A UK parliamentary committee has printed new proof fleshing out how membership knowledge was handed from UKIP, a pro-Brexit political occasion, to Leave.EU, a Brexit supporting marketing campaign lively within the 2016 EU referendum — through the disgraced and now defunct knowledge firm, Cambridge Analytica.
In proof periods final yr, in the course of the DCMS committee’s enquiry into on-line disinformation, it was instructed by each the previous CEO of Cambridge Analytica, and the primary monetary backer of the Leave.EU marketing campaign, the businessman Arron Banks, that Cambridge Analytica did no work for the Leave.EU marketing campaign.
Documents printed in the present day by the committee clearly contradict that narrative — revealing inner correspondence about the usage of a UKIP dataset to create voter profiles to hold out “national microtargeting” for Leave.EU.
They additionally present CA workers elevating issues concerning the legality of the plan to mannequin UKIP knowledge to allow Leave.EU to establish and goal receptive voters with pro-Brexit messaging.
The UK’s 2016 in-out EU referendum noticed the voting public narrowing voting to go away — by 52:48.
New proof from Brittany Kaiser
The proof, which incorporates emails between key Cambridge Analytica, staff of Leave.EU and UKIP, has been submitted to the DCMS committee by Brittany Kaiser — a former director of CA (who you could simply have seen occupying a central position in Netflix’s The Great Hack documentary, which digs into hyperlinks between the Trump marketing campaign and the Brexit marketing campaign).
“As you can see with the evidence… chargeable work was completed for UKIP and Leave.EU, and I have strong reasons to believe that those datasets and analysed data processed by Cambridge Analytica as part of a Phase 1 payable work engagement… were later used by the Leave.EU campaign without Cambridge Analytica’s further assistance,” writes Kaiser in a protecting letter to committee chair, Damian Collins, summarizing the submissions.
Kaiser gave oral proof to the committee at a public listening to in April final yr.
At the time she mentioned CA had been endeavor parallel pitches for Leave.EU and UKIP — in addition to for 2 insurance coverage manufacturers owned by Banks — and had used membership survey knowledge offered by UKIP to constructed a mannequin for pro-brexit voter persona sorts, with the intention of it getting used “to benefit Leave.EU”.
“We never had a contract with Leave.EU. The contract was with the UK Independence party for the analysis of this data, but it was meant to benefit Leave.EU,” she mentioned then.
The new emails submitted by Kaiser again up her earlier proof. They additionally present there was dialogue of drawing up a contract between CA, UKIP and Leave.EU within the fall earlier than the referendum vote.
In one e mail — dated November 10, 2015 — CA’s COO & CFO, Julian Wheatland, writes that: “I had a call with [Leave.EU’s] Andy Wigmore today (Arron’s right hand man) and he confirmed that, even though we haven’t got the contract with the Leave written up, it’s all under control and it will happen just as soon as [UKIP-linked lawyer] Matthew Richardson has finished working out the correct contract structure between UKIP, CA and Leave.”
Another merchandise Kaiser has submitted to the committee is a separate November e mail from Wigmore, inviting press to a briefing by Leave.EU — entitled “how to win the EU referendum” — an occasion at which Kaiser gave a pitch on CA’s work. In this e mail Wigmore describes the agency as “the worlds leading target voter messaging campaigners”.
In one other doc, CA’s Wheatland is proven in an e mail thread forward of that presentation telling Wigmore and Richardson “we need to agree the line in the presentations next week with regards the origin of the data we have analysed”.
“We have generated some interesting findings that we can share in the presentation, but we are certain to be asked where the data came from. Can we declare that we have analysed UKIP membership and survey data?” he then asks.
UKIP’s Richardson replies with a adverse, saying: “I would rather we didn’t, to be honest” — including that he has a gathering with Wigmore to debate “all of this”, and ending with: “We will have a plan by the end of that lunch, I think”.
In one other e mail, dated November 10, despatched to a number of recipients forward of the presentation, Wheatland writes: “We need to start preparing Brittany’s presentation, which will involve working with some of the insights David [Wilkinson, CA’s chief data scientist] has been able to glean from the UKIP membership data.”
He additionally asks Wilkinson if he can begin to “share insights from the UKIP data” — in addition to asking “when are we getting the rest of the data?”. (In a later e mail, dated November 16, Wilkinson shares plots of modelled knowledge with Kaiser — apparently exhibiting the UKIP knowledge now segmented into 4 blocks of brexit supporters, which have been named: ‘Eager activist’; ‘Young reformer’; ‘Disaffected Tories’; and ‘Left behinds’.)
