Slashdot Mirror
Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower Says Data From 87 Million Users Could Be Stored In Russia (cnn.com)
PolygamousRanchKid shares a report from CNN: Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie says the data the firm gathered from Facebook could have come from more than 87 million users and could be stored in Russia. Wylie added that his lawyer has been contacted by U.S. authorities, including congressional investigators and the Department of Justice, and says he plans to cooperate with them. Aleksander Kogan, a Russian data scientist who gave lectures at St. Petersburg State University, gathered Facebook data from millions of Americans. He then sold it to Cambridge Analytica, which worked with President Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. "I know that Facebook is now starting to take steps to rectify that and start to find out who had access to it and where it could have gone, but ultimately it's not watertight to say that, you know, we can ensure that all the data is gone forever," he said.
It's red scare time. Witch hunts always find someone in league with Russia these days. We need shadowy villains and conspiracy stories. Reality doesn't have the same appeal.
Even worse, it could be stored in America.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
...had to exploit the system that Facebook created to get data. Ok. When are people going to get pissed that Facebook has willingly been sharing much more extensive data with Democrats for years? These crocodile tears are getting really old.
The Russians already have the data from the RNC and DNC so why not Facebook as well?
Its probably being tormented by now :(
[($)]
Analysis of a Recent Facebook company announcement:
Buried in a company announcement was acknowledgement that nearly all of its users have been targeted to some degree.
That makes about 2 billion users whose privacy was leaked.
Also, Facebook was trying to collect patient data from hospitals:
The idea was to build profiles of people that included their medical conditions, information that health systems have, as well as social and economic factors gleaned from Facebook.
Also also, Diamond and Silk (two pro-Trump bloggers from the election cycle) were deemed unsafe for the community by facebook. Their followers no longer receive a notice when they make a new post.
From Facebook:
"This decision is final and it is not appeal-able in any way." (Note: This is the exact wording that FB emailed to [Diamond and Silk].)
Although unproven — indeed, unprovable, because there is no such crime — the "collusion" allegations must be repeated on the daily basis until they become accepted by the mainstream. To the point, where the low information voter just says: "Well, everyone knows it — just google it or something".
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Lately whenever Slashdot posts a story that shows Russia in a bad light, Slashdot starts having trouble with its nginx gateway.
#DeleteChrome
I've never created a Facebook account but Facebook created one for me and leaked out all my personal info to the World?
If they created a profile without you giving them the data, then they didn't "leak" anything that wasn't already out there.
There is now more than one copy of said data, and nobody knows exactly how many copies or who has them.
N/T
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
Its probably being tormented by now :(
Well, at the very least it's annoyed about being pulled back and forth around the globe.
The Russian trolls and their alt right dupes are here in droves. Hi comrades!
The data COULD also be stored in North Korea. Or on a laptop in someone's basement. Or in a locked filing cabinet in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the Leopard".
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
So FaceBook collaborated with the Russians. From the summary:
;-)
"Aleksander Kogan, a Russian data scientist who gave lectures at St. Petersburg State University, gathered Facebook data from millions of Americans."
I know the Fox News lawyer said collusion isn't a crime. It is. It's acting as a unregistered foreign agent, the crime facing Manasfort, and Collusion to the crimes they commit. i.e. if he colluded with the hacking, he's guilty of the hacking.
And while you might want to go lah lah lah and pretend there is no problem with a candidate conspiring with Russia to seize power over the USA, even spelling out what he did makes it indefensible.
Fox News may sell out the US, but how many of their viewers would sell out the US? How many of their sponsors?
If the NRA funnelled money to Trump from Russia, likewise that's a crime too. Election finance rules prevent candidates from receiving foreign money. NRA insists it has two separate funds, and only pays political donations from the legal fund, but that just confirms the foreign money they receive, or there would be no 'other' fund. To receive money in one fund and pay it from another is laundering money. A crime.
Likewise the shell company property purchases, after he got the nomination a load of shell companies bought up his properties, going from 4% of sales to 70% of sales. Again money laundering of campaign finances is a crime.
