence about Brexit, and how the current goverment is doing everything in its power to subvert that outcom. for the benifit of the few London Banksters. At the behest of every other working slob. and oh boy the Downvotes will surly come.*
I can't wait to see this post go down in flames.
*Though to be fair, as this is a "Tech Site", I guess its a fair comp to those who so vehemently flame away, as one must supose that they know on which side of their bread they have their butter on. I mean its not like Bob, the Fisherman, will ever actually have a need for someone with Oracle Database expreance on their team. So is it any wonder that pretty much any, and EVERYONE who doesn't live in London, or in Scotland. Each with ther own reasons to drink the green milk of the bruxelles cow. Suddenly decided, that the EU was not only a waste of time, and money, but was also becoming more, and more dangerus?
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Breath a word of defence about Brexit, and how the current goverment is doing everything in its power to subvert that outcom
Yay for conspiracy theories! If the facts don't fit your argument then the facts must be wrong!
While I suspect a majority of contributors and commentards are indeed against the UK leaving the EU, at least one author is for it and given the opportunity to make his case. As for the commentards, well most of the arguments for leaving have wilted in the heat of the facts so it must be sabotage!
On the other side of the pond: it's hard for many to accept but the jobs lost to automation are never coming back as a result of a trade war. But at least a trade war gives people something to shout about.
"insuffrable Metro Euro Onion loving Liberal bent to it"
Ok, I can guess that the 'Metro' bit (no need for the capital letter by the way, it's not a proper noun) is because you don't like people who live in cities, and the 'Euro' bit needs no explanation. The 'Liberal' part (again, no need for the capital here, unless you're talking about the LibDems) just marks you out as a yank who thinks that all political systems are the same as yours, again, fine, we're used to that.
The bit I don't follow is the 'Onion' part, assuming you're not talking about the vegetable (which personally I do love, especially in a cheese sandwich), then I guess you're talking about the satirical website? (Again, your wildly inconsistent use of capital letters makes it hard to tell).
So what have the Onion ever done to upset you? Or did you actually mean the vegetable?
PS, when you're counting up the anti-brexit areas of the UK, you missed out Northern Ireland, and most major cities.
PPS most browsers contain spell checkers these days
edit: strike doesn't work all that well with a lower case e ...
Yeah, striking the whole word would have worked better. Even with letters that don't have a horizontal stroke, single-letter strikeout is kind of subtle.
For that matter, I've have used "leek^Wleak" for the ASCII version; I think it's a bit easier to see what you were doing. But that's a matter of opinion.
a Liberal did it
Americans seem to have an alternative definition of 'liberal'
It just didn't get the right press attention at the time, and there wasn't the same simmering concern over privacy running in the background or the Russian interference concerns.
But, perhaps American reporting has gotten so partisan that a 'liberal' news outlet might well have trimmed the story, just as a conservative outlet might have tried to minimised the story if it looked bad for one of their demagogues.
Perhaps that partisan reporting is still something less likely to happen in the U.K....
Any campaign that lifted people's private profile info via a seemingly innocent app is v naughty, and now Facebook's been pressured into tearing up its APIs and reviewing 3rd-party software connecting to its platform. No doubt, it'll find some other way to monetize its vast amount of intelligence on people while keeping within the letter of the law and EULAs.
.. otherwise, it may rename too (I can't see bankruptcy happen :) ). After all, it does work. If Google wants to do something positive it ought to surface data on companies prior to renaming during a search, but I can't see that happen. So, from a search perspective it's an effective solution.
"If Google wants to do something positive it ought to surface data on companies prior to renaming during a search, but I can't see that happen."
Maybe Goofle wouldn't, but Companies House (where UK registered companies official records are freely available to search, at the moment) comes pretty close, including listing a company's previous name(s), listing the directors names, and making it relatively easy to work out which directors have been or are directors of other UK registered companies, and (more recently) recording details of "persons with significant control" (who are not directors but...).
There are other, commercially oriented, services which charge money for company check data, credit reports, etc which might have this stuff packaged ready to go.
