[wind blowing softly]
[soft, indistinct chatter]
[man 1] Ms. Kaiser, you seem to have traveled a long way
from an idealistic intern in Barack Obama's campaign
to working for an organization that keeps pretty unsavory company.
Didn't that make you uncomfortable at all?
[man 2] You referred to having two sets of business cards.
Who did you work for?
[explosions booming]
[man 1] Don't take this the wrong way.
In your life, have you ever worked for
or provided information to any country's intelligence agency?
[man] Hi. A small coffee, please?
-Uh, $2.25. -Great.
All right.
-[phone chimes] -[man] Who has seen an advertisement
that has convinced you
that your microphone is listening to your conversations?
[class laughing]
[man] It's hard for us to imagine how else it could work,
but what's happening is that your behavior
is being accurately predicted.
So, the ads that seem uncannily accurate,
that have to be eavesdropping on us,
are more likely to be evidence
that the targeting works,
and that it predicts our behavior.
Maybe it's because I grew up with the Internet as a reality.
The ads don't bother me all that much.
When does it turn sour?
[electronic chiming]
[phone chimes, vibrates]
[female voice over PA] This is a Brooklyn-bound Q express train.
-The next stop is Canal Street. -[phone vibrates]
[phone vibrates]
[Carroll] It began with the dream of a connected world.
A space where everyone could share each other's experiences
and feel less alone.
It wasn't long before this world became our matchmaker,
instant fact-checker, personal entertainer,
guardian of our memories, even our therapist.
[speaks indistinctly to students]
[Carroll] I was teaching digital media and developing apps.
So, I knew that the data from our online activity
wasn't just evaporating.
And as I dug deeper, I realized...
these digital traces of ourselves
are being mined into a trillion-dollar-a-year industry.
We are now the commodity.
But we were so in love
with the gift of this free connectivity...
that no one bothered to read the terms and conditions.
-[overlapping voices] -[digital noise]
[Carroll] All of my interactions,
my credit card swipes, web searches,
locations, my likes,
they're all collected in real time and attached to my identity,
giving any buyer direct access to my emotional pulse.
Armed with this knowledge, they compete for my attention,
feeding me a steady stream of content built for and seen only by me.
And this is true for each and every one of us.
What I like,
what I fear,
what gets my attention,
what my boundaries are, and what it takes to cross them.
[overlapping voices]
[woman 1] Go back to Washington.
[woman 2] Crooked Hillary tells lots of lies.
The stock market's gonna crash. I mean, this'll cause a civil war.
[Carroll] We saw the fallout of our filtered realities
in the 2016 election.
[woman 3] ...you were not offended when Donald Trump said it!
[overlapping shouts and jeers]
-[man 1] Get the fuck out! -[angry shouts overlapping]
[Carroll] The real world became a deeply divided wreckage site.
-[protesters chanting indistinctly] -[overlapping shouts]
[man 2] Fuck those dirty beaners! Build the wall!
[man 3] Whoo!
[men shouting] Fight!
[Carroll] How did the dream of the connected world tear us apart?
[static crackles]
[Carroll] My daughter is eight, and my son is four.
Uh, every app is carefully scrutinized before ins-- being installed, and--
And, like, now, I'm the dad who reads the privacy policy and says,
"No, you see here? They read your messages.
Are you okay with that?" [chuckles]
That's, like, the new way I'm gonna be an annoying parent.
-Hey. -[kids chattering]
[Carroll] I've been concerned for a long time
about how the misuse of our data and information
could affect my children's future.
But it wasn't until after the 2016 election that I realized
it had already happened on our watch.
It was really, like, a feeling of, like...
[takes a deep breath]
...the worst-case scenario has happened with technology.
Hmm.
I became obsessed with finding answers.
And the question I kept asking myself was:
Who was feeding us fear?
And how?
This was our Project Alamo, where the digital arm
of the Trump campaign operation was held.
When Project Alamo was at its peak,
they were spending one million dollars a day
on Facebook ads.
We had the Facebook, and YouTube, and Google people.
They would kind of congregate here.
I mean, they were basically our hands-on partners
as far as, you know, being able to utilize the platform
as effectively as possible.
But what we also learned
is that a company called Cambridge Analytica...
was also working on Project Alamo.
Cambridge Analytica was here.
And this is kind of the brain of-- of, you know, the data.
-[over video] This was the data center. -[man] Right.
"We gotta target this state. We gotta target that state."
-So, within that-- -[man] How would they know that?
-How would they know that-- -That's-- That's their secret sauce.
-[computer chimes] -[mouse clicks]
-[Carroll] Paul-Olivier? -[Paul-Olivier] I'm there.
Okay. Let me just, uh, set up my screen.
[Carroll] I connected with a mathematician based out of Switzerland
named Paul-Olivier Dehaye.
[Dehaye] I've been looking at Cambridge Analytica for over a year
and I think there's more to be found.
[Carroll] Both Paul and I understood that
in order to send people personalized messages,
you need people's data.
And Cambridge Analytica claimed to have 5,000 data points
on every American voter.
But it was invisible.
And so the question is, how do you make the invisible visible?
[sighs] That's the hardest part. Um...
-[marker squeaks] -[Carroll] Paul-Olivier Dehaye had
a hypothesis,
and the hypothesis was that US voter data
was processed by Cambridge Analytica's parent company
in Great Britain.
And if it was true,
I could use a British lawyer to force Cambridge Analytica
to give me my data.
[man] I think the beauty of David's case is it encapsulates
why data rights should be considered just fundamental rights, simple rights.
