The Real Targets
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
The Real Targets Oh! what a tangled web we weave When first we practice to deceive! (Sir Walter Scott, Marmion) “… held back almost all of our budget and then we basically dumped the entire budget in the last ten days and really in the last three or four days and we aimed it at… roughly at about 7 million people [who] saw something like 1 and a half billion digital ads in a very short period of time”. First, I quote the Sir Walter Scott poem, because this whole saga is an extremely tangled web, in which those involved wanted to deceive! Then I quote from Dominic Cummings, who served as the Campaign Director of VoteLeave throughout the EU referendum Campaign. The figures given by Dominic Cummings are mind-blowing if you break them down! 1.5 billion digital ads aimed at 7 million electors in 10 days maximum - WOW! In 10 days that is close to one digital ad per person per hour - 21 per day! WOW! And, if it was really ‘in the last 3 days’, that’s 3 digital ads every hour of those 3 days!! Examining Evidence All the evidence collected so far, points towards the fact that those digital ads were targeted at the personal Facebook pages of the 7 million persons. We have to assume they were all persons with a vote in the Referendum, otherwise there would have been no point in targeting them in the first place. So, how did VoteLeave and AggregateIQ get to that point? I thought it would be fun to try and piece it all together and work out how it was done - so here goes! Nigel Farage In UK terms, it has to start with the one and only Nigel Farage. His early career was in investment banking, and he joined an American company, Drexel Burnham Lambert in the 80s. That company was into the ‘junk bond market’ and went into bankruptcy in 1990 as a result. There is quite a lot of evidence which indicates that Farage had a friendship with Robert Mercer, and later with Steve Bannon, over quite a lengthy period of time. Since Farage has always been on the Right of the political spectrum, since his schooldays at Dulwich College, it is easy to see how he could, and probably would, have developed a friendship with Mercer and Bannon, and the alt-Right of US politics during his time in the States. We know that Robert Mercer has invested many millions of his billions of dollars into the range of companies - SCL Group Ltd, SCL Elections, Cambridge Analytica, and the many other shell companies which have been established and are still being set up. There is a massive interwoven web of companies, most registered in London, with the same players appearing as Directors and key executives in each of them, including two Mercer daughters, Rebekah and Jennifer, the latest being Emerdata. We have to wonder at what point Nigel Farage became a target for the Mercer/Bannon teams, or could it have been the other way round? Did dear Nigel see the Mercer/Bannon teams as his best way to win a referendum on the EU, if one ever came? In her interview in The Guardian, Brittany Kaiser stated she thought the work done for Leave.EU/UKIP was worth about £40,000, so it is interesting to see Carole Cadwalladr’s revelation of an invoice from CA to UKIP for £41,500. Seems like a funny coincidence. In a sense that doesn’t matter now, because what we know of what did happen, fits into patterns which shows determination to influence the direction of politics in the UK. EU Tax Laws, and new Data Protection Directives could well have been a major driving force which entered the mix, once decisions were taken to invest in the UK. Enter Arron Banks, a major funder of UKIP, and a major funder for the Leave.EU campaign for the Referendum, and initially a close friend of Nigel Farage, and I believe also Robert Mercer. Leave.EU Leave.EU started life as ThekNOw.EU campaign, founded by Arron Banks, Richard Tice, and Jim Mellon, all millionaires in their own right. Before launching, the name had changed to become Leave.EU. The platform party for the launch of Leave.EU in July 2015, consisted of Richard Tice, Jim Mellon, Liz Bilney CEO of Leave.EU, Gerry Gunster, of the US Company Goddard Gunster, Arron Banks, and Brittany Kaiser, an executive from Cambridge Analytica. (see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuPbAX6Lzhc&t=139s ) Brittany Kaiser, who answered questions during the launch, and indicated she was helping Leave.EU later left Cambridge Analytica, and this is what she told Carole Cadwalladr of The Guardian after her departure: She said both organisations offered to share proprietary data with Cambridge Analytica’s