Sometimes (quite often) a company doesn't so much change names as get reincarnated with the same business model and same directors. Sometimes even with confusingly similar names (FibreCity<>CityFibre, for example). Sometimes a company going into receivership (e.g. robbing the people they owed money to) is part of the process.
Still, so long as there's money to be made for the greedy 0.1%...
"how do you feel about Barrack Obama doing exactly the same Facebook mining in 2012 during his reelection campaign, and bragging about it too?"
Because the Obama campaign did not do *exactly* the same thing. A couple of excerpts from an article on politifact.com:
"The Obama campaign created a Facebook app for supporters to donate, learn of voting requirements, and find nearby houses to canvass. The app asked users’ permission to scan their photos, friends lists, and news feeds. Most users complied.
The people signing up knew the data they were handing over would be used to support a political campaign. Their friends, however, did not.
The people who downloaded the app used by Cambridge Analytica did not know their data would be used to aid any political campaigns. The app was billed as a personality quiz that would be used by Cambridge University researchers."
"Obama operatives used Facebook data to get users to send their messaging for them, according to Eitan Hersh, a Tufts professor who wrote Hacking the Electorate, a book on Obama’s microtargeting strategies.
Facebook friends lists, tags and photos allowed Obama operatives to identify a person’s close friends, which they then matched with offline public records. (Was this person likely to vote for Obama, but unlikely to get out to vote?) They then told the app users which of their friends they should send campaign messages to.
Cambridge Analytica dialed up what Karpf called the creepiness factor. They combined the survey results with the Facebook data to create psychological profiles they then sold to campaigns. The idea was, if the firm could discover how these people thought, they could target ads toward them.
Cambridge Analytica then sent targeted ads to the users on their database as well as users with similar profiles, identified by Facebook’s Lookalike tool. The friends of the app users weren’t being targeted by their friends, but by the campaign itself. In other words, the consenting middle man was gone.
In his research, Hersh found that neither tactic was greatly effective at persuading people to vote."
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2018/mar/22/meghan-mccain/comparing-facebook-data-use-obama-cambridge-analyt/
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http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2018/mar/22/meghan-mccain/comparing-facebook-data-use-obama-cambridge-analyt/
The Obama campaign dudn’t steal data / use it without user permission or in violation of Facebook Ts and Cs. Nice try though.....
The Guardian says they did, link posted also in another reply; https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/17/obama-digital-data-machine-facebook-election
"In 2008 the Obama digital team was lauded around the world for its groundbreaking work on internet fundraising. Yet in fact, the separation of its data on voters into several distinct silos forced high-level staffers to spend hours manually downloading information from one database to another.
The Obama team in 2008 did a good job in beginning to tear down those walls, releasing extraordinary fundraising energy in the process that raised about $500m online.
This year the Chicago team hasn't knocked down the walls so much as dispensed with them altogether. They have built from the ground up a unified database that incorporates and connects everything the campaign knows about a voter within it.
Jeff Chester of the digital advertising watchdog Center for Digital Democracy, which has been calling for regulators to review the growth of digital marketing in politics, said that "this is beyond J Edgar Hoover's dream. In its rush to exploit the power of digital data to win re-election, the Obama campaign appears to be ignoring the ethical and moral implications."
The Obama database incorporates Vote Builder, a store of essential information such as age, postal address, occupation and voting history drawn from the voter files of 190 million active voters."
Nice try though....
Well, given the lack of public outcry at the time, it did seem that most Americans were okay with it; which probably goes someway to explaining the disconnect we are seeing over GDPR.
From this side of the pond, well that's just the ex-colonists living up to stereotypical expectations; now if they had only accepted the monarchy, being ruled from Westminster, played Rugby and Cricket and drunk tea, none of this would have happened. Obviously, because it has happened on this side of the pond, that just isn't Cricket and something must be done...
FYI, that's a pint of Boston brewed Samuel Adams Boston Lager...
