How to win elections using stolen data | The case …

"How did the dream of a connected world eventually separate us?" This question is the documentary trigger The big hack ("Nothing is Private," according to the Spanish translation), a captivating journey through the scandal that invades the Cambridge Analytica company: a complex network including private data exchanges, racist comments, operations and fake news. This recipe has been successfully applied in various electoral processes, although it has gained greater notoriety in two cases: the election of Donald Trump in the United States and the Brexit campaign in the United Kingdom .

Directed by Jehane Noujaim and Karim Amer, the film, which premiered on the Netflix streaming platform, features statements by former Cambridge Analytica employees, researchers and journalists, as well as pictures of the trial. Using an accessible aesthetic, the course is somehow in charge of David Carroll, American technology professor, who filed a complaint against the company in the UK in 2017: he wanted to know the personal data to which he had access and the sources from where he had obtained them.

Carroll begins his process of deconstruction by exposing the various ways, sometimes unsuspected, of the exposure of our data: using the card to pay for coffee, withdrawing money at the cash desk, searching the Internet or publishing content on networks social: everything He talks about us and intervenes in the construction of profiles.

Beat Crooked Hillary

In the oiled process of applying private data to elections, the documentary particularly considers the campaign for the re-election of Barack Obama in 2012: this process, according to several badysts, has "invented" the communication of networks with voters. Cambridge Analytica went from working with the Democratic candidate to that of Ted Cruz, an unknown politician in several districts, but came to compete with Trump in the primaries that would elect the Republican candidate in 2016. The story was still waiting another round: promote Cruz, the company has moved all its propaganda device to the current president. Based on the data collected, he understood that this could be a more profitable activity.

But how did Cambridge Analytica work on the potential voters of the current president? First, he had access to a Facebook app called This is Your Digital Life, a personality test that combines user responses to personal information from their users. profiles. "We are collecting 5,000 data that we can use to predict the personality of every adult in the country. Behavior of personality conditions. And the behavior influences our vote, "said Alexander Nix, former CEO of the consulting firm, before a large audience.

The guns of the political communication giant have designated a specific target: the undecided. They had to be convinced and were bombarded with replicated content on every imaginable platform. A process that, in Nix's words, should continue "until (the undecided) see the world as we wish." And it worked according to a relentless plan: Trump's 2016 campaign boss, Brad Parscale, said he posted 5.9 million ads on Facebook, as opposed to 66,000 ads from his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. .

Another success of the documentary is the mention of the prosecutor Robert MuellThe former director of the FBI conducted an investigation to determine whether there was any evidence linking the Trump campaign team to Russian officials. Brittany Kaiser, a former Cambridge employee who testified in the case, acknowledged that she had been summoned by the prosecutor's team. He also admitted that he had gone to Russia, had met Julian Assange and made donations to WikiLeaks, an organization that had access to Hillary Clinton's e-mail. Allegedly holding this information, the campaign message designed by Cambridge Analytica was Beat Crooked Hillary ("Defeat corrupt Hillary").

One of the great causes of the collapse of society was the broadcast of a hidden camera, obtained by Channel 4, which He undressed the way his managers were treated. The video showed that they were not only using personality tests or bombing messages: the leaders of Cambridge Analytica boasted that they could change the trends by scandalizing prostitutes or demanding bribes to damage the reputation of the prostitutes. political figures. The false news began to flourish, false news.

It still remained to discover the last piece of a perfect puzzle. Steve Bannon was one of the big operators of the 2016 Trump campaign. As a website developer Breitbart News He helped the current president to air his famous slogan "United States First". Bannon was one of those who set up the "Breitbart Doctrine": "If you want to make profound changes to society, you must first divide it." The increased fragmentation of American society was an additional element to favor one or the other trend, and the political consultant did not miss this opportunity either.

Despite the favorable decision of the court (Cambridge Analytica was finally found guilty and fines, ridiculous were inflicted with regard to its economic power), David Carroll was never able to recover his data. "How did the dream of a connected world eventually separate us?" The teacher wondered at the beginning of the documentary. The answer is still unknown, although The big hack This allows us, through a thorough visit, to access a reality until recently inaccessible and realize that a simple click can generate unpredictable effects.

Report: Guido Vbadallo.