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Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower

I thought it might be useful to give some examples of how this ecosystem and body of technique has been applied elsewhere.

For example Kenya where data has been used to politicise ethnicity via dark ads.

also to SCL / CA



Texas Media Company Hired By Trump Created Kenyan President's Viral 'Anonymous' Attack Campaign Against Rival, New Investigation Reveals

Voter profiling in the 2017 Kenyan election – Privacy International – Medium
On the subject of Kenya:

Politics in the digital age: Cambridge Analytica in Kenya

(best student I ever had there)
 
CA stating that they did no work for Leave.EU which the cynics among you may note is not the same as stating that they did no work for anyone trying to influence the EU referendum.

e2a: Looks like they may have outsourced their shenanigans to a Canadian sock puppet company in order to give themselves deniability.
 
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CA stating that they did no work for Leave.EU which the cynics among you may note is not the same as stating that they did no work for anyone trying to influence the EU referendum.

Indeed, though I think everyone can guess who they have done / are doing work for.
 
I've read the stuff on the Guardian website, but can't find any mention of Parkinson/No 10 outing Sanni. Have I (& google) missed it? It's covered by, among others, Ch4, Huffpost, the Sun and the Mail so they're hardly maintaining confidentiality or anything.
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I've read the stuff on the Guardian website, but can't find any mention of Parkinson/No 10 outing Sanni. Have I (& google) missed it? It's covered by, among others, Ch4, Huffpost, the Sun and the Mail so they're hardly maintaining confidentiality or anything.
View attachment 130871
It is mentioned half way down the final column of the lead article that starts on the front and continues on page 5 of the Observer print edition.
 
It is mentioned half way down the final column of the lead article that starts on the front and continues on page 5 of the Observer print edition.
tvm, but then it's even stranger that there's no mention in the online reporting. I've just checked through all 6 stories linked from the main headline and there's still no use of the word 'gay'. None have been updated since yesterday evening, maybe the Guardian doesn't work weekends. :confused:
 
FWIW the Sunday Times articles about the outing and Shahmir Sanni's claims.

No 10 aide in ‘outing’ row over Vote Leave cash claim - Sunday Times (paywalled)
Tim Shipman, Political Editor
March 25 2018, 12:01am, The Sunday Times

One of the prime minister’s closest advisers was caught in a row over the “outing” of a former partner yesterday as part of a deepening controversy about the conduct and spending of the campaign to leave the EU.

Political secretary Stephen Parkinson came under pressure to resign after Downing Street confirmed his 18-month relationship with Shahmir Sanni, a fellow “leave” campaigner. Sanni said the publicity had forced him to tell his family he was gay and had put relatives in Pakistan in danger.

Parkinson, formerly a national organiser of the official Vote Leave campaign, rejected Sanni’s whistleblower claims that it illegally co-ordinated with another group, BeLeave, to evade campaign spending caps. He said it was impossible to defend himself without revealing his relationship with Sanni.
(The rest of the article is about Matt Hancock's demands for social media terms of service to be 'simplified' in order that a figleaf of informed consent can be blutacked into place).

The main Times story about Shahmir Sanni's claims is

Whistleblower: Leave lobby ‘cheated’ its way to Brexit victory - Sunday Times (paywalled)

A whistleblower claims the EU referendum result is invalid as a Brexiteer, now an aide to Theresa May, misused £625,000.
Tim Shipman and Jon Ungoed-Thomas
March 25 2018, 12:01am, The Sunday Times

A whistleblower claimed last night that the EU referendum result “wasn’t legitimate” because the “leave” campaign “cheated” by funnelling cash to a satellite group in a way that “wasn’t legal”.

Shahmir Sanni accused Stephen Parkinson of Vote Leave — now Theresa May’s political secretary — of engineering a £625,000 donation to BeLeave, the Brexit group for which he worked, then dictating that the money was spent on digital advertising.

In an interview with Channel 4 News, Sanni claimed the donation was designed to circumvent the limits on campaign spending: “I know that Vote Leave cheated . . . I know that people have been lied to and that the referendum wasn’t legitimate.”

Sanni and two others sent a 46-page dossier to the Electoral Commission on Thursday with three ring binders of supporting evidence.

One of the others was Christopher Wylie, who last week exposed details of how the British firm Cambridge Analytica used data improperly obtained from Facebook to help Donald Trump get elected as the US president.

Its offices were raided on Friday by the Information Commissioner’s Office, which is investigating what role the company played in Brexit.