President Obama's math and demographics people were internal to their operation. They didn't leak the information to a hired 3rd party. They just used Facebook's and Twitter's internal targeting tools. President Obama's team didn't generate a surreptitious app to mine the data.
Facebook screwed up big time.
Cambridge Analytica and it's parent company are dead. They announced they're closing the doors. They talked about changing the name (according to the statement), but decided that the damage to the organization was just too great. Read customers are leaving in droves.
Yes, but those customers will just look for someone else offering the same services. Whether it's provided by former CA employees or someone else entirely, business only exists when customers exist.
Blame CA, FB, whatever, they're all complicit. The real criminals are the ones that hoped to benefit from the scam.
If they are so evil, then how do you feel about Barrack Obama doing exactly the same Facebook mining in 2012 during his reelection campaign, and bragging about it too?
Just as disgusted by it. Of course, as a third-party advocate who thinks BOTH of the major political parties are filled by scumbags and criminals, I see little to no difference between them.
But the directors still exist.
Yes, but the ICO has little redress over them. This has been demonstrated by numerous fines imposed by regulators for things like nuisance calls. The regulators have to file a civil suit against the company to try and get the cash and that goes up in a poof of very liberal UK bankruptcy law. Only in the case of criminal offence can you really go after the directors themselves. Otherwise the only option is to stop them being directors for a short period of time.
But people do forget. Years ago in the U.S., there was a big scandal with AIG Corporation which mainly sold insurance. They had recently bought another company, 21st Century Insurance.
When the economic crash hit and Obama was handing out bailout money, they went to Washington and said "Oh, we need money real bad because if we don't get it, we'll fail, and everyone will be out of work, think of the children on the street," etc., etc. After they got, I think, $50 million, they went out and gave their executives bit bonuses and sent them to high-dollar executive retreats (the sort of places the BOFH manages to get sent for "training"). They got caught by reporters who outed them. Congress even voted to tax their bailout at 100%, they were so mad.
AIG changed their name to 21st Century and continue in business today.
AIG changed their name to 21st Century and continue in business today.
"AIG" being American Insurance Group, traded on the NYSE as AIG? The ones selling insurance on aig.{com,co.uk}? That AIG?
"21st Century" being 21st Century Insurance, who AIG bought in 2005, and sold to Farmers Insurance Group (Zurich Insurance, really) in 2009 to pay some of their debts down, that 21st Century?
After they got, I think, $50 million,
Try $180bn.
Is this the AIG that sponsored the football T shirts of the Manchester United football club?
(Prior to them being sponsored by an American badged/Korean built car manufacturer who had withdrawn from the UK just beforehand?)
AIG is very proud of the fact that it paid the Federal Government back. It's thriving now. It sponsors the All Blacks.
I don't think any company is too big to fail. If it leaves thousands without a job, give them the bail-out money instead. I suspect every employee would ahve got at least £1m.
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"It is as if as soon as they become senior managers or above, that they believe their own lies, and everyone else will too."
It's not necessary for them to believe their own lies. They just need to get others to believe them. As that's been what they did for a living it's not surprising that they're continue to do it in their own interest.
What is it with the culture nowadays, where so many people lie and have absolutely no conscience in doing so ?
Simple really, money and power. Add in a bit of "I got mine, so screw you." and so it goes. Look at the "activist investors" or even high government officials in every country.
What is it with the culture nowadays, where so many people lie and have absolutely no conscience in doing so ?
I'm not sure whether people have changed, but I think our awareness of their behaviour has greatly increased. And that includes the awareness of other people inclined to behave that way, creating a snowball effect.
Shits always did lie. In the past, they often got away with it. These days that is increasingly difficult and we get to hear about it.
In the short term, lying is a good strategy. Eventually people catch up, though. In a large society, it can take quite a while for that to happen, but modern communications are shortening that.
Anthony B.Liar and his friends in the early 2000s whitehouse set a dangerous precedent by lying about weapons of mass destruction that did not exist.
