Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, John in Strickland. I'm an executive producer
Speaker 1: with how Stuff Works in a love all things tech,
Speaker 1: and we're continuing our story about Cambridge and Alytica, and
Speaker 1: also continuing Jonathan's slow descent towards laryngitis. I'm all right
Speaker 1: at the moment. I got my cup of water with me,
Speaker 1: but I am recording this immediately after recording the previous
Speaker 1: two episodes of tech Stuff, So if I start getting
Speaker 1: particularly raspy, I apologize, but it's because my health is
Speaker 1: slowly failing. In our last episode, I talked about how
Speaker 1: two old Etonian's, first Nigel Oaks and later Alexander Nicks,
Speaker 1: formed a company that depended heavily on psychological information of
Speaker 1: questionable utility to form a consulting company that would take
Speaker 1: that data and create action items for clients. They focused
Speaker 1: mainly on political clients, with Nix's push to focus more
Speaker 1: exclusively on elections, and I ended just as the organization
Speaker 1: they created, Strategic Communication Laboratories or SCL, had spun off,
Speaker 1: a new entity backed by American billionaires and This new
Speaker 1: entity was called Cambridge Analytica. That entity incorporated in Delaware
Speaker 1: on December thirty one, two thousand thirteen, so the very
Speaker 1: last day of two thousand thirteen. Before incorporating, NIX had
Speaker 1: led a few attempts to get cozy with American politics,
Speaker 1: but things had not really gone well. The Republican candidate
Speaker 1: for governor of Virginia was Ken Cucinelli, and a political
Speaker 1: action committee supporting Cucinelli had hired SCL. Now remember this
Speaker 1: was this was before Cambridge Analytica had become an official thing.
Speaker 1: S c L was to post to create a list
Speaker 1: of voters who could be persuaded to support Cucinelli. That
Speaker 1: was what they were contracted to do. But the deadline
Speaker 1: came and went and still no list, and eventually the
Speaker 1: political action committee, the pack cut ties with the firm,
Speaker 1: saying well, you're not delivering upon your promise, so we're
Speaker 1: not gonna do business anymore. But s c L had
Speaker 1: also worked with another PACK in Virginia, also supporting Cucinelli.
Speaker 1: This one was called the Americans for Limited Government and
Speaker 1: they wanted SCL to provide the group with a list
Speaker 1: of women voters from suburban areas who traditionally would vote Democrat,
Speaker 1: but who were thought to possibly flip Republican. So s
Speaker 1: c L eventually produced a list of women and handed
Speaker 1: it over, But upon closer inspection it turned out that
Speaker 1: this was a list of Republican supporters, not flippable Democrats.
Speaker 1: So in other words, those people that already were kind
Speaker 1: of promising to vote that way. So s c L
Speaker 1: and Knicks had not performed very well in two thousand thirteen,
Speaker 1: And if the mercers had learned about that, the billionaires
Speaker 1: who had backed decided to help form Cambridge Analytica, maybe
Speaker 1: they wouldn't have funded the founding of Cambridge an Analytica
Speaker 1: if they had known about those failures. Steve Bannon became
Speaker 1: a driving force behind the scenes at Cambridge Analytica. He's
Speaker 1: was the executive over at Bright Barton News at the time.
Speaker 1: According to Chris Wiley, that's the data analyst who had
Speaker 1: UH first come on board in order to look into
Speaker 1: using data from various sources to support sc l's efforts,
Speaker 1: and was the one to recommend going towards using social
Speaker 1: media and apps similar to the one that that Stillwell
Speaker 1: had created back over at the University of Cambridge. UH
Speaker 1: He said that Bannon was really interested in using social
Speaker 1: media and messaging as a way to wage psychological warfare
Speaker 1: to push a particular political philosophy. And in fact, to
Speaker 1: quote Wiley, he said, Cambrage Analytica was quote Bannon's arsenal
Speaker 1: of weaponry to wage a culture war on America using
Speaker 1: military strategies end quote. He said, Bannon was absolutely fascinated
Speaker 1: with the idea of using military tactics to wage a
Speaker 1: political war in in a campaign. The mercers meanwhile, use
Speaker 1: their leverage as wealthy go op backers to convince many
Speaker 1: different campaigns to actually go ahead and make use of
Speaker 1: Cambridge Analytica. So, out of the eight federal level clients
Speaker 1: that Cambridge Analytica one in two thousand thirteen and two
Speaker 1: thousand and fourteen, the clients they landed out of all
Speaker 1: eight of them, all eight where received being financial backing
Speaker 1: from the mercers. So how about that. So, for example,
Speaker 1: in two thousand fourteen, Robert Mercer donated one million dollars
Speaker 1: to John Bolton's Superpack, and then that same superpack went
Speaker 1: and hired Cambridge Analytica for consulting work to the tune
Speaker 1: of three dollars. Kind of odd they reviews of the
Speaker 1: work that Cambridge an Altica were returning. The reviews were
Speaker 1: not great, they weren't spectacular. Apart from one U S
Speaker 1: Senate race in North Carolina, that one was pretty positive