Cohen supposidly paid the porn star from a mortgage. This is bullshit, no lawyer takes out a mortgage to pay off his clients hush money. However there is a money laundering technique where a sock puppet takes out a loan, and receives smaller payments mixed in with other payment to repay the loan with profit. Do you think the FBI don't know how that works?
"Low information voter".... yet the mainstream press is providing the micro details of what he did and how he did it. Only Fox tries to shut down the information.
Although unproven --; indeed, unprovable, ...
What is so unprovable? Either FaceBook gave the Russians access to the US data or they did not. FaceBook / Russia collusion seems evident given the summary ;-)
Shadowy villains and conspiracy stories? People have already been charged and have PLEADED GUILTY.
You're right I'm sure we're all imagining it
Yes, because a plea bargain could never indicate a victim of coercion, only a guilty person ever takes a plea. Its never about the cost and uncertainty of a trial; the uncertainty of the entire government against what you can afford in terms of legal representation and investigation/discovery.
I've never created a Facebook account but Facebook created one for me and leaked out all my personal info to the World?
That's what you get for using gmail, Google had all that data and sold it to Facebook so they could create your account. ;-)
... at the current diplomatic climate, none of that data could hurt me. The far bigger problem is that that data is likely also stored at Facebook servers where administrations that could actually hurt me, can access it.
Maybe you should post stuff when you have actual information rather than bare speculation?
The actual information is that a) Chris Wylie is saying that the database wasn't protected against copying so likely all the data scientists at CA had partial or full copies and b) the data scientist responsible made repeated trips to Russia so there are likely disks in Russia with large amounts of the data.
We know that the other people around this have been lying - they claimed they had no data for Brexit, then it turned out that they used a front company (Aggregate IQ and others) to hold the data for certain uses so they could pretend it didn't happen. At this point we can only assume the data went wherever was convenient for them and it is up to the people involved to prove that it didn't, which is what their responsibility under European data protection laws already was.
And there's the other trick, "the other guy did it worse", or "they're all at it, so why punish [my guy]". An attempt to lessen the perceive importance of a crime by pretending its common and accepted.
When Russia kills opposing *American* politicians in the USA, and Trump Mk II is saying "Russia if you're listening, here a list of politicians who should be killed".... I'm sure we'll see the same thing from Fox News, "the other guy wanted more killed", "colluding to murder politicians with Putin is not a crime and if it is, there was no colluding".
None of this is legal defense, and Trump's real (not that ridiculous Fox news TV lawyer) are smart enough to get him to keep his mouth shut. The seriousness of this crime they're totally aware of.
If Trump's name didn't somehow get attached to this story, the Cambridge Analytica whistle blower would have been only a small blip on the landscape of the news media.
Attach Trump or Putin name to any story, however dry or souped up it may be, and the media will immediately pick and run with it.
don't spoil it. Let them live in this bubble.
The real problem here is morons on facebook taking quizzes to see what type of pizza or what species of cat they are and they grant some Cambridge sub-brand has access to their entire life's history. I blame the people first.
Aleksander Kogan, a Russian data scientist who gave lectures at St. Petersburg State University
They are making it sound like he is a Russian data scientist because he gave a few lectures at St. Petersburg State University.
His parents moved to the United States when he was seven. He's obviously a citizen of the US and therefore an American data scientist.
If your friends have a Facebook account then you might well have a Facebook shadow profile. The Facebook app downloads their contact data.
His parents moved to the United States when he was seven. He's obviously a citizen of the US and therefore an American data scientist.
*turns on TV* "Breaking news. New evidence of Russian spies infiltrating America and walking among us. Story at 11".
What's the evidence that this is a witch hunt? Is it just because Trump and his buds are calling it one? Because I've that's the standard I've got some bad news for you, Nixon thought it was a witch hunt against him, and no, that wasn't, and he had to quit before he got fired.