The dropping of the petrodollar, and control over oil fields, as well as the share prices of weapons manufacturers and private military contractors were all coincidental.
AC, black helicopters and that.
I've worked in Tech and with "big-data" (yeah I hate that term too!) for a looooonngg time and I've never wanted to brand any company this.. until now! What they have done not only taints the IT industry, but they've also managed to scare the living sh*t out of me.
I've seen companies use this strategy before, when I worked in Financial Services, this was common when a company's name became synonymous with bad practice and they come under threat of investigation or law suite.
What really pisses me off about it though, is the shady accounting practices that go with it, such as the "old" company depreciates its assets (specifically software, data, domains and other IP) and sells it's to the new company for £5k, yet weeks before they would have valued it at £500m (made up figures, just to demonstrate!).. they often try it with physical assets as well (But that is substantially more difficult).
The end result is, it's almost impossible to recover any fines or compensation for the damage they've caused!
After the chaos they have caused, these people should be barred from company directorships!
Now I've ranted, I can sleep in peace!
"I've seen companies use this strategy before, when I worked in Financial Services, this was common when a company's name became synonymous with bad practice and they come under threat of investigation or law suite."
When a company changes it's name, it's safe to assume they are doing it to get away from the horrible stench they created around their old name.
They should be strung up from lampposts and left swinging in the wind more like.
Or burned at the stake.
Or stoned to death.
Or crucified.
Anything so long as it is a very public, very long and drawn out, very painful and utterly humiliating process.
I'm not saying their families should be Keyser Söse'd as well - I'm just thinking about it.
Right, time for me to have a bit of a lie down as well, I think ; )
It'll just be Palantir anyway, if it isn't already... "No it really was just one rogue employee. well more than one actually". We're all buying that, right?
-
Peter Thiel's Palantir Proves Yet Again That It's Sketchy As Hell - Digg
http://digg.com/2018/palantir-cambridge-analytica
"Which reminds me the Quack has given me a tube to fill with a crap sample. The handle provided is ridiculously short."
Which reminds me, the government wants me to give them shit. Now that I'm over fifty, they send me one of those sample collecting kits every five years. Undecided whether to address it to Parliament House Canberra, or to my local members home.
The Insolvency Service may (hopefully) find grounds for disqualification as directors. IANAL but as I understand it they only have to prove unfit conduct (amongst a wide variety of other possible misdemeanours) in order to get disqualification. Simply going insolvent through no fault off your own is excusable but deliberately going bankrupt in an attempt to avoid criminal investigation can be regarded as unfit conduct.
Presumably the C4 production team will have a lot more corroborating evidence beyond that broadcast mentioned earlier.
How about "Oxford Analytica"; it can probably be purchased quite cheaply but it may be somewhat obvious as they seem to have copied the name in the first place.
Alternatively, "Oxford Analytics", slightly more medical, but closer to the business model ("big data").
How about "Harvard Anal", as so many other commenters on this web site seem to be obsessed with one of the university's alumni.
My consultancy fee in this matter is $1fm, please round down; I charge reasonable prices (unless you ask me to write software).
They should, but unfortunately it's easy enough to get them to divulge their most personal information in exchange for a 50 cent rebate with their next purchase of what's actually some piece of worthless tat anyway.
Seen in an Usenet .signature:
- People are not inherently stupid
- Cite?[0]
[0] more commonly expressed nowadays as [citation needed]
People do need to do that -- but that's insufficient. An amazingly complete portrait of you can (and is) compiled by simply spying on your online activities and combining that data with other offline databases, even if you never overtly disclose personal information online.
Reg, please refer to both Companies in all future articles.
e.g. an article about Cambridge Anal.
... Cambridge Anal, (it's phoenix company Emerdata)...
Or,
...Emerdata (once known as Cambridge Anal. before it re-birthed)...
To ensure that they are always associated with each other in site and internet searches.
It is definitely too easy and exactly the technically legal but morally bankrupt move you would expect from Cam. Anal. This does raise an interesting question of legal / financial defense. If you do something so horrible that you are guaranteed to suffer numerous fines and class action lawsuits, are you truly protected from the cost by declaring bankruptcy and selling all of your assets to your own clone?