In the identical e mail Wheatland instructs Jordanna Zetter, an worker of CA’s mum or dad firm SCL, to temporary Kaiser on “how to field a variety of questions about CA and our methodology, but also SCL. Rest of the world, SCL Defence etc” — asking her to liaise with different key SCL/CA workers to “produce some ‘line to take’ notes”.
Another doc within the bundle seems to point out Kaiser’s speaking factors for the briefing. These make no point out of CA’s intention to hold out “national microtargeting” for Leave.EU — merely saying it would conduct “message testing and audience segmentation”.
“We will be working with the campaign’s pollsters and other vendors to compile all the data we have available to us,” is one other of the tasteless speaking factors Kaiser was instructed to feed to the press.
“Our team of data scientists will conduct deep-dive analysis that will enable us to understand the electorate better than the rival campaigns,” is yet one more unenlightening line meant for public consumption.
But whereas CA was making ready to current the UK media with a sanitized false narrative to gloss over the person voter concentrating on work it truly meant to hold out for Leave.EU, behind the scenes issues have been being raised about how “national microtargeting” would battle with UK knowledge safety legislation.
Another e mail thread, began November 19, highlights inner dialogue concerning the legality of the plan — with Wheatland sharing “written advice from Queen’s Counsel on the question of how we can legally process data in the UK, specifically UKIP’s data for Leave.eu and also more generally”. (Although Kaiser has not shared the authorized recommendation itself.)
Wilkinson replies to this e mail with what he couches as “some concerns” concerning shortfalls within the recommendation, earlier than going into element on how CA is aspiring to additional course of the modelled UKIP knowledge in an effort to individually microtarget brexit voters — which he suggests wouldn’t be authorized underneath UK knowledge safety legislation “as the identification of these people would constitute personal data”.
He writes:
I’ve some issues about what this doc says is our “output” – factors 22 to 24. Whilst it contains what we’ve already carried out on their knowledge (clustering and preliminary profiling of their members, and offering this to them as abstract data), it doesn’t say something about utilizing the fashions of the clusters that we create to extrapolate to new people and infer their profile. In reality it says that our output doesn’t establish people. Thus it says nothing about our microtargeting strategy typical within the US, which I consider was one thing that we needed to do with depart eu knowledge to establish how every their supporters ought to be contacted in line with their inferred profile.
For instance, we wouldn’t be capable to present which members are prone to belong to group A and thus ought to be messaged on this explicit approach – because the identification of those individuals would represent private knowledge. We may solely say “group A typically looks like this summary profile”.
Wilkinson ends by asking for clarification forward of a looming assembly with Leave.EU, saying: “It would be really useful to have this clarified early on tomorrow, because I was under the impression it would be a large part of our product offering to our UK clients.” [emphasis ours]
Wheatland follows up with a one line e mail, asking Richardson to “comment on David’s concern” — who then chips into the dialogue, saying there’s “some confusion at our end about where this data is coming from and going to”.
He goes on to summarize the “premises” of the recommendation he says UKIP was given concerning sharing the information with CA (and afterwards the modelled knowledge with Leave.EU, as he implies is the plan) — writing that his understanding is that CA will return: “Analysed Data to UKIP”, after which: “As the Analysed Dataset contains no personal data UKIP are free to give that Analysed Dataset to anyone else to do with what they wish. UKIP will give the Analysed Dataset to Leave.EU”.
“Could you please confirm that the above is correct?” Richardson goes on. “Do I additionally perceive appropriately that CA then intend to make use of the Analysed Dataset and overlay it on Leave.EU’s legitimately acquired knowledge to deduce (interpolate) profiles for every of their supporters in order to raised management the messaging that depart.eu sends out to these supporters?
“Is it additionally appropriate that CA then intend to make use of the Analysed Dataset and overlay it on publicly obtainable knowledge to deduce (interpolate) which members of the general public are most certainly to grow to be Leave.EU supporters and what messages would encourage them to take action?
“If these understandings are not correct please let me know and I will give you a call to discuss this.”
About half an hour later one other SCL Group worker, Peregrine Willoughby-Brown, joins the dialogue to again up Wilkinson’s authorized issues.
