FBI and Justice Department Investigating Cambridge Analytica

The New York Times dropped more potentially bad news for Donald Trump: the Justice Department and FBI are investigating right wing financially backed Cambridge Analytica.  In particular, scrutiny is being directed to the company's finances and bank accounts and also how it received the information taken from Facebook.  The obviously question is whether or not Russian Intelligence personnel   stole the data from Facebook and then provided it to Cambridge Analytica and ultimately the Trump campaign.  If the three main players were connected, then the case of collusion increases.  Here are highlights from the Times piece:

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department and the F.B.I. are investigating Cambridge Analytica, the now-defunct political data firm, and have sought to question former employees and banks that handled its business, according to an American official and other people familiar with the inquiry.

Prosecutors have questioned potential witnesses in recent weeks, telling them that there is an open investigation into Cambridge Analytica — which worked on President Trump’s election and other Republican campaigns in 2016 — and “associated U.S. persons.” But the prosecutors provided few other details, and the inquiry appears to be in its early stages, with investigators seeking an overview of the company and its business practices.

The investigation compounds the woes of a firm that has come under intense scrutiny from lawmakers and regulators in the United States and Britain. . . . 

This month, Cambridge Analytica announced that it would shut down and declare bankruptcy, saying that negative press and cascading federal and state investigations had driven away customers and made it impossible for the firm to remain in business.

Cambridge Analytica, the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation declined to comment.

[T]he firm found itself at the center of a trans-Atlantic furor after the Times and Observer articles appeared. It was then dealt another blow when a British news channel broadcast undercover video in which Alexander Nix, the company’s suspended chief executive, suggested that the company had used seduction and bribery to entrap politicians and influence foreign elections.

The federal investigation in the United States appears to focus on the company’s financial dealings — investigators have reached out to the company’s banks, for instance — and how it acquired and used personal data pulled from Facebook and other sources, according to the American official, who was briefed on the inquiry, and other people familiar with it.

In addition, the investigators have contacted Facebook, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the investigation. The official would not provide any other details, and Facebook declined to comment.

[T]he prosecutors involved is the assistant chief of the Justice Department’s securities and financial fraud division, Brian Kidd. The effort is being assisted by at least one agent who investigates cybercrime for the F.B.I., those people said.

The new company was overseen by Mr. Mercer’s daughter, Rebekah, and then adviser, Stephen K. Bannon, both of whom went on to enjoy influential positions in Mr. Trump’s circle before the president’s break with Mr. Bannon this year.

Also in 2014, a contractor for the new firm used quiz apps and other programs to gather private profile information from as many as 87 million Facebook users, data former Cambridge employees said provided the critical basis for the new company’s voter profiles. The Times also reported in March that the company had sent personnel from Canada and Europe to work on various campaigns in the 2014 midterm elections and in 2016 campaigns, raising questions about Cambridge’s compliance with federal election law, which limits the involvement of non-citizens in election campaigns.

Study: "Conservatives" Got Played by Russian Trolls 30 Times More than "Liberals"

Russian troll factory near St. Petersburg, Russia

Republicans and "conservatives" - which in today's political atmosphere equates to white supremacists, white nationalist and evangelical Christian extremists - like to claim that they are the "real Americans" and the true American patriots.  All this despite their allegiance to a man who, in my mind, likely committed treason during his campaign and who is doing severe harm to America, both domestically and internationally.  All that is needed to win such people over is incendiary - and generally untrue - information that attacks their favorite targets: immigrants, blacks, gays, liberals, etc.   Thrown this bait, these "conservatives" seemingly will believe anything.  As a new study reveals, Russian efforts to throw the 2016 presidential campaign to Trump knew this and played Trump supporters for fools (not something too difficult) and these folks retweeted Russian trolls thirty (30) times more than political "liberals."  That's the findings of a new study.  Here are highlights from a piece that looks at how Russian trolls duped mindless and/or bigoted "conservatives":

Over the past two weeks, special counsel Robert Mueller indicted 13 Russian individuals and three companies for interfering in the 2016 presidential election. The spotlight fell on one company, the Internet Research Agency and its so-called Russian trolls, who wrote fake news articles, impersonated Americans on social media and worked to manipulated people to promote certain agendas.

Now, a band of computational social scientists at the University of Southern California has measured the influence of those faceless trolls and bots in the Twitterverse.

They report in an early-release study that American conservatives shared tweets and content from Russian trolls about 30 times more often than liberals right before the 2016 election.

Badawy’s team looked at 2,752 now-deactivated Twitter accounts owned by Internet Research Agency trolls and found that 221 of these accounts showed up in their dataset.
The team found 40,000 different American users retweeted Russian trolls more than 80,000 times. And though some tweets showed bias toward both liberals and conservatives, pro-Trump and conservative-leaning messages made up a majority of the messages. Most of the retweets of Russian trolls came from two southern states — Texas and Tennessee. Texans shared more than 26,000 Russian tweets and Tennesseans shared nearly 50,000. The issue here is how much we believe what we read,” Badawy said. “There is going to be a lot of content that we’re not sure of anymore, and this problem opens up more room for doubt in American politics and politics around the world.”

“These manipulations and sharing of fake news affects the free and open exchange of information in the market,” Menczer added. “And democracy rests on the assumption of a well-informed citizenry. If others can manipulate how information circulates, then they’re able to manipulate our democracy.”

Sadly, most of the "conservative" news outlets - think Fox News and Breitbart among others - specialize in fake news and/or carefully edited and propaganda that are the antithesis to having a well informed citizenry.