I mean sure, for PR, it works to nuke yourself as a sacrificial scapegoat and try to hide that you are "starting over". (With all of the same assets.) Even through any losses in doing so, it probably is a much lower loss than what the future would hold for them as a company if they tried to fight it out. But does it protect you financially from liabilities? Legally?
If beyond a reasonable doubt it continues to walk like a goose, honk like a goose, and $#!7 like a goose...
"...has been vilified for activities that are not only legal, but also widely accepted as a standard component of online advertising in both the political and commercial arenas,"
Yep. Yet another proof that legal != ethical.
The villification is entirely justified when the "victim" is, in fact, a villain.
After chewing on "Emerdata" for a bit, I have to say that I do give them props for the name. It fits so many descriptions that it ought to have its own Reg poll. I nominate the first few choices of:
* EMERging from the ashes of our own corpse
* EMERgency corporate rebadge
* EMigratE youR personal data
* Em er a tough un, da ta think?
"unwavering confidence that its employees have acted ethically and lawfully"
I'm willing to believe that everything they did was entirely legal. After all, the whole reason the GDPR is being introduced is precisely because privacy protections have historically not been great. But ethical? The fact that they continue to insist that everything they've done has been ethical standard practice tells you everything you need to know about both these people and the advertising industry as a whole. There's a good reason advertisers tend to get placed several rungs below even lawyers and politicians on lists of trustworthiness.
...and I know nothing will probably come of it, for someone to investigate the local rag sites like the Argus. Visit them and see how many ads you're hit with. Visit them on an Android (probably the same on Apple) and see how many ads you get hit with that redirect you to bogus AV sites or direct to the Play store to install whatever crap the advert was for.
I bet they are collecting as much data on their sites as Facebook. And I suspect not nearly as secure. Worthing Herald is notorious for these bogus ads.
Jennifer and Rebekah Mercer are directors of Emerdata
That's all that need be said. Where the Mercers are involved, there is nothing good in store for non-billionaires - and not all billionaires, at that.1 Anyone else who's part of Emerdata is a fool.
1Just ask the Koch brothers. Not that I feel sorry for them, but they were severely outmaneuvered by the Mercers, and are steadily falling further behind in the struggle to control US culture.
You've never actually spent much time exploring the US, have you?
I'm afraid that one's a little too gnomic, Jake. You'll have to unpack it if you want a specific response.
I didn't say they were succeeding, or indeed that there was anything like a coherent "US culture" to control. I just said that's what they - the Kochs and the Mercers, among others - have been trying to do. That's the game they're playing. They've more or less admitted as much.
It doesn't really matter whether it's an achievable or meaningful goal. They'll do plenty of damage on the way.
@ Michael Wojcik
You've never actually spent much time exploring the US, have you?
I'm afraid that one's a little too gnomic, Jake. You'll have to unpack it if you want a specific response.
Slyly implying that every time anyone in the U.S. hears the word 'culture' they reach for their gun, perhaps? ; )
accenture indeed used to be anderson consulting.
they were trying to break with the accountancy branch since the early 90's since they had to pay up being the more succesful branche to the weaker accountant brother.
in 2001 (the year of enron, or at least december...) they became finally independent.
had to pay andersen, though, quite a bit of cash. (the 15% they had put into custody, pending break away negotiations )
which was money down the drain, after all, we all found out soon after...
A couple of days now, and El Reg is still the only news outlet I've seen that's reporting the full story. I'd like to chalk that up to the well-know fact that our supposedly "free" press has the attention span (and historical memory) of a 9 year-old, but even a primary schooler should be able to see the significance of this. Maybe, as someone intimated in an earlier comment, someone's learned the right lessons from the nearly bungled resurrection of Blackwater (Eric _is_ back on the US government dole again, after all -- amazing how so many million and billionaires wind up with government health care here while the homeless die on our streets).
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