Cambridge Analytica harvested personal info. Letter to the Editor, published in Register-Mail 3/25/18

Cambridge Analytica  (CA), hired by the Trump campaign (Kushner, Manafort and Parscale) hacked into over 50 million Facebook accounts and exploited user’s personal information for the Trump campaign’s nefarious purposes.  Before the “old fogeys”, who can barely even text, start bashing us social-media users for being so gullible, let me remind y’all that “yesterday’s” bombshell was: Russia has “infiltrated the energy, nuclear, commercial, water, aviation and manufacturing sectors in our country (as well as having hacked 7 state’s electoral systems).  Russia supposedly can create significant havoc and possibly even shut down services in our nation.  CA started in 2014 as a voter-profiling company, funded with $15M by Robert Mercer, with “vice-prez” Steve Bannon, spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway — first worked to elect Ted Cruz, then switched to Donald Trump.  Mr. Nix, a Brit, heading up CA, was warned about involvement in U.S. political campaigns, he started up a British affiliate — SCL group; he boasted (we saw under-cover footage) of employing front companies and former spies on behalf of political clients around the world, and even suggested ways to entrap politicians (sending friendly Ukrainian girls to them) in compromising situations.  CA didn’t have the data to make its “product claims” work, so they “harvested” millions of profiles from Facebook to begin their “Psycho-graphics platform”.  The vast system of wide-scale corruption by CA/SCL group is being “investigated in Britain by Parliament and government regulators into allegations that it performed illegal work on the Brexit campaign”.  Meanwhile, Trump congratulated Putin on his re-election to his 4th, six-year term as Russia’s leader, the most popular since Stalin.  Putin recently told his people that “Russia has tested an array of new nuclear weapons that are impossible to intercept”.  Rex Tillerson, Secretary of State was fired; H.R. McMaster, National Security Advisor was fired, replaced by “Hawk Neocon” John Bolton, who “was part of the effort to mislead the US into the disastrous Iraq war, supports military actions against North Korea”, and thinks we need to instigate a regime change in Iran.  John Dowd, one Trump lawyer resigned, replaced by Joseph diGenova  (believer in the Deep State conspiracy).  Ex-CIA Chief, John Brennan said on 3/17/18 to Donald Trump, “When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history.  You may scapegoat Andy McCabe, but you will not destroy America — America will triumph over you!

Trish Forsyth Voss