Speaker 1: about Cambridge an Analytica, but a lot of other reports
Speaker 1: were saying they aren't really delivering upon what they promised,
Speaker 1: but the hype continued. Nix was really really good at
Speaker 1: selling an idea. Never mind that the idea did not
Speaker 1: really have a lot of solid foundation in academic scholarship
Speaker 1: or published scientific research, or or even proof that their
Speaker 1: efforts were effective in the field. He was still really
Speaker 1: selling it, and the company in began to test certain
Speaker 1: messages that would later show up in a future campaign. Now,
Speaker 1: this was during the mid term elections often, and the
Speaker 1: messages that they were testing out in different regions appeared
Speaker 1: to be firmly rooted in Steve Bannon's philosophy. So these
Speaker 1: this is when we started seeing phrases like build a
Speaker 1: wall or drain the swamp. They're being tested at that
Speaker 1: time in fourteen among different Republican populations, messages that were
Speaker 1: critical of immigrants and ones that criticized big government would
Speaker 1: roll into rotation and test out, and the company also
Speaker 1: began testing the waters to see what the general opinion
Speaker 1: among Republican voters was about a certain Vladimir Putin, the
Speaker 1: President of Russia. And this was all during those mid
Speaker 1: terms of fourteen years before they would be used in
Speaker 1: greater rollouts in twenty. In two thousand fifteen, Ted Ru's
Speaker 1: announced his candidacy for president, although that announcement did not
Speaker 1: go as planned. Uh So, his campaign, before they had
Speaker 1: announced that it was a campaign, had secured the services
Speaker 1: of Cambridge Analytica to design the campaign website, the official
Speaker 1: website for Ted Cruz running for president. It did not
Speaker 1: start off great. So Ted Cruz sends out a tweet
Speaker 1: before midnight, uh the day before he's going to announce
Speaker 1: his candidacy, and it's a very teasing tweet. Everyone knew
Speaker 1: what it really meant because there were there's no shortage
Speaker 1: of uh pundits out there saying Ted Cruz was going
Speaker 1: to put his name in the ring for president, but
Speaker 1: the official announcement had not yet happened, and he said,
Speaker 1: just wait, it's gonna come really soon. And what was
Speaker 1: supposed to happen was one minute after midnight, the official
Speaker 1: campaign website was supposed to launch, but his team couldn't
Speaker 1: get the website to park. They couldn't get it live.
Speaker 1: Once again, a product from Cambridge Analytica was not performing
Speaker 1: the way people expected. So several minutes after midnight, crews
Speaker 1: would announce his candidacy on Twitter. So so didn't get
Speaker 1: to share the link to the official campaign website. It
Speaker 1: was not live yet. He just went ahead and announced
Speaker 1: on Twitter because the plan was not going according to plan. Uh.
Speaker 1: Initially a dozen Cambridge Analytica employees were on the staff
Speaker 1: with the Cruise campaign, but apparently the company consistently failed
Speaker 1: to deliver results and so that number was whittled down
Speaker 1: to three. As the campaign continued, Cambridge Analytica broke down
Speaker 1: Cruises target audience into four categories temperamental people, relaxed leaders,
Speaker 1: timid traditionalists, and stoic traditionalists, and this was based off
Speaker 1: the data the company had gathered about those potential voters,
Speaker 1: and the company had also created suggested messaging for each group,
Speaker 1: saying well, this target group, this type of messaging will
Speaker 1: work most effectively, but for this other group, you want
Speaker 1: to go with this different approach. And the whole idea
Speaker 1: was that they were targeting psychological anchor points that would
Speaker 1: give Cruizes campaign the advantage. Now Cruizes campaign made use
Speaker 1: of data that Cambridge General Nitteca had gathered using Alexander
Speaker 1: Cogan's Facebook app, the one that had retrieved information about
Speaker 1: users friends without those friends consent. And also this was
Speaker 1: in violation of Facebook's policies. Facebook was told that it
Speaker 1: was going to be an academic research project and therefore
Speaker 1: the data was supposed to just stay with Cogan and
Speaker 1: not change hands. But that's not what happened. Cogan did
Speaker 1: essentially sell the data from his possession to Cambridge Analytica,
Speaker 1: so Ted Cruz making use of this data was big news, uh,
Speaker 1: and once people heard about it. No one had really
Speaker 1: known about it at this point, but the information started
Speaker 1: to leak. And this is a good point to talk
Speaker 1: about how Facebook shares information among users. If you are
Speaker 1: a user, some of you may not use Facebook, but
Speaker 1: here's how it works. So you've got yourself a news feed,
Speaker 1: and that's where posts from your friends will show up,
Speaker 1: and occasionally, you know, posts from advertisers things like that
Speaker 1: will show up there too, And you can post your
Speaker 1: own things to Facebook, pictures, thoughts, whatever, and you probably know.