Vote Leave was entitled to spend only £7m but separate campaign groups could spend up to £700,000 as long as they were independent. Sanni says he and BeLeave’s founder, Darren Grimes, reported to Parkinson. “There was no time where anything BeLeave did didn’t go through Stephen,” Sanni said.

He claimed Parkinson told Grimes to spend the £625,000 on the services of Aggregate IQ (AIQ), a Canadian firm making internet adverts for Vote Leave. Asked if they could have refused, Sanni said: “We didn’t ever feel like we had that level of control . . . In terms of . . . money, we never had a say over that.”

He added: “In effect they used BeLeave to overspend and not just by a small amount . . . Almost two-thirds of a million pounds makes all the difference and it wasn’t legal . . . They say that it wasn’t co-ordinated, but it was. The idea that . . . the campaign was legitimate is false.”

The government angered leavers during the campaign by spending £9m on leaflets setting out the case for remain.

The latest row has been fuelled by revelations of a sexual relationship. On Friday Parkinson issued a statement saying he had been in a relationship with Sanni for 18 months and had given him advice only in their capacity as lovers. Sanni’s lawyers accused Parkinson of outing him.

Last night Parkinson said he was “saddened” by Sanni’s “untrue” claims, pointing out that it was impossible to defend himself “without revealing my relationship with Shahmir”. He added: “I firmly deny the allegations. I had no responsibility for digital campaigning or donations on the Vote Leave campaign.”

Grimes also denies Sanni’s claims. Vote Leave released papers showing that Sanni has changed his story since he was interviewed in December 2016 by Daniel Hodson, Vote Leave’s head of compliance. Hodson’s notes show that Sanni told him Grimes met AIQ at a “press conference at Vote Leave HQ and contacted them afterwards off his own bat” rather than because Parkinson had told him to.

The notes say: “Darren suggested that AIQ be used because of their ‘fantastic’ work for Ted Cruz in the US presidential primary campaign. It was a unilateral decision.”

Dominic Cummings, campaign director of Vote Leave, said: “Shahmir is unquestionably telling lies about BeLeave. Either he was lying . . . in 2016 . . . or he is lying now.” He said Wylie had sought to sell Vote Leave the same data analytics that he now condemns Cambridge Analytica for using — an offer that Vote Leave had rejected.

A Vote Leave spokesman pointed out that it had been advised by the Electoral Commission that the donation to BeLeave was permissible: “Vote Leave has twice been cleared on this matter by the Electoral Commission.”

The rules on collusion are poorly drawn. Sir Craig Oliver, David Cameron’s spin doctor, who led the “remain” campaign, admits in his memoirs holding morning conference calls with satellite campaigns to co-ordinate their message.

As critics sought to tie the “leave” campaigns to the misuse of data by Cambridge Analytica, Channel 4 News said it had seen documents showing links between AIQ and Cambridge Analytica’s associated company SCL Group. Vote Leave employed a different set of data scientists, ASI. But Aggregate IQ did once build software for SCL Group.

Cummings denied this proved a link between Cambridge Analytica and Vote Leave since “AIQ was specifically bound by their contract with us not to share any data with anybody”. He accused Cambridge Analytica of selling “snake oil to gullible people” and dismissed claims of a conspiracy with Trump’s data firm as “fantasy”.

Cambridge Analytica is linked to Leave.EU, the rival “leave” campaign run by Arron Banks. He sought to recruit the firm when fighting Vote Leave to be the official “leave” campaign. When Vote Leave won, Banks and the firm parted.

Brittany Kaiser, a former Cambridge Analytica employee, says the firm did unpaid work analysing data provided by Ukip. Banks insists that it “was not used in the Brexit campaign”.

Cambridge Analytica’s chief executive, Alexander Nix, has been suspended after suggesting his team could win elections with smears and honey traps, comments he claims were taken out of context.

Today The Sunday Times reveals that Nix and SCL Group used military-style psychological operations in election campaigns. A 23-page SCL marketing document boasted its defence arm has “undertaken Psyop [psychological operation] campaigns in over 53 countries. Responsible for UK MoD, US DoD and State Department doctrinal policy . . . strategic and tactical training.”

The Ministry of Defence confirmed last week it has hired SCL as a contractor. It was reportedly paid about £190,000.

The document said the group had “managed campaigns for over 23 prime ministers, and 11 presidents”.

The group also boasted of trashing the reputation of Ralph Gonsalves, prime minister of the Caribbean island of St Vincent. “SCL digital launched a targeted digital attack,” states its marketing document. “Within three weeks every single reference to him on the first two pages of Google referred to the candidate’s horrific track record of corruption, coercion, rape allegations and victimisations.”

