Perhaps part of what's changed is that just a few weeks back Cambridge Analytica claimed — in writing, to the UK Parliament — that they did not harvest profiles from Facebook:

"On 8 February 2018 Mr Matheson implied that Cambridge Analytica "gathers data from users on Facebook." Cambridge Analytica does not gather such data." — Letter from Alexander Nix, CEO, Cambridge Analytica, to the Chair of the Committee, 23 February 2018 (PDF, linked from below page)

https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z...

— And now, it's basically been 'proven' by FB that they do. Of course the ICO is gonna get involved now.

Edit: plus there's also this Channel4 investigation which went public today:

"An undercover investigation by Channel 4 News reveals how Cambridge Analytica secretly campaigns in elections across the world. Bosses were filmed talking about using bribes, ex-spies, fake IDs and sex workers."

https://www.channel4.com/news/cambridge-analytica-revealed-t...

— I think that most certainly puts CA into all kinds of shit they weren't in just 24hrs ago.

They also testified to Parliament that they had no business in Russia, and an ex-founder (who left on bad terms, admittedly) has since come out and said that when he was still there, they were sending a Russian oil company information about how to target American voters.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/17/us/politics/cambridge-ana...

Question from a [mostly] ignorant person (me, about these subjets):

Why would russian intelligence use an oil company as a shell ? Does Russia sell oil to the US ? If so do they market directly to individuals in the US ?

Yes. Yes. Lukoil gas stations.

you must not understand how deeply tied the oil companies in Russia are to their government. They are essentially the same entity.

That I understand, but it seems like oil companies don't market directly to _people_, that they would collect data on individuals they don't market to seems highly suspicious in and of itself.

Nothing changed. What happened in many of these cases (Weinstein, Facebook) is that the story was thoroughly researched and reported in depth by a team of professional journalists working for the New York Times.

My only point (if there is one) is that, despite the massive proliferation of blogs and amateur media, it often takes a professional, salaried reporter to bring an important story into the public eye.

> the story was thoroughly researched and reported in depth by a team of professional journalists working for the New York Times

No. It was Ronan Farrow that originally broke the story. The NY Times took their sweet time before going after someone that was an ultra-major Democrat party donor. The Weinstein story was rejected by multiple "professional" news outlets.

The "professional" journalists working for the NY Times KNEW about the Weinstein story as far back as 2004, but spiked it under pressure from various Hollywood interests. Professional journalists aren't supposed to spike stories for political reasons and that's exactly that the Times did in 2004.

Weinstein's office in Tribeca was right downstairs from the Tribeca Film offices. It was on the 3rd floor. Spend a few hours in that building and you could probably have heard a dozen stories in whispered tones about Harvey. Some professional journalist from the NY Times should have had this story years ago. A high school journalist could have written this! And Kevin Spacey? Anyone who in Hollywood would have known about Spacey as far back as 2004, or perhaps earlier. It was an "open" secret. So open that it was a joke. It started becoming more "known" when Spacey was working with Sam Mendes on American Beauty in 1999.

Give me a fucking break. Professional journalists sat on this story, ignored it or conspired to crush it. It took a rookie, Ronan Farrow, trying to make a name for himself while on a personal mission against that horrible abuser Woody Allen for this to all break.

https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/movies/russell-crowe-ma...

I was unaware of the Farrow article, thank you for noting it. Its role in publicizing the Weinstein scandal doesn’t diminish my point, however. Farrow is hardly an amateur; as a Rhodes Scholar and Yale Law graduate, he’s been published in numerous journals and works as an undercover journalist for NBC News. His article on Weinstein was carried by The New Yorker, a magazine with a stellar reputation for high journalistic standards. My point that it takes a pro to give credence to a big story still stands.

I understand your reluctance to credit the Times given how they sat on the news for years before finally publishing their expose. Nevertheless, the Times article came out on October 5, 2017 — five days before Farrow’s story hit the wire on newyorker.com. So technically the Times still gets the scoop — and most of the credit :-).

I don't know anything about the particulars here, but this explanation seems very strange? Do NYT have someone on the staff at New Yorker magazine to make sure they never get scooped by a weekly?

No, the NYT story came out before Farrow’s story — Oct 5 vs Oct 10: https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.nytimes.com/2017/10/05/u...

It is commendable that Farrow investigated his story independently, but that does not mean the NYT “took their sweet time” — certainly, I haven’t seen Farrow demean their work. The reporters and editors who worked on the NYT’s coverage were not on staff 13 years ago. Story ideas aren’t passed down from generation to generation.

NYT finally published because Ashley Judd went on the record. NYT knew just like so many others, but that was really mostly just based on rumors...how do you possibly publish something like that and risk the lawsuits? You need solid evidence to make taking the risk a responsible choice, and in a case like Weinstein's, that really means at a minimum someone needs to go on the record.

I don't know whether Weinstein would have qualified as a "Public Figure" before the news coverage.

If not, he would have been in a substantially better position to sue for libel.

He was one of Hollywood’s most well-known producers, he most certainly qualified as a public figure.

> The "professional" journalists working for the NY Times KNEW about the Weinstein story as far back as 2004, but spiked it under pressure from various Hollywood interests.

Would you care to stand that up? Because it seems unsubstantiated.

And yet, almost everyone continues to insist that the system is more or less clean, even though it is blatantly obvious news and politics is lies and propaganda from top to bottom.