Because all he wants to know
is what did you do?
And if David finds out the data beneath his profile,
you'll start to be able to connect the dots in various ways
with Facebook and Cambridge Analytica and Trump and Brexit
and all these loosely-connected entities.
Because you get to see inside the beast,
you get to see inside the system.
[man] I used to be the COO and CFO
of the Cambridge Analytica, or SCL, Group.
If you spoke to most people that worked at Cambridge Analytica,
they would say the same thing.
It was, uh... an environment of great innovation.
Hello, my name is Alexander Nix.
I'm CEO of Cambridge Analytica,
the world's leading data-driven communications company.
From Mad Men of old to Math Men of today,
expert data scientists whose insight
can tell you far more about audiences that you want to reach
and how to reach them.
[Wheatland] Alexander Nix was very focused on building a strong elections business.
And then the Obama campaign very successfully used data
and digital communications,
which created a market opportunity to provide a service
to Republican politics in the US.
[crowd cheering]
[Cruz] God bless the great state of Iowa.
[crowd cheering]
[Wheatland] Ted Cruz went from the lowest rated candidate
in the primaries
to being the last man standing before Trump got the nomination.
[crowd members cheer]
Let me first of all say...
-to God be the glory. -[crowd cheering]
[reporter] Everyone said Ted Cruz had this amazing ground game,
and now we know who came up with all of it.
Joining me now, Alexander Nix, CEO of Cambridge Analytica,
the company behind it all.
It's fascinating, Alexander, to look at all of the work
that goes into the ground game.
Have any of the other candidates called you?
Well, um...
[audience applauding]
It's my privilege to speak to you today
about the power of big data and psychographics.
When Cambridge Analytica joined the Trump campaign,
we were an attractive proposition.
We'd just spent 14 months working on the Ted Cruz campaign,
and had collected a huge amount of voter data and research,
which we were able to hand over to the Trump team.
By having hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Americans
undertake this survey,
we were able to form a model,
where we have somewhere close to four or five thousand data points
we can use to predict the personality of every adult in the United States.
Because it's personality that drives behavior,
and behavior that obviously influences how you vote.
We could then start to target people
with highly-targeted digital video content.
[man 1] Secretary Clinton said there was nothing marked classified on her emails
either sent or received. Was that true?
[Trump] Our movement is about replacing
a failed and corrupt political establishment.
Why aren't I 50 points ahead, you might ask?
[man 2] Do you really need to ask?
[Clinton coughing]
-[crowd cheering] -[rousing orchestral theme plays]
A night that will go down in history,
a stunning upset as Donald Trump triumphs over Hillary Clinton,
defying the polls, the pundits, and the political class once again,
this time elected president of the United States.
[orchestral theme continues]
[crowd cheering]
[crowd chanting] USA! USA!
-Thank you. -[chanting continues]
[Trump] Thank you very much, everybody.
[Nix] If there's one singular takeaway from this event,
that is that these sorts of technologies
can make a huge difference
and will continue to do so for many years to come.
Thank you.
[audience applauding]
[Wheatland] After the election, it was really exciting.
[cheering]
[Wheatland] We could see the path to being a billion-dollar company.
We were on top of the world. Or at least we thought we were.
[Cadwalladr] This is the exciting box.
I've been investigating Cambridge Analytica
and how that ties to the Brexit campaign to leave the European Union.
And this has been my full-time, 12-hours-a-day,
seven-days-a-week kind of obsession, I would say, since then.
It's been all-consuming.
[sighs]
When I first started looking into this whole web of links
between Cambridge Analytica and Brexit...
I emailed Andy Wigmore,
who is an associate of Nigel Farage.
And Nigel Farage is a very central figure in the Brexit campaign.
I sort of said, "Oh, can we go for a coffee?
I'm really interested in technology and campaigning."
And then he just sort of like, he just like laid it all out.
[upbeat jazz playing]
[Cadwalladr] It was just after the Inauguration.
So, Andy, he was just like sort of, like, showing me all the photos on his phone.
"This is the inauguration."
Then, "Oh, it's such a laugh!
We had such a good time. Oh, Donald..."
And I was like, "How did the introduction to Cambridge Analytica come out?"
He was like, "You know, it's 'cause Nigel. Nigel's friends with Steve Bannon."
-Ladies and gentlemen, Steve Bannon! -[audience cheers]
[Cadwalladr] Steve Bannon headed the campaign for Trump.
He's also the Vice President of Cambridge Analytica.
So he's like, "Yeah, there's this bunch of billionaires in the States.
We've all got the same aims,
and Brexit was the petri dish for Trump."
For most of my life, America is the leader.
Now, I would like to think, in my own little way,
that what we did with Brexit
was the beginning of what is gonna turn out to be
a global revolution
and that Trump's victory is a part of that.
[people cheering, applauding]
[scoffs] Anyway, and then he told me all sorts of other stuff
about, you know, how they used artificial intelligence,
you know, how they were mining details from Facebook
and, um...
And he was like-- And he was like, "It's creepy, Carole!" He said,
"The amount of information you can get on people--
People just give it to you!"
And he sort of said, "It's just so creepy!"
So, I just kind of kept going.
The Brexit work.
I'd started tracking down all these Cambridge Analytica ex-employees.
And, eventually, I got one guy who was prepared to talk to me.
Chris Wylie.
We had this first telephone call, which was insane.
It was about eight hours long. And...
