BreXit in global Power Strategy for De-Globalization
My diaries ...
Related reading ...
Deglobalisation 2.0: Trump and Brexit are symptoms | Clingendael Institute The Hague |
I must disagree with the famous think-tank ... BreXit and the Trump victory were successful after superb effort of disinformation and support from Big Tech, the rightwing winners.
UK Parliament: SCL influence in foreign elections
Data analytics firms have played a key role in elections around the world. Strategic communications companies frequently run campaigns internationally, which are financed by less than transparent means and employ legally dubious methods. As we wrote in our Interim Report, we raised concerns about the complex web of relationships between the SCL (Strategic Communications Laboratories) group of companies, and "these concerns have been heightened by Alexander Nix and SCL's own links with organisations involved in the military, defence, intelligence and security realms."
We highlighted the following election and referendum campaigns that SCL Elections and associated companies had been involved in: Australia; Brazil; Czech Republic; France; Gambia; Germany; Ghana (2013); Guyana; India; Indonesia; Italy; Kenya (Kenyatta campaigns of 2013 and 2017); Kosovo; Malaysia; Mexico; Mongolia; Niger; Nigeria; Pakistan; Peru; Philippines; Slovakia; St Kitts and Nevis; St Lucia; St Vincent and the Grenadines; Thailand; Trinidad and Tobago; and the UK. We also received testimony that SCL may also have worked on the Mayoral election campaign in Buenos Aires in 2015 for Mauricio Macri.
Following publication of our Interim Report, both the High Commissioner of Malta and the Chelgate PR company wrote to the Committee, denying statements in the Interim Report that the Malta Labour Party had had dealings with the SCL Group "for several years before the 2013 elections". We understand, however, that SCL certainly had meetings in Malta, that Christian Kalin of Henley & Partners was introduced by SCL to Joseph Muscat in 2011, and that Christian Kalin met with both political parties before 2013.
UK Parliament investigation: Written evidence submitted by Dr Emma L Briant, American University, Washington, DC, USA.
In 2018 SCL Group were revealed to have sold in political campaigns worldwide the behavioral influence methods developed for defence which they had drawn on research by DARPA and DSTL. Wider concern about the lack of restrictions to prevent military tactics being redeployed by veterans commercially include recent concerns over the origins and spread of QAnon. There have been several over examples where influence by western governments has raised issues over process, transparency or domestic influence concerns.
Evidence for the US Senate Judiciary Committee on Cambridge Analytica and SCL Group
By Dr Emma L Briant, Senior Lecturer (equivalent to Associate Professor) at University of Essex
The online architecture of social media encourage the individual to focus on themselves, failing to see their data's significance within the collective, even as it becomes more and more compulsory to be `connected' and surrender data. SCL Group is a logical product of poor regulation, weak oversight and legal loopholes in digital persuasion. Digital communication industries are dominated by monopolies such as Facebook who have been incentivised to abuse our data. The logic of the system created is to enable what we have witnessed to reproduce unless a strong independent regulator is established to bring structural changes - ensure transparency, accountability and proportional use of our data.
The evidence is in three sections:
1. Digital Campaigns and Microtargeting: Didn't Obama do this too?
- Evidence on Leave.EU, Eldon Insurance and US Health Insurance Industry
- Oversight of Government Contracts and Relationships Between Cambridge Analytica and SCL
Group
SCL Group behavioral influence methods developed for defence on research by DARPA and DSTL.
Investigative journalist assassinated in mafia style car bombing - Malta
Panama Papers: Investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia assassinated in Malta car bomb attack | TRT World |
East-West Freedom of Press Under Attack | 28 April 2018 |
Populism on the rise and journalists used by politicians as targets of discontent for the masses [Source: DW News]
Cambridge Analytica: ex-director says firm pitched detailed strategy to Leave.EU | The Guardian - |
Brittany Kaiser says she carried out study on microtargeting people likely to back Brexit
A former Cambridge Analytica director has confirmed that the firm pitched "a very detailed strategy" to Leave.EU on how it could use data and psychological profiling to microtarget people likely to back Brexit in the referendum.
In her first broadcast interview since coming forward last month to the Guardian, Brittany Kaiser said she carried out a study for Leave.EU before the referendum as part of her role in business development for Cambridge Analytica.
But speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, she said: "Cambridge Analytica never took receipt of any data or undertook any modelling on behalf of Leave.EU."