Speaker 1: There are various privacy settings that you can activate before
Speaker 1: you post stuff to Facebook. You could choose public that
Speaker 1: means anyone who is on Facebook can view that material,
Speaker 1: or you can choose different privacy settings. You can set
Speaker 1: so that only your friends can read your posts, so
Speaker 1: anyone who isn't your friend won't see the post that
Speaker 1: you've you've put in. You can even exclude specific people,
Speaker 1: or you can select only specific people to be able
Speaker 1: to see it. But you get the idea. Well, until
Speaker 1: if you developed an app for Facebook, you could request
Speaker 1: friends permission on that app, and that would give you
Speaker 1: access to view user friend data. And if a user
Speaker 1: says sure, yeah, i'll I want to use this app,
Speaker 1: I agree to that, then that would mean you would
Speaker 1: be able to view that user's friends as if you
Speaker 1: were that user. And in fact, it's like you have
Speaker 1: just become a friend to all of that users friends.
Speaker 1: So let's let's use an example to make this more clear.
Speaker 1: Let's say that Ben Bolan Ben Boland's using Facebook and
Speaker 1: Ben Bowen comes across an app that I have made
Speaker 1: any Season is an app from before, and he sees
Speaker 1: that in this app, I've said I want to have
Speaker 1: permission to view your your friends data, and Ben Bolan,
Speaker 1: being the conniving jerk face that he is and not
Speaker 1: giving a care about the privacy of his friend's data, says, sure,
Speaker 1: I want to know what howson hogwarts I belong to.
Speaker 1: I want to take this quiz, so he agrees. Then
Speaker 1: I get to see that all, not just all of
Speaker 1: Ben Bolen's data, but all of Ben Boland's friends data
Speaker 1: as if I were Ben Bowlen. I get to see
Speaker 1: all of his friends data, just as if I were him,
Speaker 1: and I can collect all that data and make use
Speaker 1: of it at all. Because he was so thoughtless, I
Speaker 1: should give out his email address so that you can
Speaker 1: send him complaints because he does that to me all
Speaker 1: the time on his podcasts. But I'm not gonna because honestly,
Speaker 1: Ben Bolan is actually a really nice guy and I
Speaker 1: like him, but it's great to use him as an example.
Speaker 1: So this is why that number of people who may
Speaker 1: have been affected by the Cambridge Analytica scandal is so
Speaker 1: high at eighty seven million users, even though reportedly only
Speaker 1: two seventy thousand people actually took the survey and agreed
Speaker 1: to the the app permissions, and the average Facebook user
Speaker 1: you see it has three thirty eight friends. That's that's
Speaker 1: the average some people and more some people if you
Speaker 1: were But if you multiply two by eight, you'll get
Speaker 1: more than nine million possible friends. And granted there's bound
Speaker 1: to be some overlap between different users. I'm honestly always
Speaker 1: surprised to find friends I know from very different circles
Speaker 1: who also happened to know each other. But you can
Speaker 1: see why that seven million number got there. So in
Speaker 1: Facebook would change that policy. These days, if you develop
Speaker 1: an app, you can still send a friends permission request
Speaker 1: and Facebook will review your app before allowing it to
Speaker 1: be on the platform. But now that does not give
Speaker 1: you access to view all of the friends data of
Speaker 1: a user. Instead, what it does is it lets you
Speaker 1: see a list of friends of that user who also
Speaker 1: haven't all that same app. So you don't get new
Speaker 1: information about new people. You just you just get to
Speaker 1: know about connections between existing people who have already downloaded
Speaker 1: your app. So you're just you know, you already have
Speaker 1: that other users information because they installed your app already. Um,
Speaker 1: so it's a very different policy. Well, when I come back,
Speaker 1: I'll talk more about what Cambridge Analytica did and why
Speaker 1: it got into so much trouble. But first, let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break to thank our sponsor. Cambridge Analytica used
Speaker 1: all that data to build out psycho graphic models of
Speaker 1: potential voters, essentially putting them in these different categorizations. About
Speaker 1: two months before the Iowa caucus, Caucuses and primaries are
Speaker 1: how we decide which nominees within a party will become
Speaker 1: the official party nominee for general election. If you're not
Speaker 1: from the United States, it gets pretty confused ing anyway,
Speaker 1: About two months before the Iowa Caucus, which is one
Speaker 1: of the the it's the first big event that can
Speaker 1: really set the tone for a nominee, The Guardian ran
Speaker 1: a story revealing that Cambrage Analytica had possession of unauthorized
Speaker 1: Facebook data and that therefore the Cruise campaign was depending
Speaker 1: upon information that was gathered in an unethical way, that
Speaker 1: they were relying upon information that people did not consent
Speaker 1: to sharing. Facebook responded to this by telling Cambrage Analytica
Speaker 1: and Alexander Cogan that they needed to delete all that data.