[mimics explosion sound]
My name is Christopher Wylie, I'm a data scientist
and I helped set up Cambridge Analytica.
It's incorrect to call Cambridge Analytica
a purely sort of data science company or an algorithm, you know, company.
You know, it is a full-service propaganda machine.
[interviewer] You were an investor in Cambridge Analytica.
-I helped put the company together. -[interviewer] And-- Yes, you did. And--
And gave it-- And gave it that amazing name.
[Wylie] Steve Bannon was the editor of Breitbart.
He follows this idea of the Breitbart doctrine,
which is that, if you want to fundamentally change society,
you first have to break it.
And it's only when you break it
is when you can remold the pieces into your vision of a new society.
This was the weapon
that Steve Bannon wanted to build to fight his culture war.
And we could build them for him.
But I needed to figure out a way of getting data,
and so I went to these Cambridge University profs
and asked, "What do you think?"
Kogan offered us apps on Facebook that were given special permission
to harvest data not from just the person who used the app or joined the app,
but also it would then go into their entire friend network
and pull out all of the friends' data as well.
If you were a friend of somebody who used the app,
you would have no idea that I just pulled all of your data.
We took things like status updates, likes,
in some cases, private messages.
We wouldn't just be targeting you as a voter,
we'd be targeting you as a personality.
We would only need to touch a couple hundred thousand people
to build a psychological profile
of each voter in all of the United States.
[Cadwalladr] And people had no idea
that their data was being taken in this way?
[Wylie] No.
[Cadwalladr] You didn't ever stop and think,
"Actually, this is people's personal information,
and we're taking it, and we're using it in ways that they don't understand"?
[Wylie] No.
Throughout history, you have examples of grossly unethical experiments.
[Cadwalladr] Is that what this was?
[Wylie] I think that, yes, it was a grossly unethical experiment.
You are playing with the psychology of an entire country
without their consent or awareness.
And not only are you, like,
playing with the psychology of an entire nation,
you're playing with the psychology of an entire nation
in the context of the democratic process.
[news anchor speaks indistinctly nearby]
[Carroll] The revelations have started to spill out.
We're now not just threatening to do things, but we're actually doing it.
-[anchor] Okay, we're ready, guys. -[man] One, two, three...
We turn now to the burgeoning scandal
around voter-profiling company Cambridge Analytica.
David Carroll filed a legal challenge in Britain
asking the court to force Cambridge Analytica
to turn over all the data it harvested on him.
Explain what you are demanding.
Uh, full disclosure, so...
where did they get our data,
how did they process it, who did they share it with,
and do we have a right to opt out?
[man] Cambridge Analytica says
it's got 5,000 data points
on many, many millions of people out there.
[Carroll] That's right.
When people can actually see the extent of the surveillance,
I think they're going to be shocked.
We don't work with Facebook data. We don't have Facebook data.
Uh, we do use Facebook as a platform, uh, to advertise.
Mr. Nix, Channel 4 News.
Did you mislead Parliament over the Facebook issue?
-Absolutely not. -[reporter continues indistinctly]
[Carroll] It's crazy that I have to mount a year-long,
super risky legal challenge in another country
to get my voter profile.
David, don't stop, don't relent.
[Carroll chuckles]
-Keep going. Good. -I'm gonna do it, don't worry.
-[woman] Don't sleep! -[Carroll laughs]
Facebook's down 6.35%.
That's 120 billion dollars.
This is huge.
[reporter 1] Officers working for the UK Information Commissioner
are searching the headquarters of Cambridge Analytica, in London.
[reporter 2] They're inside, they're looking at computers,
they're looking for documents.
[reporter 3] Facebook knew about that data collection over two years ago
but did not go public until three days ago.
Really, Facebook?
You forgot to mention that 50 million people
had their private data breached,
but every time it's my uncle's friend's sister's dog's birthday,
I get a notification?
[audience laughs]
[reporter 4] You are taking on a giant,
a Goliath of big data marketing.
How hopeful are you of succeeding?
-[woman makes indistinct introduction] -[audience applauds]
[Carroll] People don't want to admit that propaganda works.
Because to admit it means confronting our own susceptibilities,
horrific lack of privacy,
and hopeless dependency
on tech platforms ruining our democracies
on various attack surfaces.
Join the struggle to help get our data back.
[applause, cheering]
Welcome to our inquiry into disinformation and fake news.
I'd like to welcome Christopher Wylie and Paul-Olivier Dehaye,
uh, to the committee to give evidence this morning.
[O'Hara] Have you or anybody else made any assessment
of actually whether any of this made much difference
to the final outcome of the EU Referendum?
When-- When you're caught in the Olympics doping, right,
there's not a debate about how much illegal drug you took. Right?
Or, "Well,
he probably would've come in first anyway,"
or, you know, "He only took half of the amount," or--
Doesn't matter. If you're caught cheating, you lose your medal. Right?
Because...
[stammers] ...if we allow cheating in our democratic process,
what about next time?
What about the time after that? Right? You shouldn't win by cheating.
A lot of people will say, and I'll say, um,
that given that you're someone who worked very closely with these people,
uh, for a period of time,
why have you decided to speak out against it
and give evidence against people who used to be your colleagues?
It's a process of coming to terms with what you've created
and the impact that that-- that-- that has had.
Um, I am incredibly remorseful for my-- my role in setting it up.
But there's been a lot of attention on me because I'm sort of-- I've become the...
uh, you know, the face of it, because I'm the one that's...
come forward and put my name to it.
But someone else that you should be calling
to the committee is Brittany Kaiser.
