Missouri AG demands all Facebook communications with Obama's 2012 campaign

originally posted by: neo96
Missouri AG demands all Facebook communications with Obama's 2012 campaign

Then make them tell us how many of Obama's followers were BOTS!

That would be very interesting to know...

Thanks theantediluvian, for posting quotes from the Stahl/Parscale interview. I saw that interview and it was shocking. The thing I feel is not being mentioned is that all of those companies offered the same services to the Clinton campaign and were turned down. Why? Was the Clinton campaign too arrogant? Or did the Clinton campaign know something that they did not want exposed to the public?

Obama had shown the importance of social media already. And like it has been said; we do not know to what extent Obama's campaign was able to target their message. I think we need to know just how well advertisers and marketers are manipulating the population. I would not be surprised if 95% of our daily lives were manipulated in some way.

Unfortunately, I think that the only recourse we have is that any campaign should be forced to make public any information that they gleen from social media. This situation is not going to stop. You just have to be more imaginative to extract the information that is desired.

Does anyone really think they were getting Angry Birds for free? I was watching a baseball game yesterday and every commercial break a Marvel game was being pitched as "For Free". Remember the actual cost is information on you.

a reply to: Boadicea

And, again, there's only one person in this discussion who was also POTUS before, during and after the misuse and abuse of such information. And it ain't Trump.

What abuse of what information are we referring to? This is important because as I've mentioned in earlier posts, what CA did specifically back in 2014 is a separate issue from what Facebook did with the Obama campaign in 2012 or the the Trump campaign in 2016 (apparently, the Clinton campaign declined FB embeds in 2016).

CA lied to survey participants about how their data would be used which is bad on its own but what's even worse is that they scraped data from the friends of these participants.

And that's probably the most legitimate part of the CA/SCL operations. If you've been following the developments, Alexander Nix is on camera talking about how they'll hire prostitutes to entrap politicians and the CA whistle blower talks about how they used an Israeli firm (Black Cube) to hack the medical records of their client's opponent — who is now the President of Nigeria.

As for how closely Facebook worked with the Trump campaign in 2016 or the Obama campaign in 2012, that's a separate issue about how Facebook uses data on its users. CA lied and stole data. It should be held to account in court for its malfeasance.

I don't know that there are any legal issues in terms of what Facebook has done with users data but it's definitely something that should be of great concern to its users and more generally, how data is being collected by these private corporations and what they do with it is a major issue for society as a whole.

In other words, I don't think that the Trump campaign's dealings with Facebook nor the Obama campaigns in 2012 are anything that any state AGs should be subpoenaing emails about. This MO AG's actions reek of a political stunt.

Though I will say that I think Facebook should answer as to what level of access to user data it has been giving its clients. My impression is that Facebook doesn't give raw access to data. They might help with targetting based on some set of criteria like location + likes or something (I mean, this is something that really needs to be explored) but this would still be less of an invasion of privacy than what CA collected.

And I'm not sure what you're implying re Obama being President in 2012 — that he might have somehow used the federal government to gather information used for microtargeting? It wouldn't be as effective as going straight to the source. In fact, both political parties have curated data sets on tens of millions of American voters that likely already exceed what the federal government could readily compile (minus criminal records, military records, etc) in terms of the sort of items that are being used/would be useful for things like microtargeting political advertising.

Again... no one is more powerful than the president of the United States. No one has more opportunity to misuse and abuse such information than the president of the United States. No one except Obama was president of the United States before, during and after the 2012 election.

If you don't understand the full implications (and reality) of this, I don't know how to explain it to you.

The thing is, corporations are already harvesting more useful data than the federal government (or state governments for that matter) with certain exceptions and it's very unlikely that a President could direct government agencies to transfers terabytes of data to 3rd parties to be used for electioneering.

There are companies like Palantir that get contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars to stitch together disparate databases under a single interface for agencies like ICE.

I'm fairly concerned about what's going on here and even for me that's low on my list of concerns, including with the Trump administration and that's with the Trump campaign having used CA which demonstrates a certain extra lack of ethics if nothing else.

The reality of what's happening right out more or less in the open is bad enough that it should be something we're talking about. Both the RNC and DNC have been amassing data for years and as you can see from Parscale's interview, the presumably "liberal" Silicon Valley giants are in actuality whores who will offer up user data to anyone with money.

Obama and Facebook Colluded to beat Hillary and Romney? But that was "genius" back then, lol.

originally posted by: carewemust
Obama and Facebook Colluded to beat Hillary and Romney? But that was "genius" back then, lol.

Okay carewemust. What should be done now to make this system more fair to everyone. Like theantediluvian has said, major corporations have vast amounts of data on all of us. These corporations can sell that data to anyone they want. How do we make it more fair so that the "little guy" will have a fair chance? We can cry about the past but we need to decide which path to follow in the future.

www.nolo.com...

Missouri Mo. Rev. Stat. § 516.097 et seq. 10 (If contract is for something other than payment of money or property, then the statute of limitations is five years.) 5 5 5

originally posted by: MteWamp
Maybe it's just me, but I find the idea that "Facebook" influenced an election laughable.

I'm not so sure they directly did, but the information on you they might have sold or allowed to be stolen by different political entities may have.

a reply to: theantediluvian

The reality of what's happening right out more or less in the open is bad enough that it should be something we're talking about. Both the RNC and DNC have been amassing data for years and as you can see from Parscale's interview, the presumably "liberal" Silicon Valley giants are in actuality whores who will offer up user data to anyone with money.

Agreed 100% that this needs to be talked about, and that it can be and has been exploited by those on the left and the right, but not just politically, and in even worse ways. In the most private and intimate ways. I just recently read that the HIV status of users of one social media platform is being sold for marketing purposes. That should not even be possible.

I think we agree that this is far bigger than any one political campaign, and even far bigger than politics in general. I think we also agree that there's a good chance no written laws were broken, so there may not be any criminal wrongdoing here.

I also know we disagree about Obama... and I know we won't agree about this... but I won't mince words here. I have no doubt that Obama scooped up any and all information on anyone and everyone he could -- enemies as well as friends. That would be that massive database Maxine Waters boasted about... And I have no doubt that Obama used any means at his disposal, both public and private, both legal and illegal, both reasonable and unreasonable. And I have no doubt that if Obama could have, he would have "weaponized" that voter data just like he "weaponized" the IRS and the FBI and DOJ... and I have no doubt that he did to the absolute greatest extent possible. Could I be wrong? Sure. But the only way to know for sure is to know exactly what information was being given/taken, how it was given/taken, and what was done with it. And heaven only knows what might still be done with it.

And the same for Trump: The only way to know anything for sure is to know exactly what information was given/taken, how it was given/taken, and what was done with it.

I would also very much like to know how these data mining privileges are marketed to their clients. Are there different packages -- economy and prime and deluxe? Are there different packages for different industries? Some tailored to Big Pharma and some tailored to Banksters and so on? Do they give politicians and those they "like" better technology and therefore data than those they don't like? Was Obama getting better info than Trump because they like Obama? Or had FB's technology and "services" grown and progressed so much between Obama and Trump that Trump was actually getting better info? (And FB really is just an equal opportunity political whore...)