Speaker 1: But Facebook really doesn't have any enforceable authority here. The
Speaker 1: data had already changed hands first to Alexander Cogan and
Speaker 1: then from Alexander Cogan to Cambridge Analytica. Chris Wiley said
Speaker 1: that at this point he had already left Cambrige gen
Speaker 1: Ata and he had deleted that data. But all he
Speaker 1: had to do was fell out a little form and
Speaker 1: click a checkbox and said that onto Facebook to say, hey, yeah,
Speaker 1: I followed your instructions. But Facebook didn't take any steps
Speaker 1: to actually verify that. And he says he could have
Speaker 1: kept all of the data Facebook Facebook never would have known. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and years later people said that the information was
Speaker 1: still available from that time, that information that was gathered
Speaker 1: by the initial app was still readily available. The New
Speaker 1: York Times reported the data at least some of it
Speaker 1: was still remaining in use as Cruise narrowly one in Iowa,
Speaker 1: and Alexander Nicks was very quick to jump on that
Speaker 1: news and boast about how his company, how Cambridge Analytica
Speaker 1: helped push Cruise to victory, and that Cruise had started
Speaker 1: in a very low place, like maybe polling at single
Speaker 1: digit percentages, although that was not, you know true. Others
Speaker 1: on Cruises campaign staff were not very quick to give
Speaker 1: any credit to Cambridge Analytica, but Nicks was selling his
Speaker 1: idea to a bigger audience now and staffers on the
Speaker 1: campaign were concerned that Cambridge Analytica wasn't forthcoming and how
Speaker 1: it was coming up with the various categories for voters.
Speaker 1: They were not transparent in how they were making these determinations.
Speaker 1: So the campaign staff says, we can't really tell how
Speaker 1: well we're doing, and we can't even we don't even
Speaker 1: know how they're coming to these determinations, so we can't
Speaker 1: judge how well they're doing in the United States. Uh,
Speaker 1: in order to become a nominee, like I said, you
Speaker 1: have to participate in these caucuses, in these primaries. By
Speaker 1: the time Cruizes campaign was working in South Carolina, staffers
Speaker 1: noticed that the data they were getting from Cambridge Analytica
Speaker 1: was woefully out of date. CRUs would come in third
Speaker 1: place in South Carolina, and you didn't see Nick's jumping
Speaker 1: up on the news to talk about that problem. Cruises
Speaker 1: campaign stopped relying on Cambridge Analytica shortly thereafter, saying, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't think this is really working out. I don't
Speaker 1: think we're getting the return that we were promised. Now,
Speaker 1: Nix did have the chutzpa to appear at the Concordia
Speaker 1: Summit and claimed that Cambridge Analytica helped push ted Cruz
Speaker 1: to a second place finish for the Republican nomination. Uh
Speaker 1: The story Nix was selling was that Cruise had been
Speaker 1: so far behind that getting second place was an enormous
Speaker 1: achievement all by itself, and that the only reason he
Speaker 1: was able to really get there was because Cambridge Analytica
Speaker 1: was able to lift him much further than he was
Speaker 1: going to go on his own. That's not necessarily an
Speaker 1: accurate betrayal of what happened, as I understand it from
Speaker 1: the various reports I've read, but it appeared that that
Speaker 1: was Alexander Nick's messaging, and his next move was to
Speaker 1: take aim at the Trump campaign to see if Cambridge
Speaker 1: Analytica could get hired on to help in those efforts.
Speaker 1: He had already attempted once before, but Trump was not
Speaker 1: interested in hiring a political consultant that was already working
Speaker 1: for one of his opponents. He had also around this
Speaker 1: time allegedly reached out to Julian Assange. He's the founder
Speaker 1: of Wicky Leaks. Assange had said that he got hold
Speaker 1: of internal emails from the Clinton campaign, and these are
Speaker 1: the same emails that we later discovered were harvested from
Speaker 1: a cyber attack that was led by Russian hackers. So
Speaker 1: Russian hackers attack Clinton's email servers, get access to these
Speaker 1: emails and send them to Julian Assange over at Wiki Leaks,
Speaker 1: who then says, hey, I've got these emails. And then
Speaker 1: Alexander Nicks reaches out to Julian Osange and says, I'd
Speaker 1: really think we should talk about the possibility of making
Speaker 1: use of this information. According to an article in Mother Jones,
Speaker 1: Nicks really wanted to weaponize those emails, but Assange ended
Speaker 1: up passing on that offer. Alexander Nicks would go on
Speaker 1: to claim this company had essentially done all the marketing
Speaker 1: and messaging for the Trump campaign, that Cambridge an Analytica
Speaker 1: was ultimately responsible for developing the approach Trump used during
Speaker 1: the whole election, and that Cambridge Analytica effectively won the
Speaker 1: presidency for Trump, and that it was because of Cambridge
Speaker 1: Analytica's research that Trump was able to target the voters
Speaker 1: that would swing the election his way. He could lose
Speaker 1: the popular vote, and he did by nearly three million votes,
Speaker 1: but he won in areas that got him the electoral
Speaker 1: votes he needed to win the presidency, and Alexander Nick
Speaker 1: said that this was because Cambridge Analytica had done the
Speaker 1: research and knew who to target and that's why Trump won.