Who's Brittany Kaiser?
I'm not that interested in standing up for powerful white men anymore
who obviously don't have everybody's best interests at heart.
[reporter 1] Brittany Kaiser, once a key player
inside Cambridge Analytica,
casting herself as a whistle-blower.
[reporter 2] Until three weeks ago, Brittany Kaiser, a top exec there,
she had a key to Steve Bannon's townhouse in Washington.
She spoke at CPAC in 2016, along with Kellyanne Conway,
spent election night at the Trump victory party
with mega-donor Rebekah Mercer.
[reporter 1] Miss Kaiser was also closely involved
with millionaire Brexit supporter Arron Banks
and his Leave.EU campaign.
[reporter 3] She's raising some interesting things.
Why is she talking now, do you think?
[man] Well, she only gave us part of the picture.
She's talking to investigators, and so we'll know the full picture
at some point later...
[soft jazz playing]
[Kaiser] I have evidence
that the Brexit campaigns and the Trump campaign
could've been conducted illegally.
And so, for my own safety, I don't need geolocation of where this is.
Just me sitting here...
the person trying to overthrow two administrations
and all of the most powerful companies in the world,
all at once.
[chuckles]
With one disjointed but hopefully-soon-seamless narrative.
[chuckles]
The wealthiest companies are technology companies.
Google, Facebook, Amazon, Tesla.
And the reason why these companies
are the most powerful companies in the world
is because, last year, data surpassed oil in its value.
Data is the most valuable asset on Earth.
And these companies are valuable
because they have been exploiting people's assets.
It wasn't until one of my friends reached out to me
to ask was I going to be all right
with the way that my story would be seen in history.
And I thought, "No.
I'm not okay, actually." [chuckles]
And there's probably a lot of information that I could give
that would be helpful to making things okay, possibly.
[Hilder] I'm a political technologist
who tries to shine a big light
on how data's been used and abused.
It's a moment where people have that visceral sense.
There is, you know,
that there's something wrong here, uh, that we need to fix.
And so, I've dropped pretty much everything I was doing
to work on this with Brittany Kaiser.
I went and found her and met her,
and she was very forthcoming
in a way which made me think, [chuckles] "There's a lot here."
[applause, scattered cheers]
What we really need to be understanding is people's levers of persuasion.
How are we actually going to message voters so that they can under...
[man] Tina and I met with Brittany Kaiser.
[Kaiser] We look very unlike any other political
and communications firm, so--
[woman] Do you work both sides of the aisle?
Uh, no, we only work for the Republicans in the United States.
[woman] Okay.
And in Britain?
[Kaiser] Well, actually, right now we're working on the Brexit campaign.
At Leave.EU, we're going to be running a large-scale research
throughout the nation to really understand
why people are interested in staying in or out of the EU.
And the answers to that will help inform our policy and our communications,
to make sure that we turn out more first-time voters,
more unregistered voters, more apathetic voters than ever before.
[Hilder] I think we now have the foundations laid for...
her to share what is some reasonably explosive materials
that we've been finding.
Uh, and, uh... her inbox and her hard drive,
uh, really are a treasure trove of... uh, sketchy information.
And we're still just scratching the surface.
[dance music playing]
[Hilder] Tell us about the first meeting you had in Trump Tower.
In November 2015,
I went with Alexander Nix to go see Corey Lewandowski,
who was the campaign manager at the time.
And I asked Corey, why could this place possibly look so familiar?
And he said, "This is the set of The Apprentice.
That's probably why you recognize it." And...
I was kind of shocked, you know?
The Trump campaign HQ is a reality TV set.
[Hilder] Yes. It is.
And the idea of a company...
conducting large-scale analysis of a population...
Mm-hmm.
...and then identifying the triggers that people have
in terms of what's gonna move them from one state to another state,
that feels very challenging
to the individual's sense of autonomy and freedom...
-Mm-hmm. -...uh...
and to the idea of democracy.
Doesn't it?
I don't know. Um... I would challenge that.
What this strategy is mostly meant to do
is to identify people who are still considering
-many different options... -Yes.
...and educate them on some of the options that are out there,
and if they're on the fence,
then they can be persuaded to go one way or the other.
-Yes, they can. -Uh, again, that is their own choice.
-But a lot of the times... -Is it?
-...these are individuals that-- -[Hilder] Is it their own choice?
In the end, they're the ones that go to the ballot box
-and make their ch-- decision. -[Hilder] Yeah.
I mean, I'm asking you these questions as Brittany Kaiser.
-[Kaiser] I know. -Right?
I'm not asking you these questions as Cambridge Analytica or SCL,
because that's not who you are anymore. Right?
I get it. I get it. But--
[Hilder stammers] And do you think Cambridge Analytica
was ever involved in the contravention of people's human rights?
[Kaiser] No.
But, [chuckles] again, I start to question a lot of things the more I hear.
[Hilder] Yeah.
[Kaiser] I mean, I had spent my entire career before that
working for human rights.
[Hilder] Okay.
Let's go back to that. [chuckles]
It wasn't that long ago. Just a decade.
-[Hilder] It wasn't that long ago. -Yeah.
[Kaiser] I had worked in elections since I was 14 or 15.
I told my cousin I applied to intern on the Obama campaign.
She was like, "Oh, my God.
You better get that internship, or I'll die."
I was part of the team running Obama's Facebook.
We invented the way social media is used to communicate with voters.
I then spent several years working on human rights
and international relations,
first for Amnesty International,
then lobbying at the United Nations and European Parliament.
