Cambridge Analytica

The British broadcaster Channel 4 News broke the startling story yesterday (link here) that Cambridge Analytica, a company with strong ties to Donald Trump and his campaign, secretly works in elections across the world where it uses bribes, ex-spies, fake IDs, and sex workers to entrap opponents and deploy dirty tricks.

These practices were confirmed by noneother than employees of the first who were caught in secret camera admitting to their unethical and sometimes illegal practices.

Cambridge operates in both Britain and the United States, where their biggest client to date has been Donald Trump and his 2016 campaign. The firm was founded by Stephen Bannon, Trump's 2016 campaign manager, and Robert Mercer, who donated millions of dollars to Trump-aligned political action committees during the 2016 election.

Cambridge made international headlines when major news outlets reported last week that, in violation of Facebook rules and customer agreements, the company had harvested personal information about more than 50 million users for secretive data analysis and campaign message targeting (details here). Facebook has suspended Cambridge from use of its popular social network but has otherwise not commented publicly.

The massive breach enabled Cambridge to harvest exploit social media data about tens of millions of American voters, developing techniques to target vulnerable individuals during Trump's 2016 campaign. As revealed by the secret videos made by Channel 4, Cambridge executive bragged on camera that they could make people believe lies and distrust the truth.

How will this revelation play out in the United States? A lot will depend on citizen response. If millions of angry people make their disgust known to Congress, something might be done. If not, then Trump and his partners in crime will likely get away with this, too.

Stay tuned.