People are freaking out about CA because there’s a whistleblower making the rounds, a documentary that came out last week, etc.

CA and CTR were engaging in the same sorts of things (although there’s no proof of CTR doing the sorts of things with personality profiles and microtargeting that CA did) but one’s inner machinations were exposed recently so its natural that it’s getting more press at the moment

One is more akin to shills and saboteurs, the other to MKUltra.

I'll leave the readers decide which is which.

The comparison would be between cambridge analytica and Catalist.

Catalist is far more sophisticated.

Thanks for that info - for those like me that hadn't stumbled on this here's a very brief wiki:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalist

Clearly this organization played the same role as CA but for the CTR/Shareblue side.

There's also Peter Thiel's Palantir. This heavyweight data mining org collaborated with Cambridge Analytica apparently:

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/27/palantir-worked-with-cambridge-analytica-on-the-facebook-data-whistleblower.html

This is all good to know and track - let's be conversant in order to keep sight of what we are up against on this forum - from both sides.

I'm reminded of those high school robotics contests where each team spends all semester making a goofy gadget that rolls, spins, and hammers, and then for the finale it goes in a little arena to fight it out with an equally goofy-looking opponent ... winner take all.

Some more info for those who are interested:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/07/08/upshot/how-the-year-you-were-born-influences-your-politics.html?_r=0

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2014/07/06/generations2/assets/cohort_voting_20140707.pdf

http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/electionlaw/litigation/documents/DeclarationofDr.YairGhitzafiledbyPlaintiffs050916.pdf

http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/electionlaw/litigation/documents/Veasey3912.pdf

https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/35561

http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/electionlaw/litigation/documents/DepositionofYairGhitzatakenon41416051116.pdf

I highly recommend watching this 10 minute talk by the CEO of Cambridge Analytica: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8Dd5aVXLCc

As someone in ad tech, I can confidently say that this 1:1 psychographic targeting is unmatched. Nobody has this capability except Cambridge Analytica, at least for corporate marketing.

Haven't heard much about Catalist, but I'd be happy to learn more!

Catalist has a level of access to voting data that Cambridge Analytica just doesn't.

Aside from that, they have similar capabilities. I posted links from a trial in Texas against them that describes the breadth of their capabilities in detail.

http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/electionlaw/litigation/documents/DeclarationofDr.YairGhitzafiledbyPlaintiffs050916.pdf

http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/electionlaw/litigation/documents/Veasey3912.pdf

http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/electionlaw/litigation/documents/DepositionofYairGhitzatakenon41416051116.pdf

Cool, checking it out now. The differentiation for Analytica is that they're adjusting the messaging based on personalty and beliefs. To me that's more valuable than most types of data that any vendor might aggregate.

Catalist does that as well, though.

With voter records?

They don't use just voter records. They tie every thing else back to the voter records.

Sorry if I'm missing something but why is Catalist so much worse?

By identifying deadwood accounts they are able to target personas in the voting registry that are simultaneously active (I.e. able to cast a legal vote) but not being used. According to their lead researcher's testimony, these deadwood accounts make up about 4% of all registered voters, so we're talking about more than 5 million voters on-demand. Utilizing absentee voting, all of these votes can be acquired quite easily with catalist.

So they target people who would not otherwise be motivated to vote?

No they identify "deadwood voters" (i.e. missing and/or presumed dead people who are still listed as "active" on the voting registry) and thus are then able to cast absentee ballots in their name. What I'm saying is that we can't know whether or not the Clinton campaign actually won the popular vote, or in fact lost the popular vote by 3 million votes so long as Catalist is allowed to exist.

How are they able to have votes cast in these people's names? Not asking to be obnoxious, actually trying to understand haha

Because the Catlist software links the registry name/persona to all other identifying data, and most importantly, government tracking numbers (soc sec #, addresses, etc), as is spelled out in the court interviews. Everything Catalist would need to vote using a deadwood account, they already have attached to the file in question.

How do we know others haven't tried to use the same tactic? Seems like if all the info is out there, and if that approach is feasible, many shady entities would be sending in the absentee ballots

How do we know others haven't tried to use the same tactic?

We don't, and we don't know that the DNC followed through with it, but there is evidence in the Podesta leaks that they were planning to in 2020, if not this past election. All we know is that there was most definitely an easy way for them to have accomplished this given the tools in their possession, and this is most definitley an easily exploitable (and purchasable) single point of failure in our current electoral process.

Either way, it needs to be investigated, and until it's been done publicly, it's really hard to take any other campaign hacking claims seriously. I've routinely brought it up on this subreddit to the roaring cacophony of grasshoppers chirping.

They target names on the registry attached to dead or incapacitated registered voters.

Do you participate in /r/cavdef? I believe they'd be interested in this. I know that /r/wayofthebern would.

I've posted/lurked on the latter some, but never heard of the former.

The implications of Analytica are simply that we are being gamed by corporate advertisers. There's nothing really revolutionary about it, or illegal.

The implications of Catalist are that the owners literally have the ability to create millions of fake voters at-will. Read the portions concerning Catalist's ability to identify "Deadwood" accounts. Catalist is the power to steal elections.

The implications of Analytica go far beyond persuasion, and from what I've seen so far it actually does look like the way they obtained the data could have been illegal. TBD. Their 1:1 targeting is literally unmatched. My corporate clients would kill for what analytica has.

Checking out deadwood accounts now!

I'm imagining a child prison schoolyard argument where one kid is like "My favorite creepy big data propaganda corp has unparalleled access to voting information!" and then the other kid, unimpressed fires back," Oh yeah?! Well MY favorite big data corporation has personality data at a resolution of 4000 unique data points on each and every adult in the United States!"

