Streaming - Rod Bishop urges note be taken of THE GREAT HACK (Karim Amer, Jehane Noujaim, USA, 2019)

Sobering viewing here: Trump, Brexit, Cambridge Analytica, Facebook, and a touch of the Caribbean. 

It’s the story of fallout from the data-mining of social media accounts. Of Cambridge Analytica and their seemingly innocuous survey of the ‘digital life’ of Facebook posters. Click-bait from the sinister. 

The survey gave Cambridge Analytica access not only to the respondees but also their Facebook Friends – a breathtaking 87 million voters in the USA. All were ‘data-harvested’ and, significantly, all the data stolen without permission.

Joining the Trump campaign, Cambridge Analytica then chopped up the swing states into ‘precincts’. Behavioural and personality data were analyzed and a campaign devised to target only “the persuadables” - will Hillary Clinton ever live down “the deplorables”?

The persuadables are the unregistered, or the apathetic or the on-the-fence voters in swing states who were then bombarded by Cambridge Analytica and the Trump campaign with “untraceable” and “unattributable” social media ads and anonymous posts attacking Hillary and trumpeting Trump. All swirling around social media platforms, again principally Facebook, and all designed to influence their ballot box decisions.

“Crooked Hillary” and the pair of handcuffs was just one of Cambridge Analytica’s attack ads.

The millions of unregistered, apathetic and on-the-fence voters flew under the radar of traditional polling methodology and hey, presto! What just happened? Trump is POTUS and the Poms are out of the EU.

Although not mentioned in The Great Hack, Trump stoking the ‘Russian interference’ in the election proved a convenient smokescreen to deflect focus from Cambridge Analytica, it’s Vice-President Steve Bannon (“I came up with that great name”) and its urbane, slippery CEO Alexander Nix.

But when the spotlight eventually struck, they ran for the lifeboats.

Sitting in front of one of the many subsequent investigative committees, Alexander Nix just lied. No, we didn’t harvest Facebook data; no, we’re just a simple election consultancy company and no, we weren’t involved in the Brexit campaign, despite footage of the Leave.EU launch with Cambridge Analytica staffer Brittany Kaiser publicly disclosing their data-mining strategy for Brexit.

Only a few days ago, Brittany Kaiser revealed emails had been supplied to Damian Collins, Chair of a House of Commons Committee. The emails support her claim “Chargeable work was completed for Ukip and Leave.EU…data sets and analysed data processed by Cambridge Analytica…later used by Leave.EU without Cambridge Analytica’s further assistance”.

Alexander Nix, nevertheless, has the gall to still paint himself as victim: “The global media took umbrage and decided to put us in their crosshairs and launch a coordinated attack on us as a company in order to destroy our reputations and our business”. 

Faced with worldwide disclosure, Cambridge Analytica liquidated to avoid probes into their illegal data collection. Destruction of evidence was probably high on their agenda, as well. 

Perhaps the most chilling two-and-a-half minutes in The Great Hack are devoted to elections in Trinidad and Tobago.

In that country, Cambridge Analytica was less interested in data-mining and more intent on demonstrating their Holy Grail objective - to significantly “change behavior” and thereby voter intentions.

Employed by the Indian residents of the Caribbean islands, who represent one of the two major political parties, the strategy was simple. Firstly, a campaign of graffiti street art and You Tube video clips called “DO SO (DON’T VOTE)” was aimed at the Afro-Caribbean youth to convince them voting in the elections was just too “uncool” to even contemplate. The second strategy looked after itself. The Indian parents would simply tell their children how to vote.

The result? Alexander Nix claims during an audio-visual presentation on Trinidad and Tobago: “The difference in the 18-35-year-old turnout was 40%. That swung the election by 6% and that was all that was needed [in a close election]”. He then lists the other countries where Cambridge Analytica are working: “Malaysia, Lithuania, Romania, Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria … and the Brexit campaign. But we don’t talk about that”.

A company able to target apathetic persuadables to vote in one country and target apathetic persuadables not to vote in another is somewhat challenging.

One thread running through The Great Hack is the legal efforts of Professor David Carroll to have Cambridge Analytica return the data it stole from him. Alexander Nix, however, chooses to face prosecution than rather than disclose Carroll’s data and their methodology for weaponizing it.

The data-science company had morphed from SCL (Strategic Communications Laboratories), which had morphed from a military contractor known as SCL Defense that had worked in Afghanistan. As former Cambridge Analytica employees, now turned whistleblowers, put it: “Cambridge Analytica is not data science, it’s a propaganda machine” (Chris Wylie) and “Cambridge Analytica’s psychographics should be classified as weapon-grade” (Brittany Kaiser). 

The Times of London suggests there are people who believe Cambridge Analytica are just snake-oil salesmen and their claims with Trump and Brexit are nothing but fantasy. Really? All made up, was it? As Adrian Martin might say “Oh, dear…” 

Most readers of Film Alert do so after noticing posts on Facebook. It’s the platform, described by The Guardian  investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr, “where we chat to friends and post baby photos”.

Is this the future? Will there ever be another ‘fair’ election? You might ask Zuckerberg. Persuadables or not, how can we protect our data without desisting from the keyboards entirely. How likely is that?