Kaiser, who appeared on a panel at Leave.EU's launch event, is due to appear later on Tuesday before the culture select committee's inquiry into fake news and misinformation.
Cambridge Analytica insists it did not work at all on the EU referendum, but admits pitching to Leave.EU, Vote Leave and the remain campaign. In her interview for Today, Kaiser gave details of the pitch to Leave.EU.
She said: "The proposal for how we were going to assist the Leave.EU campaign was to undertake the same type of research that we were undertaking in the United States. That's psychographic research: understanding people's personality profiles in order to develop different clusters of individuals - how they saw the world, why they would or wouldn't be interested in the United Kingdom leaving the European Union and therefore crafting many different communications campaigns."
MoD granted 'List X' status to Cambridge Analytica parent company SCL Group
MPs call for investigation into concerns over SCL Group and its access to secret documents
The SCL project was carried out by the MoD's Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), which is focused on maximising "the impact of science and technology for the defence and security of the UK".
According to a heavily redacted document released under freedom of information rules, Project Duco was part of the government's "human and social influence" work, and SCL was paid £150,000. The company was also paid £40,000 for work carried out in 2010-11.
The government team, which included psychologists and analysts, worked with SCL in 2014 to assess how "target audience analysis" could be used by the British government.
Over the course of the project in 2014, MoD officials flagged concerns over SCL's data management, saying there were "rudimentary security mechanisms" in place.
As part of Project Duco, UK officials assessed SCL's methods, which included analysing "psychological and anthropological principles" and assessing how these could contribute to the government's strategic communications.
Over the course of the project, SCL assessed behaviour patterns in young unmarried males and key factors affecting instability among this group.
Shortly after the work with DSTL, SCL delivered training for Nato, which was subsequently passed on to Georgian, Ukrainian and Moldovan government officials.
According to an audit, SCL was paid C$999,657 (£548,000) for work on target audience analysis, including an eight-week training course for Nato staff.
Target audience analysis allows governments or companies to assess how to target individuals with a message to change behaviour.
As part of Project Duco [censored document], the MoD was given "source background detail" by SCL, which included "analysis processes, data collection plans and sampling strategies".
Tory Politicians, SCL Group and the Phantom Contract | 22 March 2018 |
SCL Group is the parent company of Cambridge Analytica. They share directors and practise and are for all intents and purposes part of the same organisation. Between them they claim to have influenced more than 200 elections across the world.
In an article for this website, I revealed the extent of the links between SCL Group and the British establishment - in particular the Conservative Party. Directors include an array of Etonian educated Tory donors, former government ministers, and high-ranking officers in the British army.
These revelations led to the SNP's Westminster leader Ian Blackford questioning May about these links at Prime Minister's Questions yesterday.
Her response sidestepped the issue of connections between her own party and the organisation and emphasised that the government has no "current contracts" with SCL Group.
A Downing Street spokesperson later clarified that the government previously had three contracts with SCL Group. One was with the Ministry of Defence between 2014-2015, one with the Home Office in 2009 and one with the Foreign Office in 2008-2009. Here lies a glaring inconsistency.
Last year, the MOD responded to a freedom of information request on its links with SCL Group. In its response it detailed TWO contracts it had with the firm. One of these was in 2014-15, worth £150,000 and involving the "procurement of targeted audience analysis". However, it also notes a second contract (not mentioned by the No 10 spokesperson) , in 2010/11 involving the "provision of external training" and worth £40,000.
SCL Group and affiliated company IOTA Global were tasked in 2015 with training NATO psyops division in target audience analysis
Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL), delivered an intensive 8-week course where the SCL trained defence personnel from NATO Allied and Partner countries, as well as Centre personnel, in TAA methodology.
How Dominic Cummings Hacked the EU Referendum
British Politics? A playground for schoolboys from Eton
As the corona virus pandemic started to spread from China ...
The British government's covert propaganda campaign in Syria | MEE - 19 Feb. 2020 |
Documents obtained by MEE reveal how British contractors recruited Syrian citizen journalists - often without their knowledge - to promote 'moderate opposition'
The British government covertly established a network of citizen journalists across Syria during the early years of the country's civil war in an attempt to shape perceptions of the conflict, frequently recruiting people who were unaware that they were being directed from London.
A number of leaked documents seen by Middle East Eye show how the propaganda initiative began in 2012 and gathered pace the following year, shortly after the UK parliament refused to authorise British military action in Syria.
