THE DIGITAL ARMS RACE: By Heidi Siegmund Cuda
We used to hear about data mining as something to be vaguely concerned about, but Americans are learning the hard way: if something is free, we are the product. Unlike the European Union, which has far stricter privacy laws in place, Americans have been left exposed, digitally naked and afraid. The private life is dead and our Democracy hangs in the balance.
With the announcement that the Justice Department and the F.B.I. are investigating Cambridge Analytica, a London-based political data firm that closed shop amid scandal, America is joining the National Crime Agency of Britain to determine just how far the Steve Bannon and Robert Mercer-backed firm went to win for its clients. Bannon, the former Chief Strategist for the Trump Administration and former editor of Breitbart, encouraged his then-patron, billionaire Republican donor Robert Mercer, to invest in the data company, which was revealed to have harvested information from 87 million Facebook users accounts.
After relentless reporting by the Guardian, a shocking Channel 4 undercover expose and the courage of whistleblowers who testified to U.K. Parliament, Cambridge Analytica announced the closing of its operations, with plans to declare bankruptcy. But such newly formed data companies as Emerdata and Data Propria, which includes top Cambridge Analytica personnel on its roster, indicates a story far from over.
Here’s the thing: anyone paying attention in 2016 knew about the cyber suppression practices used by the Trump campaign, because glowing cover stories were written about the success of its digital operation. Each article included backslapping references to Cambridge Analytica, which had staffers embedded in San Antonio, Texas, where the digital campaign was centered. Even a rudimentary study of the company found many links to suspect business practices, from a parent company with Russian ties, to questions of hacking, to its involvement in the Brexit campaign and violations of Britain’s Data Protections Act.
David Carroll, an associate professor at Parsons School of Design, is a digital rights advocate who is suing Cambridge Analytica in the U.K. He says the internationalized and militarized digital arms race is a crisis of democracies around the world.
“We never thought this would happen,” he told Alexander Heffner on PBS’ “The Open Mind” show. “But it’s happening. If we let foreign entities harvest data about voters to influence their behavior and thinking, then we’re really not protecting the country.”
That this existential crisis begins and ends with Facebook is a grave concern.
It was Facebook that allowed the academic employed by Cambridge Analytica to harvest the data, and it was Facebook that allowed these foreign actors to then microtarget Americans to do a billionaire’s bidding. That the data company was working on dozens of GOP campaigns meant that this mind virus was unknowingly polluting American brains, at the same time a foreign enemy was paying troll armies to also mind warp Americans and stir discord into the public consciousness. The troll armies were operated by the Russian “International Research Agency,” which is under indictment by the U.S. Department of Justice.
As news broke today that the White House was terminating its cyber security coordinator position, the top cyber policy job in the administration, it’s clear that we are in a cyber war without leadership and without the privacy protections afforded other countries. It’s also clear that various new data companies are springing up under shell names with the same bad actors and backstory so even as Cambridge Analytica shuts its shady doors, the problem won’t go away.
So this gives consumers a few options. We either disconnect, and stop giving away our data to companies that do not have the best interest of Democracy at heart or we demand Congress take action and create stringent new protections that will stop the future breaches of consumer data.
Thanks to these dark data forces, America has been engaged in a psychological war, and the only way out is to either go offline, and avoid agitprop news altogether, or to demand swift bipartisan action by our representatives to both cut off the propaganda inflaming our nation and to protect privacy.
As the creator of the Facebook “Like” button, Justin Rosenstein, told the Guardian: “It is very common for humans to develop things with the best of intentions and for them to have unintended, negative consequences.”
The “intended” negative consequences of big money and big data resulted in a fragile Democracy drifting into a dictator’s lair, but we can turn off this dystopian data dump by cutting it off at the head and demanding our data back, and ensuring our privacy remains intact as we move into a brave new future.
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Author Heidi Siegmund Cuda is an Emmy award-winning investigative producer, mother and activist.