“The [Queen’s Counsel] opinion only seems to be an analysis of the legality of the work we have already done for UKIP, rather than any judgement on whether or not we can do microtargeting. As such, whilst it is helpful to know that we haven’t already broken the law, it doesn’t offer clear guidance on how we can proceed with reference to a larger scope of work,” she writes with out obvious alarm on the chance that the whole marketing campaign plan may be unlawful underneath UK privateness legislation.
“I haven’t read it in sufficient depth to know whether or not it offers indirect insight into how we could proceed with national microtargeting, which it may do,” she provides — ending by saying she and a colleague will talk about it additional “later today”.
It’s not clear whether or not issues concerning the legality of the microtargeting plan derailed the signing of any formal contract between Leave.EU and CA — although the paperwork indicate knowledge was shared, even when solely in the course of the scoping stage of the work.
“The fact remains that chargeable work was done by Cambridge Analytica, at the direction of Leave.EU and UKIP executives, despite a contract never being signed,” writes Kaiser in her cowl letter to the committee on this. “Despite having no signed contract, the invoice was still paid, not to Cambridge Analytica but instead paid by Arron Banks to UKIP directly. This payment was then not passed onto Cambridge Analytica for the work completed, as an internal decision in UKIP, as their party was not the beneficiary of the work, but Leave.EU was.”
Kaiser has additionally shared a presentation of the UKIP survey knowledge, which bears the names of three lecturers: Harold Clarke, University of Texas at Dallas & University of Essex; Matthew Goodwin, University of Kent; and Paul Whiteley, University of Essex, which particulars outcomes from the web portion of the membership survey — aka the core dataset CA modelled for concentrating on Brexit voters with the intention of serving to the Leave.EU marketing campaign.
(At a look, this survey suggests there’s an attention-grabbing evaluation ready to be carried out of the selection of goal demographics for the present blitz of marketing campaign message testing adverts being run on Facebook by the brand new (pro-brexit) UK prime minister Boris Johnson and the core UKIP demographic, as revealed by the survey knowledge… )
Call for Leave.EU probe to be reopened
Ian Lucas, MP, a member of the DCMS committee has referred to as for the UK’s Electoral Commission to re-open its investigation into Leave.EU in view of “additional evidence” from Kaiser.
The EC ought to re-open their investigation into LeaveEU in view of the extra proof from Brittany Kaiser through @CommonsCMS
— Ian Lucas MP (@IanCLucas) July 30, 2019
We reached out to the Electoral Commission to ask if will probably be revisiting the matter.
An Electoral Commission spokesperson instructed us: “We are contemplating this new data in relation to our position regulating campaigner exercise on the EU referendum. This pertains to the 10 week interval main as much as the referendum and to campaigning exercise particularly geared toward persuading individuals to vote for a selected consequence.
“Last July we did impose significant penalties on Leave.EU for committing multiple offences under electoral law at the EU Referendum, including for submitting an incomplete spending return.”
Last yr the Electoral Commission additionally discovered that the official Vote Leave Brexit marketing campaign broke the legislation by breaching election marketing campaign spending limits. It channelled cash to a Canadian knowledge agency linked to Cambridge Analytica to focus on political adverts on Facebook’s platform, through undeclared joint working with a youth-focused Brexit marketing campaign, BeLeave.
Six months in the past the UK’s knowledge watchdog additionally issued fines in opposition to Leave.EU and Banks’ insurance coverage firm, Eldon Insurance — having discovered what it dubbed as “serious” breaches of digital advertising legal guidelines, together with the marketing campaign utilizing insurance coverage prospects’ particulars to unlawfully to ship virtually 300,000 political advertising messages.
A spokeswoman for the ICO instructed us it doesn’t have a press release on Kaiser’s newest proof however added that its enforcement group “will be reviewing the documents released by DCMS”.
The regulator has been operating a wider enquiry into use of private knowledge for social media political campaigning. And final yr the knowledge commissioner referred to as for an moral pause on its use — warning that belief in democracy risked being undermined.
And whereas Facebook has since utilized a skinny movie of ‘political ads’ transparency to its platform (which researches proceed to warn just isn’t practically clear sufficient to quantify political use of its adverts platform), UK election marketing campaign legal guidelines have but to be up to date to take account of the digital firehoses now (il)liberally shaping political debate and public opinion at scale.