lead scientist, David Wilkinson. He requested access to Facebook pages, “subscriber, donation and local group data”, email engagement and call centre records. It is not clear what information they had – or what was passed over. But Kaiser says “the most fruitful work was conducted on data stored on a UKIP computer that was carried into Cambridge Analytica’s London office. UKIP had undertaken a survey on why people wanted to leave the EU or not, and they also had membership data. So, we were able to build personas out of that. That was work that would normally be paid for.” This is an important statement, since it seems to illustrate that Cambridge Analytica began their work in the UK using every shred of data which UKIP handed over, and this formed the basis of the database they were building in the UK. Brittany Kaiser On 17 April, Brittany gave evidence to the DCMS Select Committee. In her written submission, and in her oral evidence she seems to have given Alexander Nix and Cambridge Analytica a ‘get out of jail card’ by confirming that her ‘pitch’ to Leave.EU/UKIP was just that, a pitch. And, it was not followed through by Leave.EU/UKIP, and appears that her work may have been used by Arron Banks with another company. The sudden appearance the invoice from CA to UKIP for £41,500 was a puzzling coincidence, coupled with the assertion from Brittany Kaiser that it was never paid by UKIP, despite a contribution of £42,000 from Arron Banks to cover it. Brittany in her evidence described, in answer to questioning, her contact with Eldon Insurance, and the degree to which Arron Banks was prepared to use the data from the customers of Eldon. That also has the feel of trying to help CA and AN! She also appeared to let Alexander Nix ‘off the hook’ by suggesting that all was not well between Cambridge Analytica and AggregateIQ after the campaign for Ted Cruz in Texas, as his team were unhappy with the AggregateIQ work. But, she made no reference to the fact that SCL Group owned the Intellectual Property Licence of AggregateIQ. Cambridge Analytica Alexander Nix who was, the CEO of CA, was at great pains to deny that CA did no paid or unpaid work for Leave.EU. I can accept that as the truth - their objective of being a ‘good friend’ was to raid UKIP data. That data was a vital component in building a good operation in the UK. Bear in mind that in the 2015 General Election, UKIP came second in 120 constituencies. Not only did that help to identify a lot of electors, it came with membership records, and research data. The next component for CA was the UK electoral register, and since they did work with Experian in the US (according to Brittany Kaiser), it would be no surprise to discover they did the same in the UK. That would have come with demographic data taken from several decades of census data, in addition to providing names and addresses. This is not evidenced in any way, but my experience leads me to say there would have been no alternative. Then there was the component of Facebook data. Andy Wigmore who was the Communications Director for Leave.EU, had this to say in an interview with Carole Cadwalladr: “Facebook was the key to the entire campaign”, Wigmore explained. “A Facebook ‘like’, he said, was their most ‘potent weapon’. “Because using artificial intelligence, as we did, tells you all sorts of things about that individual and how to convince them with what sort of advert. And you knew there would also be other people in their network who liked what they liked, so you could spread. And then you follow them. The computer never stops learning and it never stops monitoring.” Cambridge Analytica built its psychometric model, which owes its origins to original research carried out by scientists at Cambridge University’s Psychometric Centre, research based on a personality quiz on Facebook that went viral. More than 6 million people ended up doing it, producing an astonishing treasure trove of data. SCL Group Ltd At this point we need to take a step back in time. Strategic Communication Laboratories, a British Company, was founded in 1993 by Nigel Oakes, to study mass behaviour and how to change it. It eventually became SCL Group Ltd, aided by a series of substantial investments from US billionaire Robert Mercer. SCL created several offshoots, one of which was SCL Elections, which in turn became Cambridge Analytica. SCL entered US politics in 2014, at about the same time as developing more contacts in the UK. We now know SCL Elections and Cambridge Analytica have gone into bankruptcy, and so we have to assume they are no longer needed.