And I used to always say I love human rights campaigning,
but sometimes I feel like I'm banging my head against a brick wall
because I can't see the results of what I'm doing.
I don't know if I'm literally just wasting my time.
And that's where I was when I met Alexander Nix.
-[low chatter] -[cutlery clinking]
[Kaiser] Friends of ours thought it would be a good joke to introduce us.
He was very interested in learning more about my experience with the Democrats.
He gave me his card and said,
"Let me get you drunk and steal your secrets."
And in December 2014, he offered me a job.
Coming across a company where you could actually see your impact
was really exciting for me.
I got a little more conservative or posh
in terms of the way that I dressed and the way that I spoke,
and doing things like going on shooting at the weekends
and stuff like that.
It's just very different to what I would normally spend my time doing.
[Hilder] Must've been a hell of an adventure.
It was really interesting. I strapped on my cowboy boots,
got into character, got my NRA membership.
-Yeah, you joined the NRA, right? -I did, yeah.
Just to understand how these people think,
-like... -Uh-huh.
I don't want to use guns.
-I'm not really interested in guns at all. -Yeah.
I felt like I was getting to know...
people that I used to disagree with a lot,
like my grandparents, my aunts, uncles, cousins.
[Hilder] So this wasn't just an outfit that you put on, and it felt important?
It was important. It is important.
-[Hilder] Yeah. -I feel like the main problem
in US politics
is that people are so polarized that they can't understand each other,
and therefore they can't work together, and therefore nothing gets done.
-[PA chimes] -[woman speaking indistinctly on PA]
I am about to draft some questions for a senator
who will be able to ask them to Mark Zuckerberg
in the Senate Judiciary hearing on Tuesday.
"How much of Facebook's revenue
comes directly from the monetization
of users' personal data?"
[chortles] All of it!
Exactly.
The reality is that Facebook knows more about this
than pretty much anyone in the world
because Facebook is the best platform on which to run experiments.
-Yeah, it is. Um, it... -[laughing]
And it actually always gets you the best engagement rates.
We always spend the majority amount of money
on any commercial or political campaign in Facebook.
Always gets the majority of the ad budget.
-It does, it does. -Yep.
[Hilder] There is at least the possibility that the American public
and publics in other countries have been experimented on.
[Kaiser] Remember those Facebook quizzes that we used
to form personality models for all voters in the US?
The truth is, we didn't target every American voter equally.
The bulk of our resources
went into targeting those whose minds we thought we could change.
We called them "the persuadables."
They're everywhere in the country,
but the persuadables that mattered were the ones in swing states
like Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Florida.
Now, each of these states were broken down by precinct.
So, you can say there are 22,000 persuadable voters
in this precinct,
and if we target enough persuadable people in the right precincts,
then those states would turn red instead of blue.
Our creative team designed personalized content
to trigger those individuals.
Terrorists love porous borders.
Widespread gaps in border security allow terrorists...
[Kaiser] We bombarded them through blogs, websites, articles, videos, ads,
every platform you can imagine.
Until they saw the world the way we wanted them to.
[emoji growls]
[Kaiser] Until they voted for our candidate.
It's like a boomerang.
You send your data out,
it gets analyzed,
and it comes back at you as targeted messaging
to change your behavior.
[indistinct chatter]
[indistinct announcement over PA]
DCMS Committee announced the future witnesses
-for a fake news inquiry. -Yes.
-There you are. You're-- -Me.
-[Hilder] You're the day before Alexander. -[Kaiser] The former CEO.
He's going the day after me.
Yes. Is it-- Is it all feeling a bit real?
[chuckling] It's really intense.
-[sniffles] -[Hilder] It's real.
-And it's big. -[Kaiser sighs]
[Cadwalladr] The first time I wrote about Cambridge Analytica,
it was December 2016.
I said that they'd worked for the Trump campaign
and for the Brexit campaign.
And I started getting letters from them saying,
"We never worked for the Leave campaign."
And this was baffling because on Leave.EU's website,
it said, "We hired Cambridge Analytica."
There were statements from Alexander Nix about how they worked
for the Leave campaign.
Yeah, I'm afraid we don't talk about that campaign. At all.
[laughs]
[woman] You didn't? Or you did?
No, no, we don't discuss it.
-[woman] Okay. Not at all. -[Nix] Yeah.
[Cadwalladr] And that was when I discovered this video
of Leave.EU's press launch.
And I was like, well, there, look, it's Brittany Kaiser!
She works for Cambridge Analytica.
She's at the press launch
talking about all the clever things
that they're going to do with data for the Leave Campaign.
Like, what the fuck?
How can you carry on denying it? This is nuts!
[Russian national anthem playing]
[Cadwalladr] And it was exactly the same time
that Leave.EU started posting
the horrible videos of me.
[woman panting] I've gotta get out of here!
[Cadwalladr] There was a spoof video of a scene from Airplane!
-[stewardess] Get a hold of yourself! -[man] Please, let me handle this.
[Cadwalladr] There was like a whole stream of people going, "Don't be so hysterical!"
And, like, hitting her.
Go back to your seat! I'll take care of this.
[Cadwalladr] It was like, "Calm down! Calm down!"
[makes slapping sound] And, you know, so a whole line of people,
and then the last person's carrying a gun.
And the whole thing they had,
it was set to the music from the Russian national anthem.
[anthem continues playing]
Ugh.
The day after that Leave.EU video was put out,
the editor of another news organization that I was going to do a report for
took me for lunch and said,
"Actually, we think it's too much of a risk having you present the report."
