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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNew: Did Jared Kushners Data Operation Help Select Facebook Targets for the Russians?
The Russians used social media to rile the electorate. Investigators wonder if they had inside help.
The headlines were about Facebook admitting it had sold ad space to Russian groups trying to sway the 2016 presidential campaign. But investigators shrugged: theyd known or assumed for months that Facebook, as well as Twitter and other social-media platforms, were a tool used in the Kremlins campaign. The only thing thats surprising is that more revelations like this havent come out sooner, said Congressman Mike Quigley, an Illinois Democrat and a member of the House Intelligence Committee. And I expect that more will.
Mapping the full Russian propaganda effort is important. Yet investigators in the House, Senate, and special counsel Robert Muellers office are equally focused on a more explosive question: did any Americans help target the memes and fake news to crucial swing districts and wavering voter demographics? By Americans, you mean, like, the Trump campaign? a source close to one of the investigations said with a dark laugh. Indeed: probers are intrigued by the role of Jared Kushner, the now-presidents son-in-law, who eagerly took credit for crafting the Trump campaigns online efforts in a rare interview right after the 2016 election. I called somebody who works for one of the technology companies that I work with, and I had them give me a tutorial on how to use Facebook micro-targeting, Kushner told Steven Bertoni of Forbes. We brought in Cambridge Analytica. I called some of my friends from Silicon Valley who were some of the best digital marketers in the world. And I asked them how to scale this stuff . . . We basically had to build a $400 million operation with 1,500 people operating in 50 states, in five months to then be taken apart. We started really from scratch.
Kushners chat with Forbes has provided a veritable bakerys worth of investigatory bread crumbs to follow. Brad Parscale, who Kushner hired to run the campaigns San Antonio-based Internet operation, has agreed to be interviewed by the House Intelligence Committee.
Bigger questions, however, revolve around Cambridge Analytica. It is unclear how Kushner first became aware of the data-mining firm, but one of its major investors is billionaire Trump backer Robert Mercer. Mercer was also a principal patron of Breitbart News and Steve Bannon, who was a vice president of Cambridge Analytica until he joined the Trump campaign. I think the Russians had help, said Congresswoman Jackie Speier, a California Democrat who is a member of the House Intelligence Committee. Ive always wondered if Cambridge Analytica was part of that. (Cambridge Analytica did not respond to a request for comment.)
More: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/09/jared-kushner-data-operation-russia-facebook
Slowly but surely, we are getting there.
Eliot Rosewater
(31,097 posts)the MORE the deplorables will LOVE them.
Do you know what that means?
MelissaB
(16,420 posts)I think we'll see jail time, and a lot of it.
Eliot Rosewater
(31,097 posts)unless Schneiderman in NY can pin something on them, and the MORE treason they commit the MORE half of your country, my country will LOVE them, which to me means we are done, over.
This is not fixable.
I see major unrest when it happens to turn out the GOP can commit any crime they want and nothing at all happens.
I cant get over how half of this country is willing to commit treason. I am very angry about that and cant see straight.
MelissaB
(16,420 posts)LisaM
(27,762 posts)This makes Watergate look like a kindergarten game.
WhiteTara
(29,676 posts)As the tale of betrayal and treason inundating the Trump White House spirals in an ever widening gyre, we add more names in this saga: DeVos and Zuckerberg.
In a November 22, 2016 Forbes article, Jared Kushner bragged about his Stealth Data Machine that won the White House for Donald Trump. In an article dated October 31, 2016, Slate magazine reported on the connections in Kushners Machine.
For months during the election cycle, reporters noted constant internet data traffic between Trump Towers servers and Russian Alfa Banks servers. Now we learn of a third leg in those data transmissions.
Spectrum Health, a DeVos family (of Amway multilevel-scheme wealth) companys computer servers appear to have been receiving, replicating and updating hacked voter records with more complete data gleaned from their voluminous patient records. Then after being updated and replicated, that data was transmitted to Trump Tower servers, Alfa Bank servers and finally to the Kremlin for weaponization based on targeted voter information.
Confirming these allegations, computer data scientists recently published Meta data from their IP addresses and noted consistent lengths of time for each transmission and period of rest.
Intelligence shows Russias GRU hacked both DNC voter rolls and voter registration systems throughout the 2016 election cycle. While no data was stolen, deleted or changed, it was replicated.
Zuckerbergs Facebook recently admitted taking illegal ad money from Russian companies. Whether Zuckerbergs company is complicit is undetermined. But the reported $100,000 ad buys placed a lot of political ads on Facebook . Those ads aimed to destroy the opposition: Hillary Clinton.
Betsy DeVos, now part of the Trump cabinet, is turning our public school system into private charter and alternative (religious) schools.