Gonsalves strongly denied the allegations and threatened legal action.

At the bottom of the latter story :
Today The Sunday Times reveals that Nix and SCL Group used military-style psychological operations in election campaigns. A 23-page SCL marketing document boasted its defence arm has “undertaken Psyop [psychological operation] campaigns in over 53 countries. Responsible for UK MoD, US DoD and State Department doctrinal policy . . . strategic and tactical training.”
 
The (IMO) rather more interesting Times articles about SCL, it's offerings, it's network of separate companies and it's government clients actually appeared yesterday.

Murky world of the Old Etonians for hire who revelled in secrecy - The Times (paywalled)

Billy Kenber, Oliver Wright
March 24 2018, 12:01am
With an innocuous name and a bland description as a “non-profit academic organisation based in London”, The Research Institute seemed harmless enough. It claimed to work on “social and cultural issues affecting individual communities” and made vague reference to its use of the “latest tools and technologies in the collection and analysis of data”.

The Athena Trust professed to be similarly unremarkable: a “high-impact, tailored and measurably successful market-research consultancy”. Its director of strategy was Alex Ashburner. Mr Ashburner was in fact an alias for Alex Ashburner Nix and both were fronts for a data company he led that is now embroiled in accusations of using dirty tricks and data harvesting to manipulate elections around the world.

SCL Group, an associate company of Cambridge Analytica, was set up in 2005, although its origins date back to the early 1990s. Led by two Old Etonians, Mr Nix and Nigel Oakes, its pitch was simple — it planned to use pioneering techniques in psychological profiling and behavioural research to help politicians win votes, and militaries win hearts and minds. In presentations to potential clients, it boasted of using “the science of influence and persuasion to help governments, their militaries and commercial companies to persuade key audience groups to measurably change their behaviour”.

The company quickly built up an impressive client list, working on projects for the British and American militaries and taking a role in a number of election campaigns. From its earliest days, the company’s election division in particular appeared to revel in secrecy. One ex-employee described staff “running around as though they were members of the security services”.

It used a network of front companies in an apparent effort to hide the involvement of its staff in political campaigns and a “secondary payments company” to mask the source of payments to suppliers. In an internal presentation, staff were told that it should never be used “if supplier knows us as SCL”. “Do not over use, cover then may get blown,” they were warned.

Under Mr Oakes, the company’s defence work was fairly straightforward, relying on traditional field work rather than social media analytics.

One former employee said: “SCL pioneered using psychological parameters as analysis of group behaviour but we used conventional surveys and interviews in order to try and better understand the target audiences.”

The company “almost always only worked for the US and UK governments” with its defence work, on projects in countries including Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Mexico, according to an internal document from 2010.

Projects included attempts to dissuade Nepalese insurgents from breaking into houses to steal food by providing supplies free of charge. Meanwhile, its elections division, led by Mr Nix, appeared more willing to use murkier techniques when necessary.

During the 2010 election in Saint Kitts and Nevis, SCL paid £12,000 to a contractor to take part in a sting in which he offered the opposition leader a £1 million bribe — pledging campaign support in exchange for a cut-price land deal, according to sources. Hidden camera footage was leaked on the internet and SCL boasted of its effectiveness in casting a “huge shadow” over the opposition party “at the most sensitive time during the election”.

SCL may also have played a role in spreading sexual misconduct allegations against a rival candidate in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines that year. It also flooded the candidate Ralph Gonsalves’s Google results with negative stories about “corruption, coercion [and] rape” accusations, according to company documents.

By 2011, with profits soaring in its election division, SCL focused its efforts on politics, downsizing the defence division which had previously been the backbone of the company.

Two years later, it set up Cambridge Analytica, which was established to pitch for work in the US, claiming to be able to use sophisticated data analysis techniques to “micro target” susceptible voters with the right message to secure votes. It secured work for political action committees, including one run by John Bolton, the new US national security adviser, as well as working for the Texas senator Ted Cruz’s ill-fated presidential campaign.

In mid-2016, it was brought on board by the Trump campaign, initially to help with fundraising but later to assist with data analytics and targeting. Trump’s campaign paid almost $6 million (£4.2 million).

Last year, the company was hired to provide consultancy work on President Kenyatta’s re-election campaign in Kenya. One source involved with the work said SCL “promise the world and they don’t deliver”. “It was shallow and ludicrous,” they said, claiming that SCL charged huge profit margins — billing President Kenyatta’s party £10,000 for monthly tracking polls which had cost the company £1,000.

