The Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development blinked. Then he blinked again. He has just been asked if his government’s “Digital Charter” would apply to his own political party. You know, the governing Liberal Party of Canada. He doesn’t answer. The host on CBC’s “Power and Politics” genially tries
Continue readingTag: Cambridge Analytica
The Disaffected Lib: Cambridge Analytica – "In the Beginning"
It began as a means to thwart Islamist recruitment. But then… Here is Chris Wylie describing how they built the technology that came to be diverted into the effort to skew Brexit and the 2016 American elections. What many don’t know is that Cambridge Analytica has its origins in another
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Why the Brits Ignored How ‘Leave’ Rigged the Brexit Referendum
The Leave campaign had its thumb on the scales in the Brexit referendum. Through various devices it was a rigged outcome. Now the national crime agency is investigating some of the culprits. The list of suspects includes a number of shady Brits but also a few prominent Americans and perhaps
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Trump Backers Sought to Bury Cambridge Analytica So Deep No One Would Uncover Its Secrets
Cambridge Analytica, the now defunct company believed to be instrumental in the Brexit Leave campaign and the election of Donald J. Trump to the White House, is now before a British court. The company, once owned by ultra-right billionaire, Robert Mercer, and directed by noneother than Trump aide, Steve Bannon,
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Did the Trudeau Liberals Use Hacked Data to Win in 2015?
What role did Victoria’s AggregateIQ and perhaps Cambridge Analytica play in the Trudeau Liberals’ come-from-behind triumph to majority in the 2015 federal election? An article in the National Observer suggests that the Liberals may have received hacked data unwittingly or otherwise.
Continue readingWarren Kinsella: Column: the Canadian connection
It’s the biggest political scandal in the world. And it involves a bunch of Canadians. For quite some time now, it’s been known that Vladimir Putin’s Russia – and assorted other outlaw states, like North Korea – have been engaged in acts of cyber-war against democracies around the globe. Long
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: You Can Close The Open Book That Is Your Data
Now that it has been demonstrated Facebook is not the benign social media giant it has always claimed to be, people are becoming more conscious of how vulnerable and how valuable their data is to unscrupulous entities. Among those who are concerned, there will be a corp looking for ways
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: The Slippery Slope of Privacy
Those implicated in the Cambridge Analytica/AggregateIQ scandal inevitably contend that their uninvited intrusions and targeted messaging may have been unethical but they dispute that their acts were illegal and close with the assertion that there is no proof that their skulduggery actually changed anything, that it manufactured any votes for
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Message to Alberta’s chattering classes: Quit misinterpreting ‘the rule of law,’ already!
PHOTOS: Protesters opposed to the Kinder Morgan Inc. Pipeline expansion megaproject in Burnaby, B.C., in May 2016 (Photo: Marlin Olynyk, Survival Media Agency, Creative Commons). They pose no threat to the rule of law. Below: Green Party of Canada Leader Elizabeth May, United Conservative Party Agriculture Critic Rick Strankman, environmentalist
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Wylie Outs the Wizards from Victoria, AggregateIQ.
The laws behind the Brexit referendum set strict spending limits for parties wishing to participate in it. The Leave campaign had four distinct supporting groups: Leave, BeLeave (a youth movement), Veterans for Britain, and the Irish gang, the political party that props up Theresa May’s Tory government, the DUP. Each
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: The Little Guy With the Funky Hair Lowers the Lumber on Cambridge Analytica, AggregateIQ, the Upset "Leave" Win on Brexit and the Upset Win of President Donnie Trump.
Christopher Wylie, the former research director for Cambridge Analytica turned whistleblower, is giving evidence today before a British Parliamentary committee. In the case of Brexit, Wylie says it was not only misuse of data but also money laundering to give the Leave campaign a big financial advantage over the Stay
Continue readingWarren Kinsella: Column: as with Trump, what if they won by cheating?
It almost seems kind of quaint, doesn’t it? Back when the Conservative Party was running things, the commentariat were apoplectic about something called CIMS: the Constituent Information Management System (CIMS). “Tory database draws ire of privacy experts,” went one CTV News headline. An “unethical invasion of Canadians’ privacy,” thundered Conservative-turned-Liberal
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Whose Democracy Is It, Anyway?
While the Mound has been giving comprehensive coverage of the Cambridge Analytica assault on democracy, I am taking this opportunity to supplement his work with the following. I hope it sheds further light on the ongoing subversion of politics and citizens’ rights, all for the sake of facilitating victory for
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