Bring on the smug downvotes boys, but until all media, social networks, and the overall internet can be brought completely under government control, it will continue because there is simply too much criminal activity going on everywhere.

Quality authors afiliated to prominent prestigious publishers printed on the finest cloths imaginable. Not only were their words and the patterns extraordinarily beautiful, but in addition, this material had the amazing property that it was to be invisible to anyone who was incompetent or stupid.

That's because there's an army of people who are quick to discredit anything coming from blogs and lesser known sources as bunk while falling all over themselves for traditional news sources like NYT. Even when the big sources completely fail at their jobs and end up piggybacking on the story. Like you're doing in this thread.

My guess: Selling psychological data to advertisers is boring but if you get Bannon involved and rope it into the Trump news cycle, it suddenly gets a lot of people talking.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/data-war-whistl...

This article is probably the biggest one right now.

Selling psychological data to advertisers is boring, but when you get billionaires and foreign powers involved to elect a would-be autocrat who is degrading American democracy, it suddenly gets a lot of people talking.

Yup. It's not a surprise why people are interested in the role of data in modern public debate and democracy.

That's why we need safeguards in place. Everyone was happy when Obama used it and never thought it can be used by someone else too.

Edit: Someone linked this below - http://adage.com/article/moy-2008/obama-wins-ad-age-s-market...

Did Obama acquire the data under false pretense, use it to lie and mislead people, or downright coerce candidates through bribes and sex?

I have seen no evidence that the efforts of “foreign powers” were even remotely close to effective. Has anyone done a study proving that people either changed their votes or didn’t vote based upon the Russian campaign?

I think most people believe Russian hackers literally hacked voting machines to give Trump the election. Subtle manipulation of emotions it too complex for the public.

Wait until people find out American democracy is smoke and mirrors, then you'll see people talking. They better this situation under control soon or that might just happen.

Not just security nerds. Take for example Eben moglen, professor in law and history of law.

"So I was talking to a senior government official of this government (2012) about that outcome and he said well you know we've come to realize that we need a robust social graph of the United States. That's how we're going to connect new information to old information."

I suspect that the only reason we are hearing about the Trump campaign being the buyer is that the democrats already had the information. It is also why Facebook can not put the cards on the table since then they would not have any political allies left. Just like with the Snowden leak, privacy is not a issue for which the parties differentiates on. One can only hope that will change in the next election.

There's been evidence that the Trump campaign did a massively better job of taking advantage of Facebook than any other campaign, Republican or Democrat, had previously.

There's also evidence that Facebook's advertising models were a massive help -- the Trump campaign and affiliated organizations were paying much lower advertising rates than the Clinton campaign + affiliates, largely because Facebook's model prioritized the kind of controversy-and-outrage-generating stuff Trump was putting out there (since controversy and outrage drive engagement, and engagement is the metric Facebook cares about).

That’s a great statement on the issue almost always faced by security professionals. Almost impossible to impress upon people the stakes when you can do something, almost impossible to do anything once it’s too late.

> Suddenly, the public gives a shit and I don't understand what changed.

The story was linked to Trump?

Also, security nerds are attuned to how personal data might be misused. The public needs a concrete example.

What changed is that an attack vector has been found to take out Cambridge Analytica. The Democrats are in full political warfare with the Trump regime, and this is just another salvo.

p.s. Did you know Steve Bannon looked at tech workers as people he could bamboozle to be his political footsoldiers? That's why the Mercers completely fund Breitbart - to propagandize young, mostly tech, men and boys.

From Josh Greene's book: "Yiannopoulos devoted much of Bretibart's tech coverage to cultural issues, particularly Gamergate, a long-running online argument over gaming culture that peaked in 2014. And that helped fuel an online alt-right movement sparked by Breitbart News.

"I realized Milo could connect with these kids right away," Bannon told Green. "You can activate that army. They come in through Gamergate or whatever and then get turned onto politics and Trump.""

Mercer spends around $10M per year funding Breitbart to spread that propaganda.

PS: And the democrats weaponize starry eyed, well-intentioned young progressive millennial and gen-xers. Why do you think the Russia-did-everything story sells so well when they were a bit player at most?

Sorry to burst your bubble, but everyone is in on it.

Democrats are moving to the center (e.g. right) while conservatives move further right. Meanwhile, young progressive millennial and gen-xers are trying to move democrats to the left and are in large power struggle.

Not the same.

Conservatives haven’t really moved anywhere since 2010. Most of the political movement is on the Left with many Democrats being targeted for things like intersectional politics, gender. This season of America is not one to miss.

Spoken like a true believer.

The public does not "give a shit". If Trump's win tells us anything, it's that there is not necessarily a correlation between what gets trumpeted as national news and what people actually believe, accept, or experience.

There are major power players at work trying to a) exert control over the internet as a speech platform; and b) ensure that their political opponents can't win without establishment support. I discussed this some at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16616227 .

As for my grandma, my mom, and my sisters, like most of the public, they don't care about any of this, because this data was mostly already public-enough (friends list restricted) and they just want a platform where they know they'll be able to engage with friends and family.

> Suddenly, the public gives a shit and I don't understand what changed.

Not the public per se but the media suddenly cares.

My guess it's the runup to the US midterm elections, it's never too early to start the mudslinging...