SCL did not respond to a request for comment.

and

MoD worked with tainted company SCL Group until last month - Times (paywalled)

Paul Morgan-Bentley, Head of Investigations
March 24 2018, 12:01am

Theresa May was accused last night of a cover up after it emerged that a data company linked to dirty tricks was working on a defence contract just a few weeks ago.

The prime minister’s spokesman said on Wednesday that the government had stopped working with Cambridge Analytica’s parent company, SCL Group, in 2015, before accusations were made that it used millions of people’s private Facebook data to manipulate elections.

However, The Times can reveal that the Ministry of Defence paid £42,000 to a branch of SCL for “data analytics” between December and February. The work was commissioned even though there have been widely reported concerns for two years about the company’s techniques.

Ian Blackford, the SNP’s leader in Westminster, questioned Mrs May in parliament on Wednesday about the company’s links to government. Last night he told The Times: “It is deeply worrying that this defence contract has only been revealed now.”

Paul Flynn, a Labour MP and member of the public administration committee, said: “This has got the smell of a cover up about it.”

Chris Matheson, a Labour MP who sits on the culture committee, said: “How many more are there? This company has had its tentacles across government and it is incredibly worrying if the government cannot give a definitive answer on where those tentacles have reached.”

Mrs May’s spokesman said on Wednesday that departments had had three contracts with SCL in the past. One was with the Foreign Office in 2008-09, another with the Home Office in 2009 and the final with the MoD in 2014-15.

However, Times reporters have linked the firm to British officials on at least nine occasions. After repeated questions, the MoD confirmed that it had signed the recent contract with SCL Insight, an associated company which is 40 per cent owned by SCL Group and 60 per cent owned by Nigel Oakes, SCL Group’s founder.

Officials said the work was to provide data analytics and revealed the dates involved and the amount of money paid. The work did not use Facebook data and is believed to have involved field-based market research abroad.

The MoD also confirmed that SCL had provisional List X accreditation until 2013, granting it access to secret documents, and that it had three previous official contracts with the department to provide data analytics. In total, the MoD has paid SCL and its affiliated companies £347,000.

As The Times revealed yesterday, British officials were also trained by SCL in tackling Russian propaganda at Nato’s Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence in Latvia in 2015. SCL also had a contract with the Home Office for a training project in 2009 and was paid by the Foreign Office for a “communications project” in 2008-09.

Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, had an undeclared meeting in December 2016 with Alexander Nix, the suspended chief executive of Cambridge Analytica. The Foreign Office said the meeting was not registered on transparency records “due to an oversight”.

The MoD said there were no recorded data breaches relating to its work with SCL. A spokesman added: “We have no current relationship or existing contracts with SCL Group, which includes Cambridge Analytica. As such, the company has no access to any classified information.”

A government spokeswoman said: “We’ve been setting out the contracts we are aware of as they have come to light. Departments are continuing to look into contracts with these companies.”

The acting chief executive of Cambridge Analytica, Alexander Tayler, said: “We take the disturbing recent allegations of unethical practices in our non-US political business very seriously. The board has launched a full and independent investigation into SCL Elections’ past practices, and its findings will be made available in due course.”
 
The (IMO) rather more interesting Times articles about SCL, it's offerings, it's network of separate companies and it's government clients actually appeared yesterday.

It is all very interesting, though - as with all of the articles so far on this - the most important questions about CA, SCL and AIQ have not yet been asked.
 
Someone at the BBC thinks Nigel Oakes is important, there's a 15 minute Radio4 profile of here. He's described as thinking he's the brains behind it all while Nix is a salesman. Sounds very unpleasant.
 
On the outing, that seems to be being talked about mostly on Twitter now.

As far as I understand it: Dominc Cummings first published the statement from Number 10 which outed Shahmir Sanni. He then withdrew that part of his blog, with that very dramatic notice shown above. As he mentions lawyers, I wonder if similar notices were sent to all the papers who are now doing as his lawyers asked.

It's all pretty incidental to the story I suppose, but some of the people reporting it are very upset because Number 10 has confirmed the statement so that made it - and the outing - "official", and Carole Cadwalladr also claims that the statement contains a lie. Shahmir Sanni went so far as to say the statement was intimidation, so that part of the story may come up again.
 
The one they've been cleared of twice already? The review carried out largely by a quite vocal anti-brexit person who writes for the guardian on why brexit will be shit?

And no one has been done for any crime - some anti-brexit poshoes have done a quick review and sent it to the EC. That's all.
 
Whatever happens I hope some way of keeping Boris Johnson and Michael Gove millions of miles away from any sort of political power is a result.
 
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