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Another huge Facebook story is dropping today! DC AG filing shows Facebook knew about Cambridge Analytica long before first reporting. The cover up is always worse than the crime. 
DC AG wants email chain unsealed so the public can see what’s redacted in the filing. Facebook knows it’s going to make them look guilty of deception. Remember, Zuckerberg and Sandberg testified under oath that they learned about Cambridge Analytica from The Guardian story.
So either the executives did perjury or their company is catastrophically mismanaged.
Here’s why it matters deeply: Facebook has to explain to the American people how it justified working alongside Cambridge Analytica embedded in Parscale’s digital op in San Antonio knowing CA were bad guys.
And of course most people don’t realize that Cambridge Analytica was illegal per UK law which applied to US citizens in this case. (I proved that.)
Here’s the full filing from today seeking to unseal the docs that reveal FB internal comms about Cambridge Analytica that FB wants to suppress for spurious reasons.
c/o @cfarivar documentcloud.org/documents/5777…
c/o @cfarivar documentcloud.org/documents/5777…
Judging by my notifs it seems most people were not aware of AG Racine’s case which was filed in December. The hearing is in DC tomorrow! Anyone planning on attending?
I actually tend to think that this case in DC is much more interesting than the consolidated class-action in Northern District of California. People always tweeting me chomping at the bit for class action. But in America it’s a lost cause. Consumer protection law is a better bet.
When I first read this in @AGKarlRacine’s original filing, I realized how the District of Columbia is striking at the heart of the issue in a way that the press has completely missed after a year of relentlessly covering Cambridge Analytica.
That said the privacy parallels between California and DC circuit cases do lay bare the stark inadequacy of US privacy law as it stands. Compare to definition of personal data and the rights associated with it in other countries, such as the UK.
Of course as I’ve noted above, maybe CA followed the lax rules the USA. Let the judges weigh the wider public interest issues. This is crucial.
But if CA/SCL hadn’t shut down by Emerdata then they would’ve been fined and/or criminally prosecuted by the ICO and others.
But if CA/SCL hadn’t shut down by Emerdata then they would’ve been fined and/or criminally prosecuted by the ICO and others.
Also note that the headlines are saturated with the internal cleartext password scandal. Sounds to me like some sloppy debugging/logging practices. Not that big of a deal as far as their scandals go. Big numbers in headlines drives clicks. Shiny new scandal eclipses an “old” one.
So BIG PICTURE here’s why it’s ALL newsworthy. Unless DC judge issues a decision tomorrow, we will be waiting for judgements in a cover-up trial in the US for Facebook AND a cover-up trial in the UK for Cambridge Analytica (SCL) SIMULTANEOUSLY. thedailybeast.com/cambridge-anal…
Totally speculating here, but if the first redaction is an acknowledgement that SCL is a military contractor then this is EXPLOSIVE. It would simply mean a Facebook employee Googled them and found something like this piece from 2005: slate.com/news-and-polit…
And ultimately it means that if no Facebook employee ever Googled SCL to realize they were a PSYOPs shop then that is grotesque negligence. That’s FB’s best defense here. Negligence.
We must deploy all tools at our disposal simultaneously to tame these beasts! bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
House of Commons turned this up. It still hasn’t been officially addressed in a US court or public committee hearing, to my knowledge, of the limited available information (and I have all the Cambridge Analytica insolvency discovery documents).
{reattaching the thread. as you have learned, if you’ve gotten this far, I am awaiting the judgement of a lifetime so a little jittery. I’m sure you understand}
A lot is riding on tomorrow’s hearing. If Racine loses this then we really have little hope to hold Facebook to account with our existing laws. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
Good occasion to revisit @harryfoxdavies account of when he starting speaking to SCL and Facebook about #CambridgeAnalytica and put together the first coverage of what would turn out to be prosecutable DPA violations. theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
Thread on the timeline, collected congressional statements, certifications, and the unexplained Joseph Chancellor questions
Jason has curated the Congressional transcripts in his amazing thread but it’s always crucial to watch the relevant @CommonsCMS hearing he found from UK Parliament trying to get clarity on the timeline. Facebook does not like taking about this.
YES. THIS WAS MEGA NEWS.
@juliacarriew has it! Kogan/Chancellor wasn’t the only Cambridge Analytica data harvesting op. theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/m…
@juliacarriew has it! Kogan/Chancellor wasn’t the only Cambridge Analytica data harvesting op. theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/m…
@riptari’s article covers this new development and fleshes out more details; she’s always on top of this stuff techcrunch.com/2019/03/22/fac…
