Thread by @fascinatorfun

Could @CommonsCMS address the following issues.

1. By February 2017 representatives of SCL Elections Ltd were claiming they had a database of 250 million Americans for the Trump Campaign.
Here is the FCO report on this. See. Para 58.

wiltonpark.org.uk/wp-content/upl…

What were the sources of those datasets.

I have some suggestions.

2/ We know from the email exchanges going on between AiQ and SCL Elections Ltd as far back as 2014 that a lot of work was going on in creating the platform and datasets to support “The Bolton Project” for the then Ambassador Bolton, now Trumps Nat Sec nominee.

3/. We also know that SCL Elections Limited entered into a contract with GSR Ltd on 4th June 2014.

4/. Schedule 2 of that contract makes reference to data from Facebook and also a change in rules at Facebook during 2014. Were there applications/scrapings running after the date of those changes that were installed before the date?

5/. Nix & SCL seem to concede that they harvested data from that contract to the tune of 30 mill people.

He seeks to rely on a warranty from GSR that these data were obtained in accordance with all data protection laws.

They got 220 million from other sources?

5/.It is worth looking at the relationships and working environment during the Trump Campaign.

7/ Oops. The previous one =6/

Pascarle, Trump’s campaign manager, says that they had republican supporting Facebook Personnel working in their campaign offices 2-5 days a week to maximise data from FB.
cbsnews.com/amp/video/secr…

8/. He says that the RNC had a database of 200 million Americans. He does not explain its source.

Whilst he says they did not use CA’s psy op features as he didn’t think they worked, the woman who actually worked with CA & wrote the FB ads disagrees.

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9/. You will see that she could not be clearer that CA and Facebook personnel were working from the same offices. Facebook to maximise everything possible FROM Facebook (that has a republican team per Pascale).
Also that CA provides her with the dataset they used.

10/. Contradicting Pascarle, she confirms that CA Psyops were applied “Cambridge Analytica’s special juice”.

11/. SO...what did the Facebook personnel mine and what was CA doing with the data mined?

How extensive was the operations and what did all those present learn FROM Facebook personnel about how to “maximise its resource”.

Pascarle wanted to know every last thing.

12/. Chris Wylie seemed to confirmed that by the time he left CA (so before the full main Trump Campaign) CA had upwards of 50 million Facebook user profiles.

He claims that, contrary to Nix’s original claim to DCMS, that th Facebook datasets were “foundational” to CA/AiQ.

13/. For those who missed his evidence, settle down for a long but rather gripping session.

Written record : data.parliament.uk/writtenevidenc…

TV recording:

parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/28…

Document bundle produced by Chris Wylie and released (at least in part) by @CommonsCMS

parliament.uk/documents/comm…

15/. In the last couple of days Facebook made the following announcement:

“"In total, we believe the Facebook information of up to 87 million people — mostly in the US — may have been improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica."
Over 1 million U.K. users’ data.
IMPROPERLY.

16/. Facebook is silent about PROPERLY obtained data.

It is also silent about the Facebook personnel that worked in the Trump campaign offices and the data mining techniques they passed on to others in the Campaign Offices.

17/. Meanwhile, turning to the U.K.

How were the various platforms deployed in the U.K.?

How come a Canadian Company AiQ was able to work so extensively on the Ref Campaign and U.K. citizen personal data at all?

18/. Facebook ALSO went on to say that 2 billion users had their data shared with third parties.

washingtonpost.com/news/the-switc…

Which 3rd parties?

19/. Brittany Kaiser, CA LLC (USA) Business Development Director says, contrary to what Nix suggested to the DCMS that they DID do work for the Leave Campaigns and that UKIP passed to the company a dataset of their “members”. (Interview with Mirror)

How was that database formed?

20/ Kaiser also says that CA used questionnaires of their own as well as Kogan’s Facebook questionnaires in the development of their datasets.

Further, due to a further change in Facebook rules in 2015 there was a last minute “grab” of data.

21/. In this interview published at the end of March 2016, Kaiser is claiming to be “working on” Brexit.

Present tense. In contradiction of Nix’s evidence to the Select Committee.

commonwealthy.com/voter-analytic…

22/. This makes more sense of the CA press release to Campaign that Nix says was a “pre campaign draft that came to nothing and should not have been published”.

However it claims to have increased hits to the Leave Campaign’s website to the tune of 3000 per day.

23/. In the press release:
"We have already helped supercharge Leave.EU’s social media campaign by ensuring the right messages are getting to the right voters online, and the campaign's Facebook page is growing in support to the tune of about 3,000 people per day."

24/. Now he says it is not reflect actual work done.