Her brother, Eric Prince, owner of infamous Blackwater private military, is lobbying for his new logistics company, Frontier Resource Group, to replace our military in Afghanistan. So far, our generals have managed to squash that plan.
Now under cover of devastating fires and hurricanes, Trump and the Republicons are stacking the courts. Fascism is edging ever closer. All I can say is, Hurry Up! Robert Mueller! Those clanging bells signal a 10 Alarm Fire!
Wellstone ruled
(34,661 posts)Wondering when the DeVos connection would resurface. Steele and others mentioned this connection late last fall.
And he goes to Jared!!!!!!
unc70
(6,095 posts)I remember seeing about the Spectrum Health connection last year, but I somehow missed the patient records implications.
BigmanPigman
(51,432 posts)that arrived in the mail yesterday. I already drew 45's ugly face on both sides. What is cool is that the clown has little hands holding a hankie (on side is a laughing face and the other is crying). Too perfect!
CousinIT
(9,151 posts)So have I. In fact - that server in Trump tower that was for some odd reason connecting to Alfa Bank.... well - I just wonder.
Control-Z
(15,681 posts)connecting to Alpha Bank has always seemed very suspicious. And another thing that is never brought up - just my observation, I guess, how many of the Trump crime family, friends, and associates, associated, one way or another, with the maggot's campaign LIVED IN the Trump Tower. Many had moved out by the time the election came around but, well, I find that suspicious too. We surpassed way too many coincidences to be believable last year.
H2O Man
(73,333 posts)Yes.
unc70
(6,095 posts)How did I miss this? From this article:
For months during the election cycle, reporters noted constant internet data traffic between Trump Towers servers and Russian Alfa Banks servers. Now we learn of a third leg in those data transmissions.
Spectrum Health, a DeVos family (of Amway multilevel-scheme wealth) companys computer servers appear to have been receiving, replicating and updating hacked voter records with more complete data gleaned from their voluminous patient records. Then after being updated and replicated, that data was transmitted to Trump Tower servers, Alfa Bank servers and finally to the Kremlin for weaponization based on targeted voter information
Think about that. "Voluminous patient records" being used as part of targeted attacks on voters. I am still trying to process what that really means.
Volaris
(10,260 posts)Was crosslinked to Spectrum Healthcare's PATIENT DATABASE to look for matches, in order to provide more individual-specific data. Those matches were then compiled and forwarded to Trump Tower, Alfabank and the Kremlin.
Think about that. Your name is stolen from the voter rolls. Then someone sends it to your hospital, and ALL the information your hospital has stored on you, gets transfered FIRST to the headquarters of an American politician, and THEN to the foreign government that has agreed to help that politician get elected.
If I'm right, this by itself is a violation of just about every HIPPA law there IS, and if Betsy knew about it, she can be placed in charge of the literacy program in the prison she will be sleeping in...
Jeezus...This is going to be a big deal...
yardwork
(61,420 posts)For instance, people with cancer diagnoses could receive targeted fake news Facebook propaganda pieces about how much Trump cares about cancer victims. (There were videos about this all over the internet leading up to the election.) Also, these voters would be targets of fake news claiming that Hillary didn't care about cancer victims.
History of mental illness in a voter's medical records? They would be the targets of propaganda that played on their fears.
Medical records also provide lots of demographic data - ages, addresses, family histories.
All of this information was fed into algorithms that spit out propaganda targeted to the interests and vulnerabilities of specific voters. This is very sophisticated, personalized propaganda.
This is why we are unable to reason with family, friends, coworkers, and neighbors who are convinced of alternate realities. They are literally brainwashed.
If this isn't stopped, somebody - probably Putin - will literally take over the world. This is brainwashing on a global scale.
calimary
(80,700 posts)THIS MANY "lucky breaks"? I don't think so.
certainot
(9,090 posts)which is why in a new york magazine interview with gabriel sherman 4/3/16, trump guy sam nunberg said he "listened to 1000s of hours of talk radio and reported to him (trump)" in 2014
who told him that was a good idea? no way that dumbass'd figure that out - none of the
they're going to find limbaugh's got cyprus bank accounts and putin's been using talk radio since rove lost the white house
canetoad
(17,090 posts)That Russia guided them through setting up their digital campaign. Kushner waffles on about bringing in the best Silicon Valley minds and all that but phenomenally talented as Jared is, I doubt that he could have got this up and running from scratch in the time available.
This is going out on a limb, but Putin first came to power in 1999 and I believe the quest to destabilise the USA began shortly afterwards. Social media was about to take off and the potential for 'weaponisation' was there from the start. This is not something that started with Jared being put in charge of Trump's digital campaign.