The Red Scare with McCarthy had major congressional force backing it, and congress seems to be asleep at the switch this time around, and sometimes running interference for Trump particularly through the actions of Rep. Nunes, as opposed to focusing on measures to secure electoral and other infrastructure. If you are going to invoke McCarthyism, you are going to want to show how it is a relevant comparison deeper than the pure surface similarity of being freaked out by the Russians.
You think Mueller's running a witch hunt? Because the work he's shown so far with the guilty pleas and indictments suggests otherwise. I know we've always been at war with Eastasia, but Mueller is a Republican, and was W Bush's pick to run the FBI, and was almost unanimously granted an extension to his 10 year term in Obama's first term. His background doesn't suggest him being any sort of political inquisitor.
I'm sorry, but from the other side of the fence these accusations of "witch hunt" really sound like cries of deflection and denial, there's an obvious amount of dirt in public view and the usual suspects want nothing more than to sweep it under the rug. Personally, I think a lot of these guys are guilty as hell, but ultimately I want the truth to come out and let the chips fall where they may. When you got guys like Hannity running interference for obvious crooks like Paul Manafort, who would be a total crook due to his work in Ukraine and for other dictators even if he had never met Trump, that's pretty clear indication that the truth and honest enforcement of the law is not the desired end from that side.
I find it hilarious that Democrats started hating Russians approximately the moment they stopped being communist.
Where does the data come from? Facebook. This is like bringing a phone book from the US to Russia and tell them the data comes from Russia.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Open a fast food restaurant based on your eating habits...
That's not where I was really going. The majority of people have very short attention spans. Just like few slashdotters read the article, hell many don't get past the headline, you will lose them if you can't sum it up in 3 sentences or 1 short paragraph if it's an anecdotal story. But more than that, people are treating politics like sports teams and don't care about facts as long as thier team wins. The whataboutism is a good example, as if examples of more corruption lets everyone off the hook instead of holding everyone accountable. They aren't willing to let thier "team" go down so yours shouldn't either makes no actual sense until you frame it as tribalism. This fails to reign in corruption, politicans don't get significant money from thier constituents anymore and therefore don't represent them, nor are they held accountable by their constituents due to tribalism, and the result is the mess we see today. I realize the irony of going over 3 sentences but I assume you wouldn't fall to the lowest common denominator.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Oh.
Wait.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I'm laughing at all of you who stored your entire lives on Facebook, and now are pwned by these 'companies', and by Putin. Between this and the Equifax breach, your lives are about as safe and private as a convict in prison or an animal in a zoo, and it doesn't look like there's any recovery from it for you. Sad, sad, sad.
Other interviews clearly indicate that he is speculating as with almost all of what he said.
Someone began this thread with a conspiracy theory re:Trump having a tie to the Russians through this. The craziness of that is phenomenal.
This is pretty simple. Russia is a big country. There is going to be a good number of people that live there that have the same notions about what they can do with data that others have done. In Russia there are large businesses. There are all sorts, just like in America. To assume that no one else could have done this is pure ignorance.
Obama had the data of virtually every American that used Facebook during his last administration. Maxine Waters pronounced this miraculous and even warned all others including Democrats that they'd have to contend with Obama's database. Another TED like event had a woman give a speech where she clearly said Obama had a database covering all Americans and stated a fear that this was bad as it could adversely affect elections and was particularly bad because the Republicans did not have it.
So now tell me what the fuck this guy is talking about? Russians have collected data on Americans through Facebook due to how Facebook does business? Tell me people in the US and other nations do not have data on people outside their nation.
This isn't a Trump issue. The trust of all Facebook users has been violated.
Don't let the media not the Facebook PR people fool you. Even if you did t have an account it doesn't mean that Facebook doesn't have a profile on you. If you hadn't heard, if you have friends and family with the Facebook app on their phone they collected info on you and created shadow profiles. If you read the leaked Facebook memo you'll read a reference to that ... Collecting contacts info... If you haven't actively been fighting for your privacy by using technology a d techniques to block the collection you need to be aware that Facebook has lots of info on you.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.