Speaker 1: Others in Trump's campaign are not so quick to credit
Speaker 1: Cambridge Analytica. They dispute these claims. They say that the
Speaker 1: firm was not instrumental in Trump's messaging, and that most
Speaker 1: of those efforts were being funneled directly into Facebook from
Speaker 1: the campaign itself rather than through Cambridge Analytica, and that
Speaker 1: the consulting firm had even screwed up some major TV
Speaker 1: ad deals, serving ads and locations that were a complete bust,
Speaker 1: and that they were handling the campaign in a very
Speaker 1: amateurish way. So, in other words, the story Nix was
Speaker 1: telling didn't seem to match up with what other people
Speaker 1: who had been involved in these campaigns had to say
Speaker 1: about the matter. Steve Bannon, who would become the chief
Speaker 1: political strategist for Trump for a while anyway, remained more
Speaker 1: or less in charge of Cambridge Analytica until April seventeen,
Speaker 1: which was several months after Trump had taken office, which
Speaker 1: I don't know sounds like a conflict to me. By
Speaker 1: the end of twenty seventeen, Cambridge Analytica had withdrawn from
Speaker 1: pursuing consulting gigs in politics in the US. The official
Speaker 1: reason that Alexander Nicks gave was that there was going
Speaker 1: to be too many other political consulting firms in the mix,
Speaker 1: which meant there'll be more sharks in the water and
Speaker 1: not enough food. It's gonna be too competitive, not not
Speaker 1: lucrative enough, so the company was going to look elsewhere.
Speaker 1: But a lot of the reports I read were very
Speaker 1: skeptical of this claim, because if in fact, you were
Speaker 1: a consulting firm that had just helped a candidate when
Speaker 1: the position of President of the United States, you would
Speaker 1: think you could leverage that into being a very lucrative
Speaker 1: selling point for future campaigns. What these journalists have said
Speaker 1: is that effectively Cambridge Analytica had been under delivering on
Speaker 1: their their their promises regularly repeatedly, that perhaps those psychographic
Speaker 1: models that the company had been touting may not have
Speaker 1: been nearly as effective as the company was suggesting, and
Speaker 1: that also they had a general lack of knowledge about
Speaker 1: how US politics work. That these Brits were coming into
Speaker 1: a US system and they didn't really understand the way
Speaker 1: politics work in the United States, and that all of
Speaker 1: this meant that people were viewing Cambridge Analytica as a
Speaker 1: bad consulting firm for at least for American politics, and
Speaker 1: it essentially landed the company on a do not hire
Speaker 1: a list for both parties. So the general consensus seemed
Speaker 1: to be that Trump had won the presidency despite participation
Speaker 1: of Cambridge and Analytica, not because of it. So you've
Speaker 1: got two different stories here. You have Alexander Nick saying
Speaker 1: we're not gonna get involved in ten because there's not
Speaker 1: enough money in it, and you have everyone else saying
Speaker 1: you're not gonna get involved in ten because nobody wants you.
Speaker 1: Was when things really fell apart for Cambridge Analytica. Over
Speaker 1: in the United Kingdom, the BBC sent in an undercover
Speaker 1: reporter to look into scl and Cambridge Analytica, which we're
Speaker 1: still claiming to be two separate entities, but we're operating
Speaker 1: more or less as a single one. This reporter got
Speaker 1: got got stuff on tape, was able to capture on
Speaker 1: tape discussions in which Alexander Nix himself talked about spreading
Speaker 1: misinformation on purpose and even blackmailing political opponents of clients
Speaker 1: through entrapment, essentially by by hiring sex workers to go
Speaker 1: and and uh proposition those opponents and then use that
Speaker 1: as a way of blackmailing those opponents. This gut, you know,
Speaker 1: came to light, it was published, it it aired, and
Speaker 1: then Alexander Nicks tried to shrug the whole thing off, said, oh, no, no, no, this,
Speaker 1: I wasn't talking about things we would actually do. I
Speaker 1: was engaging in this ridiculous hypothetical situation and uh in
Speaker 1: a way to try and win a client. But we
Speaker 1: would never actually do any of that. And a lot
Speaker 1: of the people that Noah Alexander Nick say yeah, this
Speaker 1: is kind of in line with his approach anything to
Speaker 1: land that sale. So would the company have engaged in
Speaker 1: these behaviors Maybe not. Maybe that was all talk, but
Speaker 1: it's not good talk, especially not good talk to have
Speaker 1: on tape and play out in public. Uh. This, by
Speaker 1: the way, would end up resulting in Cambridge Analytic a
Speaker 1: suspending Alexander Nix in response to that warn't coming out,
Speaker 1: and so he would be suspended as CEO and would
Speaker 1: effectively be removed from power over in the United States,
Speaker 1: investigations into Russian interference in the twenty sixteen elections extended
Speaker 1: over to Cambridge Analytica and Nicks was called to appear
Speaker 1: before the House Intelligence Committee via video conference so he
Speaker 1: didn't have to travel to the States. His testimony was
Speaker 1: never made public. According to Alexander Nicks, he was only
Speaker 1: asked five questions and that was a total breeze, uh
Speaker 1: or maybe it was three questions. He said, was in
Speaker 1: and out in like five minutes. Also in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: the British Parliament called Nicks to appear before them to
Speaker 1: discuss another event that happened in sixteen, which was the
Speaker 1: UK's vote to leave the European Union, also known as Brexit.