Drawing upon British, American and Canadian funding, UK government contractors set up offices in Istanbul and Amman, where they hired members of the Syrian diaspora, who in turn recruited citizen journalists inside Syria.
These journalists, many of them young, were commissioned to produce TV footage, radio programmes, social media, posters, magazines and even children's comics.
While many Syrians turned spontaneously to media activism from the start of the war, the documents describe the way in which the British government sought to guide some of their output, seeing citizen journalism as a way of covertly influencing Syrian audiences.
The papers also make clear that those people who were recruited were often unaware that they were part of a British propaganda initiative.
Some of those who were recruited have defended their involvement, however, saying that they were reliant on western support in their efforts to counter pro-government reporting in Syrian state media, and in Iranian and Russian-backed media.
At a time when the last opposition-held enclave in Idlib province is under assault by pro-government forces, they questioned whether western countries could have contributed more material support to moderate rebels.
Some Syrian journalists complained that western support for their work was decreasing even as it was most needed, after Russia's entry into the war in 2015 tipped the balance in favour of President Bashar al-Assad.
The documents were drawn up as blueprints for the initiative by an anthropologist working in counter-terrorism at the foreign office in London. They were issued in late 2014 to a small number of communications companies that were invited to bid for three contracts to deliver the work.
EuroTrib archive diaries key words | Cambridge Analytica | SCL Group | Emerdata UAE | Steve Bannon |
Interesting ... just where does one lay the suspicious on influence of election interference .... Seems everybody was in on the fun. My own analysis says Cambridge Analytica and Israel's lobby efforts were major and most effective.
Did Cambridge Analytica Collude with Russia's Intelligence Services to Interfere in US Elections? | 20 April 2021 |
Wendy Siegelman looks at new evidence about the US polling data handed to Russian agent Konstantin Kilimnik, and the role of the now-defunct election campaign company co-founded by Steve Bannon
In 2014 Sam Patten became a contractor for Cambridge Analytica and its parent company SCL Group. According to a story by Nafeez Ahmed, Patten worked for Cambridge Analytica at the Oregon office of its parent company, SCL Group, when the firm was fine-tuning its methodologies before the presidential campaign.
During 2014 to 2015, Vitali Klitschko hired Patten to assist in his Kyiv mayoral campaign. Patten worked for Klitschko for approximately a year, and was paid $800,000 by Serhiy Lyovochkin, a Ukrainian oligarch and politician who led the Opposition Bloc, had previously worked for Yanukovych and employed Manafort, and is a business partner of Dmitry Firtash.
Kilimnik joined the work with Patten and said Lyovochkin would make all decisions for Klitschko related to hiring of political consultants. In a 2015 news story Firtash allegedly described his involvement in getting Klitschko elected.
Not very convincing IMO
Ukraine MP election: Removing Oligarchs ... Some
The Truth Is Out There
This diary is not about physics but rather about psychology and disinformation produces by the U.S. Government ... a generational effect on the younger generation missing historical context of CIA's Operation Mockingbird. Covert acts by your government ... a science to misinform and spread falsehoods.
[...]
Update on Cambridge Analytica funder Rebekah Mercer who runs Emerdata, co-founded 1789 Capital with Omeed Malik and is a key trustee of the Heritage Foundation which launched Project 2025
Mercer Family, UAE, Election Interference: Cambridge Analytica funder Rebekah Mercer who runs Emerdata
Emerdata Limited is a political consulting company based in London, formed in 2017 after filing for insolvency of Cambridge Analytica. Emerdata is accused by privacy advocates as its rebranded form and is headed by several of its executives.
The High Court of Justice of England and Wales affirms Emerdata's subsidiaries or daughter companies are the SCL Group Ltd and SCL Analytics Ltd. The trading subsidiaries of SCL Analytics Ltd are SCL Commercial Limited which provided data analysis to commercial customers, SCL Social Limited which provided campaign management and communications services to political customers, and SCL Elections Limited. In April 2019, 21% of Emerdata's shares were held by three individuals, Alexander Nix, Julian Wheatland and Nigel Oakes. Julian Wheatland is now its sole director.
Rather than any fundamental change this appears to be mere cosmetic surgery to an organisation deeply embroiled in a series of scandals around data harvesting and election rigging. A quick examination of Wheatland's history suggests this is little more than a case of "new boss, same as the old boss."
I'm joining Facebook to build bridges between politics and tech | The Guardian Opinion - by Nick Clegg |
