Here he is...
Paul Farrelly just asked question about Smersh in relation to Cambridge Analytica. @chrisinsilico: ‘Smersh?’ Farrelly: ‘The organisation in James Bond’
.@chrisinsilico now being asked about the death of his predecessor in Kenya. ‘To be clear, I didn’t know that he died when I took the job.’
‘I was told that the police were bribed to not enter the hotel room where he died for 24 hours’
Hey @WendySiegelman, your chart of CA/SCL structure being shown to MPs..
‘They got rid of Tchenguiz when they finalised the CA deal’
Uh oh. @chrisinsilico meets parliamentary privilege. ‘Because Tchenguiz is kind of sketchy’.
‘Certain wealthy people need things to keep them occupied. So going into a country & running things appeals to them’
Now talking about Cambridge Analytica’s relationship to AIQ. The firm that worked for Vote Leave in Brexit
AIQ’s intellectual property was assigned to SCL & it traded as SCL Canada
Having different entities helpful for getting around co-ordination rules esp in States, says @chrisinsilico
AIQ also worked in Cambridge Analytica campaign in Nigeria.
.@chrisinsilico claiming that hacking of Nigerian president carried out by Black Cube. (NB note from me: this is based on my reporting & I have no proof of that)
Hacking of Nigerian president was carried out by Israeli hackers. Channel 4 news has footage of Nix offering Black Cube’s services. These are two separate things though. No proven link.
Chris now talking about how he met Vote Leave’s Dom Cummings & is asking ‘where did he get the data? That baffles me.’
‘AIQ is a company that works with hacked material. That distributes violent content. There is a lot of questions to be asked.’
‘AIQ was involved in the Nigeria project.’ @chrisinsilico tells MPs they should follow @guardian’s reporting on this..
.@IanCLucas reads AIQ’ms statement about how it has no relationship to CA. What do make of that, he asks. ‘It’s weasel words,’ says @chrisinsilico
CA had Facebook data. And so did AIQ. ‘I have provided the contractual documents for that’
‘It is categorically untrue that CA never used Facebook data. It was the foundational dataset of the company’
.@podehaye chips in ‘there’s also a video of an intern at CA talking about working with Facebook likes. ‘
This was at an event organised by ASI, says @podehaye. @chrisinsilico adds ‘and ASI worked for Vote Leave’
So what did Dom Cummings know? Questions need to be asked, says @chrisinsilico
‘I am absolutely convinced there was a common plan with Vote Leave, BeLeave, the DUP & Veterans for Britain’
‘How on earth did they find all find AggegateIQ? When you couldn’t even find it on the internet’
‘When I spoke to AIQ I asked them ‘what was your secret?’ And they told me ‘it was totally illegal’
‘This is a company that has worked around the world undermining democracy’
‘BeLeave is a proxy money laundering vehicle that Dom Cummings used. Because he wanted to win’
‘I am so angry that two people I introduced in good faith to Stephen Parkinson & they were used to break the law’
‘It is absolutely outrageous that Darren was made personally responsible for a criminal conspiracy’
‘It is not Dom Cummings being investigated. It’s not Cloe Watson at Downing St who’s being investigated’
‘Vote Leave’s lawyer wrote the constitution for BeLeave. The whole process was managed by them’
‘Why did Víctoria Woodcock go on to a shared drive 2 weeks after they were notified of an investigation & delete herself, Dim Cummings & Henry de Zoete’
Q: ‘did it make a difference?’ @chrisinsilico ‘when athletes are caught doping, we don’t ask that. You cheated’
‘This isn’t a local council election. It’s a irreversible change to Britain’s constitution. And it can’t be based on cheating. It’s wrong’
‘Dom Cummings said ‘we couldn’t have won without AIQ’. ‘
‘It’s farcical to say AIQ didn’t have access to Facebook data when they built the software platform that deployed it’
‘Facebook would have the information about exactly what they did.’
On the Facebook data ‘my own view is that it’s more than 50 million profiles’
‘Nix was asked was any of your data from GSR? He replied no.’ @chrisinsilico ‘well why spend a million dollars on it? It’s just not true’
Now talking about Palantir & Sophie Schmidt. First reported in Observer a year ago. ‘Senior Palantir employees also working on the Facebook data’
Note: Palantir expressly denied this to me
.@chrisinsilico showed me emails of meetings between Palantir & CA employees in Palantir offices. Palantir denied any such meetings took place
‘The point of working in politics abroad is to win lucrative govt contracts’
We also reported this last year: ‘Ghana project supposedly for health paid by govt. But that data was used for political purposes.’
‘You signed a non-disclosure agreement. Are you under any threat?’ ‘It’s Facebook who’s most upset by this story. I’ve had pretty threatening legal correspondence from them’
‘Trump election no longer a niche shady firm..that’s what prompted me to come forward. I am the first person to say I should have known better’
‘It’s very intimidating to go up against a billionaire’
‘Are you angry?’ ‘Frankly yes. Nothing good has come from CA. It’s not a legitimate business’
‘Kogan told me that he talked to Facebook engineers. So Facebook knew. Their account is they has no idea until @guardian reported it at end of 2015’
Facebook took 8 months to send @chrisinsilico legal letter. ‘The same month that CA announced it was working for Trump. So I don’t know if it was covering it’s ass or was genuinely concerned about the data’
MP: ‘so it wasn’t in Facebook’s interests to notify people about this data breach?’ ‘No’
.@podehaye ‘It was @harryfoxdavies article in @guardian that put this into public domain. And that sparked my interest in CA.’ (@podehaye = patron saint of investigations into both Facebook & CA)
.@chrisinsilico: ‘The data is everywhere. So many people had accesss to that data. Palantir has access to that data. ‘
.@JoStevensLabour ‘We know Vote Leave ads had a billion views. And that referendum depended upon 600,000 voters. Did AIQ make a diffference?’ ‘I believe so’
.@chrisinsilico now talking about @LeaveEUOfficial. ‘ I have seen invoices that say work done for Ukip’
Also quotes docs passed to committee from @EmmaLBriant that show @LeaveEUOfficial & Eldon insurance shared data
‘Did CA have access to that data?’
‘Bannon was really interested in Britain. If you are fighting a culture war & can instill populist movement in Britain you can do it in the US’
‘UK is land of Downtown Abbey if Britain can Brexit this is v powerful’
‘The ICO very limited powers. Very small team. It’s been very difficult for them’
.@JoStevensLabour: ‘Brexit has happened. The companies that ran campaigns have been disbanded’
Question now about Lukoil. ‘What I am a direct witness to is meetings& presentations to Lukoil’
.@chrisinsilico ‘SCL ran Russian counter propaganda work for NATO. Of course they were a Russian target.’
‘Trinidad was a precursor project to see how much data we could pull. AIQ worked to de-anonymise IP data’
‘Do you think Mr Mercer should be subject to questions about his role?’ ‘Absolutely’
.@podehaye tells MPs: ‘Facebook say it is too expensive for us to retrieve your data. Because we are too large. Their argument is that they are too big to comply with data protection law. ‘
‘Facebook is hiding targeting data. That it ought to disclose by law’