Speaker 1: The general policy at s c L was that they
Speaker 1: weren't going to get involved in local politics. Remember s
Speaker 1: c L and Cambridge Analytica both are located in the UK.
Speaker 1: But the company had also released a statement saying it
Speaker 1: was forming a partnership with an ganization campaigning in favor
Speaker 1: of Brexit. But Alexander Nick said his company never actually
Speaker 1: did any work. It was something that was announced but
Speaker 1: never never actually came to fruition. According to Alexander Nick's
Speaker 1: investigations into that matter continue because they involve finance issues
Speaker 1: about rules about what, where and when money can be spent,
Speaker 1: and how these efforts can be coordinated or not coordinated.
Speaker 1: It gets really super complicated, and it involves another organization
Speaker 1: that's located of Canada, an organization that has connections to
Speaker 1: Chris Wiley, the data analysts who became a whistleblower for
Speaker 1: Cambridge Analytica. But that probably will merit its own episode,
Speaker 1: and that investigation is still ongoing. So rather than do
Speaker 1: a half finished episode, I don't think I'd rather wait
Speaker 1: to hear more about it. Well, I do have a
Speaker 1: little bit more to say about Cambridge Analytica and the
Speaker 1: fallout that resulted from the various reports, but let's take
Speaker 1: another quick break to thank our sponsor. Chris Wiley would
Speaker 1: tell The Observer that in July two thousand fourteen, he
Speaker 1: and Alexander Nixt met with executives of a company called
Speaker 1: Luke Oil. Luke Oil is the second largest oil company
Speaker 1: in Russia, and the head of Luke Oil was vat Alekporov,
Speaker 1: who was close friends with a guy you might have
Speaker 1: heard of, a guy named Vladimir Putin. Wiley said to
Speaker 1: the Observer that at the time he was confused why
Speaker 1: Cabrige Analytica was being called in to have a meeting
Speaker 1: with a Russian oil company in the first place. I mean,
Speaker 1: why would an oil company want to know how Cabrige
Speaker 1: Analytica was targeting and profiling American voters and has sending
Speaker 1: out messaging to American voters. According to an email, Alexander
Speaker 1: Nick had said that the purpose was to explain how
Speaker 1: their work they were doing in US elections could apply
Speaker 1: to the Russian oil business, which left wildly totally at
Speaker 1: a loss. He said, I don't see where this connection is.
Speaker 1: And according to Wiley, the presentation focused on ways to
Speaker 1: disrupt and affect elections. The entire presentation was really geared
Speaker 1: up to what cabra j Analytica was doing with the
Speaker 1: data that it had in the United States, and that
Speaker 1: seems to be a pretty strange presentation to give to
Speaker 1: a petroleum company. Coincidentally, or maybe not so coincidentally, American
Speaker 1: intelligence indicates that it was right around this time when
Speaker 1: Russian hackers began targeting social media platforms to plant propaganda
Speaker 1: and fake stories in an effort to affect elections in
Speaker 1: the United States as well as push for Brexit in
Speaker 1: the UK. So this is where that fake news stuff
Speaker 1: starts starts to come in, the fake news that was
Speaker 1: planted in social media to rile up different UH electoral bases.
Speaker 1: And so the suggestion is that perhaps this meeting between
Speaker 1: Cambrage Analytica and Luke Oil might have sparked this approach.
Speaker 1: Cambra Generalytica didn't appear to actually do any work with
Speaker 1: a Luke Oil, didn't appear to accept a contract, but
Speaker 1: did make this presentation that may have created that inspiration
Speaker 1: for Russia to interfere with the election through misinformation campaigns
Speaker 1: using social media as the platform. Whether Cambridge Analytica had
Speaker 1: any measurable effect on the various elections in the United
Speaker 1: States remains a matter of debate. It also is not
Speaker 1: exactly a smoking gun case that the company contributed to
Speaker 1: Russia's interference with a two thousand sixteen election. Cambridge Analytica
Speaker 1: certainly tried to influence the election. They were hired to
Speaker 1: try and help various candidates get elected, and some of
Speaker 1: those candidates did get elected. I mean, that was the
Speaker 1: whole point of it. But it mostly seems to come
Speaker 1: across as snake oil. To me, I'm sure there's merit
Speaker 1: in the idea behind it. I'm sure. I mean that
Speaker 1: it seems intuitive that if you know a lot about
Speaker 1: it person, you can more effectively communicate to that person.
Speaker 1: But it sounds to me that Alexander Nicks was largely
Speaker 1: more talk than substance when it came to producing results.