So did they just pluck an increase of hits of c.3000 a day out of the air? Of did the hits increase by c. 3000 a day?

25/. In any event we know from all the documents produced by Chris Wylie to the @CommonsCMS that the working relationship between SCL/CA and AiQ that worked on Vote Leave, BeLeave, Veterans for Leave and the DUP was very close, with AiQ developing the CA platform.

26/. According to Chris Wylie AiQ was set up to do just that.

The bundles contains a series of contracts between SCL Elections Ltd and Aggregate iQ covering a period between November 2013 to well into 2014.

They describe development work being done by AiQ for SCL.

27/. The contracts also make it clear that the IP developed from AiQ’s work for CA/SCL would be the subject of a perpetual world wide irrevocable licence to that platform and work.

28/. In one of the contracts (early 2014) between AiQ and SCL/CA they enter into a revenue sharing agreement.
Clause 3.1
“In the event either party enters into third party arrangements utilizing the Product to generate revenue, the revenue shall be shared between AIQ and SCL.”

29/. To what extent did. AiQ use the IP and platform developed for SCL/CA when working on the EU Referendums for the various Leave organisations?

Did they in fact pass any money to SCL Elections or any of the CA companies for that work per clause 3.1?

30/. We certainly know that SCL Elections received very substantial sums from CA LLC (USA arm) both in 2015 (£12million+) and 2016 (£24 million) from the accounts filed in Comapnies house. These seem large sums to be dividends for a 19% share in CA LLC.
Thanks to
@brexit_sham

31/. I also have some questions about AiQ’s continuing presence in the U.K. political scene.

Three months after the referendum a group of people who worked with David Cameron or on the Leave Campaign set up a Company called Hanbury Strategy.

32/. David Cameron’s ex Head of Strategy, Ameetpal Gill. Vote Leave Director of Comms, Paul Stephenson (ex Gove).
Oliver Lewis. Director of Research Vote Leave. (Ex Gove)

They were joined by more personnel including

Olivia Robey, Head of Political Section Conservative HQ.

33/. Jonathan Stuart...(ex Vote Leave in strategic comms)

Lizzie Loudon. (Ex Press Secretary for Theresa May during Brexit negotiations. Ex Special Advisor to Ian Duncan Smith)

Then a series of more junior appointment from across the political and EU campaign divide.

34/. It seems that ACOBA (Govt Advisory Committee on Business appointments re ex civil servants/SPADS/ Etc) had been concerned about Hanbury making post hoc applications for permission to work with commercial and other partners.

35/. it was sufficiently concerned that that it wrote in October (16), criticising Gill for accepting clients without securing its clearance and expressed its anger in a scathing letter to the civil service chief, John Manzoni.

theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/a…

36/. This brings me to a letter from ACOBA to Gill dated “June 2017” giving permission to work with AiQ in a contract for 1 year. The letter asserts that Gill said he had not worked with AiQ whilst working in Government and would not lobby Government.

He might not have.

37/. However plenty of other Hanbury staff must have done when they were working on the Leave Camapaigns.

Remember those lying Facebook adds that were fed into users feeds about the NHS and Turkey joining the EU?
Here’s an example.

facebook.com/voteleave/vide…

38/ Here’s Paul Stephenson talking about it

“Keep it simple - I think by the end of the referendum people were talking about our simple messages like the £350m a week figure and Turkey joining the EU; we used language people could use in the street or in the pub."

39/. All those Hanbury people involved in Comms, Strategy, Digital must have known about and worked with AiQ, surely?

Read more at

prweek.com/article/140847…

40/. Did ACOBA know all that when they granted permission to Gill?

gov.uk/government/upl…

41/. If there was no political lobbying or work going on re AiQ what was one of AiQ’s directors doing outside No 10 in the Autumn in 2017? @MichaelLCrick suggests AiQ visited Conservative HQ too. Remember Hanbury Director Olivia Robey (Ex Con HQ)?

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42/. And what exactly were they doing around June 2017 when Acoba gave permission to Hanbury for the 1 year contract?

43/. One way or another Leave must have had quite a comprehensive database before the formal campaign period started as they targeted c 8million people to send information leaflets to.

How did they know how to target?

44/. What were ALL the sources of data that AiQ and CA used to work on. The UKIP one. What others?

I’ve been wondering what happened to the WESS DGITAL database too. That company was struck off just after the referendum

threadreaderapp.com/thread/9800672…

45/ Finally. A request of the Committee.

Given this is so current could the committee encourage @BBCWorld to make available again that very useful programme aired in September of Last year all about Facebook, Cambridge Analytica, data and Trump?

bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09…