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A tangled web indeed by @BloggersRUs

Published by Tom Sullivan on March 28, 2018

A tangled web indeed
by Tom Sullivan


Blofeld’s cat in From Russia With Love.

Not only an American election but Brexit too may have been a Cambridge Analytica project.

CA whistleblower Chris Wylie testified before the UK Parliament on Tuesday with more allegations of campaign finance violations by the data team behind the Trump campaign. Wylie alleged that a network of companies conspired to skirt Britain’s campaign finance laws in the lead-up to the Brexit vote:

He added that a Canadian business with ties to Cambridge Analytica’s parent company, SCL Group, also provided analysis for the Vote Leave campaign ahead of the 2016 Brexit referendum. This research, Wylie said, likely breached the U.K.’s strict campaign financing laws and may have helped to sway the final Brexit outcome.

“If we allow cheating in our democratic process … What about next time? What about the time after that? This is a breach of the law. This is cheating,” he told British politicians Tuesday. “This is not some council race, or a by-election. This is an irreversible change to the constitutional settlement of this country.”

On the heels of news that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will testify before Congress, Wylie had more to say about CA’s use of Facebook profile data:

“The projects I was working on may have had a larger impact than I first expected,” said Wylie, who worked for SCL Group, Cambridge Analytica’s parent company, for about one and a half years. “It’s categorically untrue that Cambridge Analytica has never used Facebook data.”

But these bits from The Guardian’s live stream of the hearings provide even more breadcrumbs for special counsel Robert Mueller to follow:

That raises questions about the financial arrangements the Trump campaign had with CA, something Mueller might want to explore. But he’ll have to decide first how credible Wylie is. In a statement, Cambridge Analytica stated, “Chris Wylie has misrepresented himself and the company to the committee, and previously to the news media.”

But this earlier from Wylie sounds like something from a spy thriller:

After the hearing, Wylie threw cold water on the suggestion his former boss, Alexander Nix, ran a SMERSH-like operation:

“He’s a salesman, he likes to sell stuff,” Wylie told the committee, explaining that as head of Cambridge Analytica, Nix’s job was to woo clients, not write algorithms.

“He has no background in psychology, technology, marketing or politics,” the whistleblower told The Washington Post.

Wylie said that Nix and his company didn’t care whether they broke laws in developing countries, as long as they won elections for their clients — in Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana and the Caribbean.

Asked what he thought might be Nix’s next move, Wylie — a Brexit supporter who sports pink hair and a nose ring — suggested, “Jail?”

If this is a spy thriller, it’s a bad one. Not even a white cat could dress up Steve Bannon.

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Request a copy of For The Win, my county-level election mechanics primer at tom.bluecentury at gmail.

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