Speaker 1: This is based off the numerous reports I've read and
Speaker 1: the various sites that have posted people who are familiar
Speaker 1: with the company and the way it worked. Um, just
Speaker 1: drawing those conclusions based on those numerous reports. Now, that
Speaker 1: doesn't change the fact that the company engaged in some
Speaker 1: really murky stuff. Leveraging Facebook data without user consent is
Speaker 1: a huge ethical problem, though the company has repeatedly denied
Speaker 1: it did any such thing, despite evidence pointing to the contrary,
Speaker 1: much of that evidence provided by Chris Wiley. In addition,
Speaker 1: the mess is really brought into focus Facebook's role. The
Speaker 1: company did very little to protect user data and still
Speaker 1: does very little to protect user data. So why is that? Well,
Speaker 1: ultimately the answer comes down to money. You see, user
Speaker 1: data and privacy are of our data. Security specifically and privacy,
Speaker 1: they're a little concern to Facebook's shareholders. Those are the
Speaker 1: people who own stock in Facebook. What they want is
Speaker 1: a return on investment. They want to spend money to
Speaker 1: own part of Facebook, and then they want Facebook to
Speaker 1: make way more money so that they get some of
Speaker 1: that money. So that means they want to see Facebook grow.
Speaker 1: They want to see it growing revenue, they want to
Speaker 1: see it growing users. They don't care about the quality
Speaker 1: of the service as long as it doesn't impact those numbers.
Speaker 1: Facebook could be a terrible, terrible, terrible experience, but as
Speaker 1: long as it drove that growth and revenue and in users,
Speaker 1: shareholders aren't going to care because that doesn't that that's
Speaker 1: not important to them. What's important to them is that
Speaker 1: return on investment. So Facebook's primary focus has always been
Speaker 1: on delivering returns, not on creating a better service. And
Speaker 1: that's something that can happen to any company. I'm not
Speaker 1: singling Facebook out to say they are particularly at fault here.
Speaker 1: They follow a very similar pathway that tons of other
Speaker 1: companies follow. But when it's a company that's gathering tons
Speaker 1: of personal data about all of us, largely because we're
Speaker 1: sharing it willingly, but not not just through that, this
Speaker 1: becomes a concern, and I question Facebook's decision to ever
Speaker 1: allow developers to create apps that would give those developers
Speaker 1: access to the data belonging to friends of people who
Speaker 1: downloaded those apps, friends who had never actually been given
Speaker 1: the opportunity to say yes or no to having their
Speaker 1: data shared. I think that's a terrible, terrible policy that
Speaker 1: to have ever been in place, and I'm glad that
Speaker 1: it's gone, but it never should have been there. So
Speaker 1: it's just not cool to say, hey, I can look
Speaker 1: at all your information because your buddy Bill said it
Speaker 1: was okay, Because the rash response to that is go
Speaker 1: take a flying leap, because Bill does not have the
Speaker 1: rights to give you permission to look at my information.
Speaker 1: And yet for years that's exactly how Facebook allowed developers
Speaker 1: to create apps. As I mentioned earlier, they've since changed
Speaker 1: that policy, but it was ludicrous to have it in
Speaker 1: the beginning, not to mention this awful passing the buck
Speaker 1: situation has been going on between the various parties involved
Speaker 1: in this scandal. No one is taking accountability for this.
Speaker 1: So Facebook's initial response was, Hey, it's not our fault.
Speaker 1: We were told this was for an academic research project,
Speaker 1: and that met our criteria, so we said, go ahead,
Speaker 1: it's fine. It's not our fault that they abused that.
Speaker 1: In fact, we told him to knock it off, as
Speaker 1: if somehow that makes it okay to share user data
Speaker 1: without their consent. Then you have Alexander Cogan, whose response
Speaker 1: was nothing I did was technically illegal, which might be true,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't mean that it wasn't unethical and it
Speaker 1: was against Facebook's terms of service, although again Cogan had
Speaker 1: said I didn't read the terms of service, and clearly
Speaker 1: Facebook didn't read my terms of service, or else they
Speaker 1: would have never allowed my app to publish. So everyone
Speaker 1: is equally at fault because no one reads terms of service.
Speaker 1: And Cambrage analyticas response was, Hey, all we did was
Speaker 1: by data. We didn't specifically hire anyone to scrape information
Speaker 1: well user consent, So no one is accepting responsibility for this. Uh,
Speaker 1: and I would argue that they all are at fault
Speaker 1: in some measure. The story reminds us that there remains
Speaker 1: out there a gray market, and that gray market is
Speaker 1: filled with information about us. It's the data we generate
Speaker 1: as we navigate over the Internet. We create it when
Speaker 1: we post a social media we create it when we
Speaker 1: make an online purchase, we leave traces as we move
Speaker 1: from one website to another in our browsing histories. We
Speaker 1: created a messages. It's created about us without us even
Speaker 1: taking active participation, and all of that data has value
Speaker 1: to it. There are different ways you can use that data.
Speaker 1: You can use it to sell to people, you can
Speaker 1: use it for political purposes, as Cambridge Analytica did. And
Speaker 1: that data is out there on the gray market, and
Speaker 1: it is for sale. If you have the money, you
Speaker 1: can buy it, and it's shockingly cheap on an individual basis.