It is this sort of visceral thing of living with this disinformation
and this propaganda every single day.
And feeling the effects of it and knowing that it does work,
it does have an impact in real life, whether people believe that or not.
You know, I'm used to just writing stories.
You write it, and then you go on to the next subject.
I'm a feature writer, that's what I did. But I was just like, "They've lied."
And they're lying about something which is actually really massive.
'Cause it's, you know, the...
rest of the future of our country.
-[reporter 1] What do you think, Nigel? -[reporters murmuring indistinctly]
[Cadwalladr] In the referendum, most people had very fixed views.
But there was a tiny sliver of people who didn't.
These were "the persuadables."
It was all about finding these very few people
and then bombarding them with ads.
This is the thing which was invisible to all of us.
Let June the 23rd go down in our history as our independence day!
[loud cheering]
[man 1] The British people have spoken, and the answer is, "We're out."
[woman 1] For good or for ill,
this decision will define our politics for years to come.
[woman 2] This great country has made a terrible mistake.
[man 2] It's an earthquake that has happened.
And what happens after earthquakes? We wait to see.
[woman 3] People weren't agreed on what Leave meant.
-[man 3] It's simple: leave. Full stop. -[woman 3] Was no manifesto for Leave.
But there is no "leave, full stop--"
[crowd chanting] Brexit! Brexit! Brexit!
[PA chimes]
[woman over PA] In the interest of safety,
parents are advised not to carry children on baggage trolleys
or allow them to play on the escalators.
-[Kaiser] Hi, Mama! -[mother on phone] Hey!
I'm through, I'm through, I'm through, yeah.
So, I managed to get into the United Kingdom with no issues,
which is really fantastic.
[mother] Well, I just want you to mentally be okay with this,
'cause what you're doing is a monumental undertaking.
I know.
And I still fear for your life.
Yeah.
With the powerful people that are involved--
[Kaiser] Yeah, I know.
You just have to be careful all the time.
[Kaiser] I know, but I can't keep quiet
just because it'll make powerful people mad.
I know. I know, I know, I know. I know.
I totally get that, you know.
Somebody's always got to bring down these jerks.
Exactly.
So, you know, anyway.
When I have time off next month,
I've gotta go and put deposits down on electric and gas.
I don't have $1,000 right now, so I'll have to wait.
[Kaiser] Well, I could-- I could pay for it. That means--
Oh, don't worry, I don't need it right now.
All right, honey, you stay healthy.
[Kaiser] Love you.
Be safe, honey. I love you.
[Kaiser] I love you. Bye-bye.
Bye-bye, baby.
[Kaiser sighs]
[Kaiser] I'm really happy to be back,
but I don't think I can really do much going out in public while I'm here.
Last time I left,
I was in a very difficult situation with a lot of my friends.
-[Kaiser] So fire door number one? -Yes.
-[man murmurs indistinctly] -What?
[Kaiser] So many people were so angry that I was working on the Brexit campaign,
so angry I continued to work for a company
that supported people like Ted Cruz and Donald Trump.
And there's still this whole group of people that are wondering,
am I taking the high road, or am I doing something to protect myself?
[reporter 1] More news on Facebook over the weekend,
as Mark Zuckerberg prepares to testify before Congress
tomorrow and Wednesday.
Earlier this morning, he announced some new measures
in the company's efforts to prevent interference in elections...
[low chatter]
[Kaiser gasps] It's today's FT.
My name's at the top of the front page of the FT.
Oh, shit.
[chuckles] There it is.
"Zuckerberg braced for Congress grilling.
Facebook chief will admit that the social network did not do enough
to stop its tools being used for harm."
[Carroll] "Facebook should pay its two billion users for their personal data.
The big tech companies are evolving into digital kleptocracies.
Yesterday."
[clicks tongue] Um...
I sort of missed the paragraph of, like,
"I helped build this monster
that...
wreaked havoc upon the world and will take decades to recover from,
and I feel really bad about that." I don't see that here.
[Kaiser] The data wars have begun.
[camera shutters clicking]
[Carroll] I mean, this is a company that is a superstate,
and the only nation that has jurisdiction over it is ours.
[gavel slams on video feed]
[Grassley] The Committees on the Judiciary and Commerce, Science and Transportation
will come to order.
[Zuckerberg] Chairman Grassley and members of the committee:
My top priority has always been our social mission of connecting people,
building community, and bringing the world closer together.
But it's clear now that we didn't do enough to prevent these tools
from being used for harm as well.
Before I talk about the steps we're taking to address them,
I want to talk about how we got here.
When we first contacted Cambridge Analytica,
they told us that they had deleted the data.
About a month ago,
we heard new reports that suggested that wasn't true.
So, we're getting to the bottom of exactly what Cambridge Analytica did.
[Kaiser] Blame it on me, Mark. Go for it.
...to address this and to prevent it from happening again.
Thank you for having me here today, and I'm ready to take your questions.
Well, Mr. Zuckerberg, during the 2016 campaign,
Cambridge Analytica worked with the Trump campaign
to refine tactics under Project Alamo.
Were Facebook employees involved in that?
Senator, I don't know that our employees were involved with Cambridge Analytica.
-Yes, they were. -Whoa!
[man] Oh, my God.
The Republican team in DC was. I met them.
...although I know that we did help out the Trump campaign overall
in sales support in the same way that we do with other campaigns.
So, they may have been involved
and all working together during that time period?
