Cambridge Analytica the true deep state?

[Vanadium Gryllz]

So many of you have probably heard about this - Cambridge Analytica are getting some serious heat over Facebook data harvesting, profile targetting, election tampering, bribery, blackmail and all that good stuff.

Said to be involved in Trump, Leave campaign, various other elections around the world.

Weren't they mentioned in the Steele Dossier too?

What do you guys make of all this?

[P3nT4gR4m]

They're going after Facebook. Whole thing is a hatchet job. Cambridge Anal. will get thrown under a bus by their only customer, hopefully saving the taxpayer a few bucks in unpaid invoices but that's just the left hand. Already the propaganda channels are referring to the Facebook "Breach". This is a specific term which, although it existed under the irrelevant Data Protection Act, is actually the chapter heading for 90% of the sections in the new GDPR, which is itself an overblown attempt to fuck over Facebook, Google and the like before they take over the business of governing the planet. Protip: Facebook did not suffer a "Breach" by any definition of the term. Straightforward power play. Might work, might result in the collapse of the democratic system. Well, the facade of the democratic system, at least. Democratic system itself collapsed decades ago but the regular corporate spokesperson raffle still draws in a good crowd.

Cambridge Anal. themselves are talking a good game but what we don't have a metric for is how effective their hacktivism actually is. I mean, the theory is sound - human being is just another information processing system so you should, in principle, be able to load instructions in and then make it act on them but the devil is in the details. These things don't respond to sql injections and cross site scripting with quite the same level of stable predictability you'd find in a proper computer. With a big enough dataset and enough deep learning grunt I'm sure you could play them like a strad but I don't think we're quite there yet. So now we got party political broadcasts and voter canvassing happening over the internet. I think the government are more pissed off cos they lost their monopoly than anything particularly profound coming out of Cambridge Anal but, hey, the CA marketing guys beg to differ.

It'll be an interesting space to watch over the coming years, tho. Eventually this technology will be effective. It's just a question of when. A bit later would be my guess. Right now I'm pretty sure we're still dealing with bog standard Joseph Goebbels v1.x with a slightly improved delivery system. Proper zombification tech is still a ways off.

[Cramulus]

I like your frame, p3nt.

I REJECT the idea that this was a "leak"--this is exactly what the system was designed to do, scrape data and fence it to companies who can use it strategically.

It's like that old saying - on social media, you aren't the customer, you're the product.

[Doktor Howl]

This is why it is so vitally important to lie about all of your vital stats on FB, and like random shit.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Personally I don't give a fuck what facebook knows about me. If the only posts and ads I see are for shit that interest me, then it's all good. I'm not a weak minded fool who has kneejerk psychological responses to things without examining and filtering them the fuck out. The weak minded fools will be led by the nose which is how it's always worked. Even though now it's neural nets and recommendation engines pulling their strings whereas it used to be despots and dictators, nothing is really any different in principle. Buncha f'kin imbeciles looking for a charismatic leader to follow off the nearest cliff. The only plus side with the whole trump and breitbart and cambridge analytica schtick is that this idea of fake news and echo chambers is embedded in the public consciousness now. It won't make much of a difference. Most are still too dumb to get it but there might be a few people who will snap out of their media induced coma and learn to form opinions instead of just having them pumped straight into their brain by whoever has the shiniest suit or the most retweets.

[Junkenstein]

This is why it is so vitally important to lie about all of your vital stats on FB, and like random shit.

Or, even easier, never touch the fucking thing in the first place.

My reluctance and paranoia about it seems more justified by the day.

[Cain]

What Cambridge Analytica does is what any competent political analysis firm can do.  The difference is that they have had access to a far larger dataset to crunch through, giving them a comparative advantage in terms of micro-targeting and network analysis.  Up until now, how they have been able to do that has been something of a mystery - of course there is a thriving gray market in large databases with personal information, but precisely how much data they had to hand, and the original sources, was unknown.

Beyond that, they're doing cringey corporate spy shit.  You don't need to be a genius to send a Ukrainian call girl to a politician, you just need investors willing to give cash and look the other way. Most of us could do that with the right bank account.

Strategic Communication Laboratories is a fairly large corporate military and intelligence contractor, who have definitely been using CA datasets along with their own AI tech.  They've done work on terrorist propaganda and messaging, internet censoring (the recently unveiled Home Office program to censor ISIS propaganda was developed by ASD Labs, which has a "revolving door" relationship with SCL in terms of staff) and they are a fairly heavy hitter - not quite on the level of, say, Palantir, but clearly trying to be a competitor.

As such, CA's business in Russia with Lukoil and their involvement in Brexit and Trump is raising eyebrows in certain corners.

The theory on which a lot of this is based is pretty sound and has been around since the 50s, if not earlier (a lot of it was developed by talented amateurs during WWII, naturally).  The difference now is the media and corporate context in which they operate.  It's far easier to get the info, and it's far easier to deploy the info than at any previous time in history.

As for the FB "breach"...yeah, it's not a breach in technical terms, but I'm still happy to see them get dragged over the coals for it.  FB's been doing shady shit and playing a game of "we're not responsible for what people use our platform for, but we'll promote sensationalist bullshit as hard as we can" for far too long now.  And Zuckerberg, wherever he's currently hiding, definitely needs to be taken down a notch.

[axod]

re: original sources-—

If FB was primarily responsible for populating the Alamo data set, I find it interesting how google also sent reps. to liaison for them in San Antonio at campaign HQ. Or it's just that they 'get' computers, generally.

[Doktor Howl]

There is no "true" deep state.  Just competing factions of stupid fucking primates.  Thing is, there are now so MANY different factions of stupid primates that the results look like design.  There is no conspiracy, just Conspiracy™, which is just another shrink-wrapped product with a shiny logo.

Point of order:  If CA was a collection of evil geniuses, they wouldn't have gotten caught bragging about their methods to an undercover reporter.

Stupid. Fucking. Primates.  I DEMAND MORE COMPETENT VILLAINS.

I can't fucking stand it. 

[ReverendJesus]

There is no "true" deep state.  Just competing factions of stupid fucking primates.  Thing is, there are now so MANY different factions of stupid primates that the results look like design.  There is no conspiracy, just Conspiracy™, which is just another shrink-wrapped product with a shiny logo.

Point of order:  If CA was a collection of evil geniuses, they wouldn't have gotten caught bragging about their methods to an undercover reporter.

Stupid. Fucking. Primates.  I DEMAND MORE COMPETENT VILLAINS.

I can't fucking stand it. 

Seriously, dude; even the Red Skull had a solid plan and listened to the experts.