It’s now greater than three years because the UK’s shock vote to go away the European Union — a vote that has to this point delivered three years of divisive political chaos, despatching two prime ministers and derailing politics and policymaking as normal.
Many questions stay over a referendum that continues to be dogged by scandals — from breaches of marketing campaign spending; to breaches of information safety and privateness legislation; and certainly the usage of unregulated social media — principally Facebook’s advert platform — because the keen conduit for distributing racist dogwhistle assault adverts and political misinformation to whip up anti-EU sentiment amongst UK voters.
Dark cash, darkish adverts — and the importing of US fashion marketing campaign techniques into UK, circumventing election and knowledge safety legal guidelines by the digital platform backdoor.
This is why the DCMS committee’s preliminary report final yr referred to as on the federal government to take “urgent action” to “build resilience against misinformation and disinformation into our democratic system”.
The exact same minority authorities, struggling to carry itself collectively within the face of Brexit chaos, failed to reply to the committee’s issues — and has now been changed by a cadre of probably the most militant Brexit backers, who’re making use of their arms to a budget and plentiful digital marketing campaign levers.
The UK’s new prime minister, Boris Johnson, is demonstrably doubling down on political microtargeting: Appointing at least Dominic Cummings, the marketing campaign director of the official Vote Leave marketing campaign, as a particular advisor.
At the identical time Johnson’s group is firing out a flotilla of Facebook adverts — together with adverts that seem meant to assemble voter sentiment for the aim of crafting individually focused political messages for any future election marketing campaign.
So it’s full steam forward with the Facebook adverts…
Yet this ‘democratic reset’ is laid proper atop the Brexit trainwreck. It’s coupled to it, the truth is.
Cummings labored for the self similar Vote Leave marketing campaign that the Electoral Commission discovered illegally funnelled cash — through Cambridge Analytica-linked Canadian knowledge agency AggregateIQ — right into a blitz of microtargeted Facebook adverts meant to sway voter opinion.
Vote Leave additionally confronted questions over its use of Facebook-run soccer competitors promising a £50M prize-pot to followers in trade for handing over a bunch of private knowledge forward of the referendum, together with how they deliberate to vote. Another knowledge seize wrapped in fancy costume — very similar to GSR’s thisisyourlife quiz app that offered the foundational dataset for CA’s psychological voter profiling work on the Trump marketing campaign.
The elevating of Cummings to be particular adviser to the UK PM represents the polar reverse of an ‘ethical pause’ in political microtargeting.
Make no mistake, that is the Brexit marketing campaign playbook — again in operation, now with full-bore pedal to the steel. (With his arms now on the general public purse, Johnson has pledged to spend £100M on advertising to promote a ‘no deal Brexit’ to the UK public.)
Kaiser’s newest proof could not include a smoking bomb large enough to blast the difficulty of data-driven and tech giant-enabled voter manipulation right into a mainstream consciousness, the place it may need the possibility to reset the political conscience of a nation — however it places extra flesh on the bones of how the self-styled ‘bad boys of Brexit’ pulled off their shock win.
In The Great Hack the Brexit marketing campaign is couched because the ‘petri dish’ for the data-fuelled concentrating on deployed by the agency within the 2016 US presidential election — which delivered a equally shock victory for Trump.
If that’s so, these newest items of proof indicate a suggestively shut hyperlink between CA’s experimental modelling of UKIP supporter knowledge, because it shifted gears to use its darkish arts nearer to dwelling than normal, and the fashions it subsequently constructed off of US residents’ knowledge sucked out of Facebook. And that in flip goes some option to explaining the cosiness between Trump and UKIP founder Nigel Farage…
Kaiser ends her letter to DCMS writing: “Given the enormity of the implications of earlier inaccurate conclusions by different investigations, I would hope that Parliament reconsiders the evidence submitted here in good faith. I hope that these ten documents are helpful to your research and furthering the transparency and truth that your investigations are seeking, and that the people of the UK and EU deserve”.
Banks and Wigmore have responded to the publication of their normal fashion, with a pair of dismissive tweets — questioning Kaiser’s motives for wanting the information to be printed and throwing shade on how the proof was obtained within the first place.
You imply the skilled whistleblower who’s making a profession of creating stuff up with a e book deal and failed Netflix movie! The witch-hunt so final season !! https://t.co/f2rsPfoDdT
— Arron Banks (@Arron_banks) July 30, 2019