Maybe that's something your investigation will find out.
Senator, I can certainly have my team get back to you
on any specifics there that I don't know sitting here today.
Oh, my God. This is the whole point of the hearing, you--
-[Cantwell] Know what I'm talking about? -No, I do not.
[Cantwell] Okay.
[man] It can go to you.
Do you think the 87 million users, do you consider them victims?
Uh, Senator, I think--
Uh...
Yes. I mean, they-- they did not want their information to be
sold to Cambridge Analytica by a developer. And-- And...
that happened.
And it happened on our watch.
So even though we didn't do it,
I think we have a responsibility to be able to prevent that
and be able to take action sooner.
One of the steps that we need to take now
is go do a full audit of all of Cambridge Analytica's systems
to understand what they're doing, whether they still have any data...
[man 1] Obviously, Facebook has been done considerable reputational damage
by its association with Cambridge Analytica.
[woman 1] ...process by which Cambridge Analytica...
[woman 2] ...relates to Cambridge Analytica...
[man 2] The recent stories about Cambridge Analytica
-and data mining... -[hearing continues indistinctly]
[man] Look at how many people are posting Zuckerberg--
-[Kaiser] Everyone's watching this. -[man] Oh, my God.
-[Kaiser] And the whole thing just says... -[man] Wow.
[Kaiser] ...Cambridge, Cambridge, Cambridge.
[no audible dialogue]
[Kaiser] I never thought everyone in the world
would know who Cambridge Analytica was.
[Zuckerberg hearing continues indistinctly]
[Wheatland] I learnt many things from that period.
I learnt, for example, that when you're in a PR crisis,
the one thing that you can't hire is a PR crisis company.
We spoke to...
[sighs] ...tens of PR crisis companies that listened intently,
went away to think about it, and came back and said,
"Sorry, we can't associate ourselves with your brand." [chuckles]
Um... And actually, I thought that's what they were there, um, for.
And so it became impossible to, um... to get a voice.
The reason that we've called this news conference today
is to begin to counter some of the unfounded allegations
and, frankly, the torrent of ill-informed and inaccurate speculation.
Do you think what was done was illegal?
We think it is probably illegal
according to UK law, and that's what we're challenging.
We do have a statement from Cambridge Analytica.
Cambridge said,
"David Carroll has no more right to submit this request
than a member of the Taliban sitting in a cave in Afghanistan."
[Wheatland] And it came like a tsunami.
There were 35,000 media stories per day.
They wanted to discredit Trump,
they wanted to discredit Brexit,
and we were the vehicle for doing it.
Do you feel that you have skewed democracy?
By providing campaign services to a candidate who'd been fairly nominated
as the Republican representative of the United States?
How is that possible?
[Wheatland] Cambridge Analytica became responsible
for pretty much everything that was wrong in the world.
Are you saying that Cambridge Analytica lies?
They knowingly misrepresent the truth.
What's your proof of that?
I was there.
[Wheatland] Chris Wylie spoke with great authority
about what had gone on in Cambridge Analytica and SCL
during 2015 and 2016,
at a time when he was never there.
He had worked for the company for nine months, left in 2014.
He then went out and pitched the Trump campaign,
and lost to us.
Chris Wylie set out to kill the company.
[man] And what about Brittany?
I don't know what Brittany was doing.
Brittany was someone that...
I thought was a friend, I know Alexander thought was a friend.
But, you know,
when the world gets turned upside down,
people behave in different ways.
Maybe even they don't understand
why they're doing what they're doing at the time.
[Hilder] I would strongly recommend that we start doing testimony prep.
Uh, go through the emails together,
maybe go through other stuff and hash out what's there.
[Kaiser] Oh, my God. I have my entire calendar.
[whispers] Shit. Shit.
-[Hilder] You have your entire calendar? -I have my entire calendar.
Oh, my God.
[Hilder] Downloaded?
[Kaiser] I didn't think that that was going to still link. [gasps]
That's amazing.
I can actually do an entire timeline of everything, if that's the case.
[Hilder] A timeline is great.
[whispers] Fuck, look at this.
[chuckles] September 2015.
US Chamber of Commerce...
Meeting at...
Leave.EU. That was fun. Run-through.
[Hilder] It's all here.
I know exactly when everything happened.
Always. Forever.
[Kaiser] I didn't realize how much I had.
I've got much more than that,
it's just those are the things I forwarded that I think are worthwhile.
[elevator bell dings]
[Kaiser] Did you get the chance to look through all of that?
[Hilder] I went through most of it. I'll look through more of it today.
[Kaiser] Let me get out one of the pitches. Um...
-[keyboard clacking] -"CA Political."
What is this?
This looks mental.
This is a list of, like, the main sources of data.
And look, it's got that fucking Facebook data set of 30 million individuals.
It just says it in there! [exclaims]
What the fuck!
[whispers] Oh, my God.
-[Hilder] February-- -[Kaiser] Created February 4th, 2016!
That was after we said to Facebook that we deleted that shit!
This is the 30 million individuals
that we got their data through Professor Kogan.
That's that.
And it admits to it right here, "Our data makes us different,"
because we're scraping people's profiles, and other people are not.
Fuck.
[chuckles] I forgot about this stuff, you know?
There's just so much stuff.
[Nix] ...we seek to do as a firm.
We are a behavior change agency.
The holy grail of communications is
when you can start to change behavior.
Uh, Trinidad. This is a great, interesting case history
of how we look at problems.
[folk music playing]
[Nix] There are two main political parties,
one for the blacks and one for the Indians.