Speaker 1: It's only when you start talking about in bulk that
Speaker 1: gets really expensive. But that is a disturbing thing to remember,
Speaker 1: and there's no indication that that's going to go away.
Speaker 1: As long as the money is there, it's gonna stick around.
Speaker 1: Cambridge Analytica and its sister or parent or whatever company
Speaker 1: scl Elections they are no more. Both entities dissolved in
Speaker 1: the Spring of and while they no longer exist officially,
Speaker 1: investigations continue into both companies, and at least in the UK,
Speaker 1: we may see more efforts to bring charges against individuals
Speaker 1: who worked for those companies. The United States, it's a
Speaker 1: little less certain the House Intelligence Committee had an investigation,
Speaker 1: but they shut that down. It was an investigation to
Speaker 1: look into Russian meddling in the US election that got
Speaker 1: shut down for reasons that I'm not going to go
Speaker 1: into because that gets super political and it doesn't really
Speaker 1: have a place in this podcast. Investigations in the US
Speaker 1: might come back at some point, but for the moment,
Speaker 1: it's mostly in the realm of journalism and out of
Speaker 1: the courts in the US. Meanwhile, Alexander Nix and Rebecca Mercer,
Speaker 1: along with Silver others who were connected to Cambridge Analytica,
Speaker 1: ended up organizing to create a new data analyst company
Speaker 1: called Emmer Data E M. E R D A t
Speaker 1: A that was established in the summer of sev and
Speaker 1: its headquarters are in the same building where Cambridge Analytica
Speaker 1: was now. According to Nigel Oaks, the guy who founded
Speaker 1: the company that eventually spawned Cambridge Analytica, the whole purpose
Speaker 1: for Emmer Data was ultimately to acquire Cambridge Analytica and
Speaker 1: s c L Elections together and form a brand new entity.
Speaker 1: But then everything fell apart, and according to Oakes, all
Speaker 1: of those organizations are now being wound down in the
Speaker 1: near future. They're not going to continue on um. That's
Speaker 1: according to Nigel Oaks. I don't know if that's official,
Speaker 1: but that's what he says. Cogan's colleague, by the way,
Speaker 1: who helped build the app was Joseph Chancellor. So Cogan
Speaker 1: and Chancellor together built the survey and the Facebook application
Speaker 1: that was at the heart of the United States controversy.
Speaker 1: And here's a fun fact, Cogan would end up being
Speaker 1: labeled by Facebook as being a terrible, uh person who
Speaker 1: had well, maybe not a terrible person, but a person
Speaker 1: who had violated the terms of service that he had
Speaker 1: created a tool that was in strict violation of Facebook's policies. However,
Speaker 1: Facebook also hired Joseph Chancellor to work for Facebook, so
Speaker 1: one of the two developers was pointed out as saying,
Speaker 1: you're a criminal, and the other one was hired to
Speaker 1: work for the company. Although to be fair, Joseph Chancellor
Speaker 1: no longer works for Facebook. Still interesting. Probably some sour
Speaker 1: grapes there, I'm guessing for Cogan, probably not terribly happy
Speaker 1: about that. Anyway. That wraps up the confusing, complicated, sad,
Speaker 1: and infuriating tale of Cambridge Analytica, a company that I
Speaker 1: think ultimately was more about promising stuff that it might
Speaker 1: not have been able to deliver than anything else. But
Speaker 1: because it was wrapped up in this other issue with Facebook,
Speaker 1: it definitely was thrust into the spotlight. Otherwise, I think
Speaker 1: it probably would have just kind of faded out of
Speaker 1: US politics at least might have still gotten into trouble
Speaker 1: elsewhere in the world. But in the US people seem
Speaker 1: to have gotten wise and just felt that it wasn't
Speaker 1: a valuable asset to have on your team. Interesting stuff. Well,
Speaker 1: in our next episode, we're going to shine a light
Speaker 1: on the dark Web. It was a listener request to
Speaker 1: take a look at what the dark web is and
Speaker 1: how it works. And then we will conclude the dark
Speaker 1: and scary week of tech stuff, and we'll we'll try
Speaker 1: and talk about fun things next week, like I don't know,
Speaker 1: furbies or something. I'll figure it out. Tri's nodding. She's like, please,
Speaker 1: please pick a happy note. I'm tired of hearing about
Speaker 1: nuclear power and dark and deceptive politics. If you have
Speaker 1: suggestions for future episodes of Tech Stuff, whether it's a technology,
Speaker 1: a person, a company, whatever it may be, send me
Speaker 1: an email. The email address for the show is tech
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Speaker 1: of those is tech stuff h s W. You should
Speaker 1: also go on over to t public dot com slash
Speaker 1: tech stuff. I was looking at your shirt and it's nice,
Speaker 1: but it's looking like you know, you could spruce up
Speaker 1: your fashion a little bit, add some variety there. I
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Speaker 1: brighten all the other clothes you put in there. See. Look,
Speaker 1: I'm following Cambridge Analytica's lead. I'm making promises I can't
Speaker 1: deliver upon, but they know there really are great shirts.
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