:(

Clever. They are both issues, certainly. One of them hasn't really gotten the airplay of the other though.

/u/marionumber1 have you heard of what Beau describes above?

No, I had not. Thanks for pointing that out to me. I am familiar with other data analytics products that use voter registration data, such as NGP VAN's Votebuilder which is used by the DNC. Registration data is imported annually and then usable by campaigns for whatever purpose they desire. It would only be a matter of time before more powerful analysis tools like Catalist made it onto the scene.

I continue to be fascinated by this & keep coming back to comments in this thread to dip a little further into Catalist. Hard to get my brain around all of it.

Why does osu.edu have these documents? Are there articles on this trial? who won?

are there links that specifically talk about them targeting deadwood voters? or which of your links would I dive into try again to understand more deeply on that, specifically?

If I remember correctly it's the sworn testimony of Yair Ghitza that describes their ability to identify deadwood voters. He created their algorithms. I read it all almost two years ago, so it's possible that the interview is somewhere else on the Moritz Law school page. There are other Catalist files there for sure.

It doesn't specifically say that they are focusing on targeting deadwood accounts, only that they can identify them and distinguish them from verified active voters.

So we know that they had the ability to do this, we know that they had the motive to do this, and we know that during the primaries numerous cities suffered from registry purges, a majority of which were Sanders supporters. We also know that Eric Schmidt of Google was working with the campaign on something related to artificial intelligence, but that it probably wouldn't be ready til 2020 based on one of the few emails between Hillary and Podesta. The smoking gun that definitely proves that they did it eludes us currently, but regardless people need to understand that Catalist collects and sells US citizen data to corporations just like CA. And they also buy information from firms like CA. They are solely controlled by the Democrats, and they sell out their own regularly.

I'm pretty sure they won the case. Been awhile though.

Here's an archive of a Catalist press release, for your files: http://archive.is/CjPji

Thanks! Much appreciated!

I'll give the video a look when I get home from work.

Neutron interactive based out of SLC is pretty sophisticated. They don't work in politics but they have very good 1-1 correlative databases. For a while they were hired to increase enrollment figures for "for profit university". They'd even go as far as posting fake jobs on monster just to get people's numbers. If someone will apply for a shitty enough job then maybe they'll apply to a school that promises them better career option. They'd track people's browsing habits and they're friends browsing habits and the narrow the search to truly desperate people with good likelihood of loan approval, mostly military vets suffering from depression. And then they'd give those names to the school at up to $150 per lead.

Sick.

Sick.

I agree. Both organizations should be investigated.

I think that there is much more focus on CA because they were caught on tape talking about it along with admitting they were entrapping politicians with bribes and prostitutes.

Plus, they were lauded previously before this came out, about how good they were at social media manipulation.

They spoke at conferences about it.

100% agree.

So the NDA isn't a violation of campaign finance laws in your opinion?

Whooooa look at those downvotes.

LOL, and this comment of yours got more upvotes and no controversial -cross because the downvote trolls thought you were serious about saying the sub is "D_T 2.0" instead of mocking them.

Yeah. Those pro-Trump people are very defensive of Hillary. For some inexplicable reason... 😂

Why are people still talking about CA as if it isn't a shell company?

Everyone is all like "fuck yeah look at FB getting all the flack! We are winning" nobody here and I do mean nobody is talking about the companies and the people behind these operations. Alll anybody here seems to care about is which side of the left right bold Bullshit bold they can be tied too.

Meanwhile, these shady companies continue to manage the stories that everyone is talking about and no one seems to give to fucks about the mass manipulation of populations around the globe, fucking psyche profiles and the distortion of reality that is presented to targeted demographics and individuals. They nurtured and sparked off civil disturbance in Nigeria to further their agenda.

All we will see from this is CA taking a bath, which they don't give two shits about because it's a fucking shell company and FB gets a bloody nose, everyone thinks they have won some sort of victory when exactly the same thing is continuing across the globe unnoticed or cared about.

This is what I mean who gives a fuck about facebook? ofc they are selling your data as any other company that collects it does.

What is different is when shell companies that purpose is to hide who is controlling them is using said data to makeup psyche profiles on people and their friends, distort reality, interfere with elections around the globe and generally push whatever agenda they are paid to do.

And apparently, that doesn't mean shit because we all know how morally corrupt corporations such as FB are?

Ask yourself this, why isn't Fusion GPS being questioned as foreign campaign manipulation? Steele is British. Is that US based shell company, Fusion GPS, all one needs to legitimize its British, Ukrainian, and Russian working parts meddling in an election?

Or The Groundwork which was spawned by Erick Schmidt, google's founder. It is a political consulting company, designed to build profiles on every American voter.

Apparently, that is preferred to accepting the fact that Hillary lost because of her emails and blatantly sabotaging Bernie.

Lmao, yes? Correct the Record was a two bit operation run by hack David Brock while Cambridge Analytica is a shady global organization run by billionaires trying to influence the world's elections. CA is literally the bogeyman organization that you all fear exists. It's real, and you're trying to downplay it for some stupid ass Clinton op that dissolved the minute the election was over.

TMoR all over this. Superiority complexes need satisfying.

LOL, and this comment of yours got more upvotes and no controversial -cross because the downvote trolls thought you were serious about saying the sub is "D_T 2.0" instead of mocking them.

Yeah. Those pro-Trump people are very defensive of Hillary. For some inexplicable reason... 😂