{"id":677,"date":"2018-03-19T21:33:53","date_gmt":"2018-03-20T01:33:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gopplaybook.com\/?p=677"},"modified":"2018-03-19T21:33:53","modified_gmt":"2018-03-20T01:33:53","slug":"cambridge-analytica-trump-tied-political-firm-offered-to-entrap-politicians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gopplaybook.com\/?p=677","title":{"rendered":"Cambridge Analytica, Trump-Tied Political Firm, Offered to Entrap Politicians"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By\u00a0MATTHEW ROSENBERG<\/span><\/a>\u00a0

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\u00a0Alexander Nix, head of Cambridge Analytica, speaking in New York City in 2016.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>Credit<\/span>Bryan Bedder\/Getty Images<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

WASHINGTON \u2014 Sitting in a hotel bar, Alexander Nix, who runs the political data firm Cambridge Analytica, had a few ideas for a prospective client looking for help in a foreign election. The firm could send an attractive woman to seduce a rival candidate and secretly videotape the encounter, Mr. Nix said, or send someone posing as a wealthy land developer to pass a bribe.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a long history of working behind the scenes,\u201d Mr. Nix said.<\/p>\n

The prospective client, though, was actually a reporter from Channel 4 News in Britain, and the encounter was secretly filmed as part of a monthslong investigation into Cambridge Analytica, the data firm with ties to President Trump\u2019s 2016 campaign.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0results of Channel 4\u2019s work were broadcast<\/a>\u00a0in Britain on Monday, days after\u00a0reports\u00a0<\/a>in The New York Times and The Observer of London that the firm had harvested the data from more than 50 million Facebook profiles in its bid to develop techniques for predicting the behavior of individual American voters.<\/p>\n

The weekend\u2019s reports about the data misuse have\u00a0prompted calls<\/a>\u00a0from lawmakers in Britain and the United States for renewed scrutiny of Facebook, and at least two American state prosecutors have said they are looking into the misuse of data by Cambridge Analytica.<\/p>\n

Now, the Channel 4 broadcast appears likely to cast an even harsher spotlight on the company, which was founded by Stephen K. Bannon and Robert Mercer, a wealthy Republican donor who put has put at least $15 million into Cambridge Analytica.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The firm\u2019s so-called psychographic modeling techniques, which were built in part with the data harvested from Facebook, underpinned its work for the Trump campaign in 2016, though many have questioned their effectiveness.<\/p>\n

Less noticed has been the work that Cambridge Analytica and its parent company, the SCL Group, has done outside the United States. The operations of the two companies were set up with a convoluted corporate structure and are deeply intertwined.<\/p>\n

Mr. Nix, for instance, holds dual appointments at the two companies. Cambridge Analytica is registered in Delaware and almost wholly owned by the Mercer family, but it is effectively a shell \u2014 it holds intellectual property rights to its so-called psychographic modeling tools, yet its clients are served by the staff at London-based SCL and overseen by Mr. Nix, who is a British citizen.<\/p>\n

SCL Elections has clients around the world, and it has experimented with data-driven microtargeting techniques in the Caribbean and Africa, where privacy rules are lax or nonexistent and politicians employing SCL have been happy to provide government-held data, according to former employees.<\/p>\n

[ALSO READ<\/strong>:\u00a0How Cambridge Analytica Harvested Facebook Data, Triggering a New Outcry<\/a>]<\/p>\n

But in the footage broadcast by Channel 4, Mr. Nix offered services that go far beyond data harvesting. The Times did not work with Channel 4 on its report about Cambridge Analytica.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany of our clients don\u2019t want to be seen to be working with a foreign company,\u201d he told the Channel 4 reporter, who was not identified. \u201cWe can set up fake IDs and websites, we can be students doing research projects attached to a university, we can be tourists. There\u2019s so many options we can look at.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Channel 4 reporter posed as a \u201cfixer\u201d for a wealthy Sri Lankan family that wanted to help politicians they favored. In a series of meetings at London hotels between November and January, all of which were secretly filmed, Mr. Nix and other executives boasted that Cambridge Analytica employs front companies and former spies on behalf of political clients.<\/p>\n

The information that is uncovered through such clandestine work is then put \u201cinto the bloodstream to the internet,\u201d said Mark Turnbull, another Cambridge executive, in an encounter in December 2017 at the Berkeley hotel in London.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen watch it grow, give it a little push every now and again, over time, to watch it take shape,\u201d he added. \u201cIt has to happen without anyone thinking, \u2018That\u2019s propaganda.\u2019 Because the moment you think \u2018that\u2019s propaganda,\u2019 the next question is, \u2018Who\u2019s put that out?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The most damning footage, though, was of Mr. Nix\u2019s suggestion that the company could entrap political rivals through seduction or bribery.<\/p>\n

At a meeting in January, also at the Berkeley hotel, Mr. Nix was direct about the techniques SCL could use to aid a client.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, deep digging is interesting,\u201d he said. \u201cBut you know equally effective can be just to go and speak to the incumbents and to offer them a deal that\u2019s too good to be true, and make sure that that\u2019s video-recorded, you know. These sorts of tactics are very effective, instantly having video evidence of corruption, putting it on the internet, these sorts of things.\u201d<\/p>\n