Reply to post: Re: No One Cares

Re: No One Cares

Fraud, money laundering, running rough-shod over data-protection, breaking the ministerial code of conduct.

So far, so normal for politics.. Or, it's just (show) business and security theatre. So Facebook let an academic do a poll that allowed waaay more personal data to be exposed. An SNA experiment that co-opted 'friends' into an experiment they had no knowledge of, and thus couldn't consent to.

Then of course the Netflix doc did dived deep into political bias. Results in the Brexit and US votes were fairly close, so if you can influence people on the fence, you can potentially swing elections in your client's favour. Leave Trump won because CA, which was bad/illegal/immoral or just the wrong result. Change the result! It wasn't fair!

But that's politics, campaigning and shone some light on the kinds of dirty tricks played in those markets. Which movies like 'Wag the Dog' also showed. CA used 'weapons grade' campaigning and export controlled dirty tricks. How dare they! Especially when CA's parent offered those services and training to authorised clients, ie the usual practitioners of pysops and political warfare. If a state is doing the regime change thing, it's fine. If it's an NGO, it's not. I have a selection of interesting books specifically on psyops, or looking at things like the Nazi's rise to power on the back of psyops and populist appeals.

So none of this should really have been any suprise. Social media companies went from being stream of consciousness enablers with no 'obvious' route to profitability to the most valuable companies on the planet, thanks to monetising (or weaponising) our data. And political campaigns have all jumped on those systems in attempts to reach and influence voters. One interesting clip showed Nix presenting at a marketing event showing where they bought their data from. CA wasn't, and isn't the only business playing that game, and now CA's gone, there are stil plenty of CA-like outfits who'll help your campaign, for a fee. I also wondered who might be buying CA's assets/IP out of bankruptcy. Then again, AFAIK the ICO and others still have the servers.

Bigger question is what the response should be. GDPR went some way towards tightening up data protection, but it's still pretty weakly regulated. Plus our data is already out there, and we've no real idea where, or how it's being processed. And Facebook, Google, Amazon etc probably want to keep it that way because Zuck needs to buy more of Hawaii. On the political side, life may be harder. So Team Trump apparently spent something like $1m a day on social media. So perhaps there should be spending restrictions, but then there have always been ways around those. Or whether that would work. Some people still seem convinced the Russians did it, but they only spent a fraction of Trump or Clinton's social media budgets. Either they were far more effective, or the effects have been exagerated.. Often by people linked to the losing side of the result.

Personally, I think there should be a legal requirement so every data controller holding or processing my data is required to show me what they hold, and require consent to transfer. Pretty simple to legislate, but would of course face strong opposition because it'd add costs for the data pimps. But it's my data..

But if politicians think this is wrong/unfair.. Stop using the practioners of these 'dark arts'. But then I guess you'd have to hope your campaign opponents follow suit.. Politicians (and the media) aren't always ethical or moral, but often are very good dog* whistlers.

*This is of course not to suggest any politicians are dog-like because that would obviously be racist and/or speciest. And Baltimore is a thriving city. Reports of violent crime increases, abandoned properties or having population/tax-base declines is obviously fake news.