And you know, they screw each other.
So, we were working for the Indians.
We went to the client and we said, "We want to target the youth."
And we try and increase apathy.
The campaign had to be non-political,
because the kids don't care about politics.
It had to be reactive, because they're lazy.
So we came up with this campaign, which was all about:
Be part of the gang. Do something cool.
Be part of a movement.
And it was called the "Do So!" campaign.
[Kaiser] It means "I'm not going to vote."
[Nix] "Do so! Don't vote."
[crowd cheering]
[man] The salute of resistance
that is known to all across Trinidad and Tobago.
Do So! Do So!
-Do So! -[crowd continues cheering]
[Nix] It's a sign of resistance against, not the government,
against politics and voting.
-♪ Run with it, run with it ♪ -♪ Run, run ♪
[Nix] They're making their own YouTube videos.
This is the prime minister's house that's being graffitied.
It was carnage.
[Nix] We knew that when it came to voting,
all the Afro-Caribbean kids wouldn't vote,
because they Do So!
But all the Indian kids would do what their parents told them to do,
which is go out and vote.
They had a lot of fun doing this,
but they're not gonna go against their parents' will.
[fireworks crackling]
[overlapping shouts]
Thank God for the guidance that has brought us here to this victory.
Thank you. Thank you, God.
[Nix] And the difference in 18- to 35-year-old turnout was like 40%.
And that swung the election about 6%,
which was all we needed in an election that's very close.
We now undertake ten national campaigns for prime minister or president each year.
Malaysia, we're working in.
[Kaiser] We did Lithuania, Romania, Kenya, Ghana.
-[Nix] So quite a few this year. -[Kaiser] Nigeria.
-[man] The Brexit campaign? -[Nix] Oh, and the Brexit campaign, yeah.
But we don't talk about that.
[Kaiser] Oops, we won!
[laughter]
[man] Do you worry at all that she might let you down?
[sighs]
Look, um...
[sighs]
That is a good question.
I know already that she is a complicated person, uh,
who has...
you know, done some complicated things.
Uh...
I believe in redemption.
[chuckles]
Uh, individual redemption and collective... uh, social redemption.
Uh, I'm an idealist. I think we can fix stuff that's broken,
uh, and, at the same time,
I am a realist about the fact that you can't fix everything. Um...
You know, some things get broken and stay broken.
Good morning, welcome to this further session
of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee.
Very pleased to welcome Brittany Kaiser to give evidence to
the committee this morning.
Now, there was a contact between Facebook and Cambridge Analytica
about the use of data in, I think it was 2015, from memory.
Did you know about that at the time?
Uh, so Facebook had announced to all of their clients
that they were going to close their clients' access to this data,
so we agreed to delete it,
but in March 2016,
you know, six or eight weeks after
our chief data officer said that those data sets were deleted,
I have an email from one of our senior data scientists
that said that we were actually using Facebook Like data in our modeling.
Ooh.
-[Kaiser] So that seems strange to me. -Uh-oh.
[Kaiser] If we had deleted all of the Facebook data sets,
how we were still using that for modeling in March.
Ms. Kaiser, you seem to have traveled a long way from an idealistic intern
in Barack Obama's campaign,
uh, to working for a company that keeps pretty unsavory company,
uh, in wishing to make pitches to far-right political parties.
-Mm-hmm. -[man] Didn't that make you uncomfortable?
Uh, yes.
I would say questioning the ethics of it is correct, definitely.
But I have been offered introductions to clients
that I refused to meet with before,
um, such as the Alternative for Germany and Marine Le Pen's campaign.
I refused to even get on a phone call with them.
But not UKIP?
Not UKIP, no.
Um, did you appear and give a presentation to the launch of Leave.EU?
Yes, I did.
[Matheson] Um, you must've been a bit, um, disappointed then
when you subsequently didn't do any work for them.
And we didn't do any further work for them after that day, yes.
[Matheson] So you had done some work.
What was the nature of the work that you had done so far?
We had taken receipt
of UK Independence Party data and the survey data.
She's, like, contradicting Nix a lot, what he said previously.
So, I think you've been quite clear, as far as you're concerned,
you were working on the campaign, but just not being paid for it?
-Mm-hmm. -[Collins] You're pretty clear on that.
Just to clarify, for our benefit,
to be effective in this space,
how big a kind of working set do you need
to be able to then use that to create the basis
for targeting the whole country in terms of voting?
I'm not a data scientist, so I wouldn't be able to say
the minimum number of data points that you would require,
uh, but I do know that their targeting tool
used to be export-controlled by the British government,
so that would mean that the methodology was considered a weapon.
Um, weapons-grade communications tactics.
What you're saying is that the proposal was for Leave.EU to use what you call
weapons-grade communications techniques against the UK population?
-[Kaiser] Yes, sir. -It's crazy.
[O'Hara] Uh, I just want to get your perspective as well.
What do you actually think the legislators should do
in order to better protect people's data?
[Kaiser] Well, I'm very glad that you asked that. Think about it right now.
The sole worth of Google and Facebook
is the fact that they own, and possess, and hold, and use
the personal data of people from all around the world.
So I think that the best way to move forward
are for people to really possess their data like their property.
-[O'Hara] Thank you, Chair. -[Collins] Thank you.
Um, I think that concludes the questions from us today.
Just before we close the session,
I just have to make a short announcement about Alexander Nix.
He's now not able to give evidence to the Committee tomorrow
as a consequence of him having been served with an information notice
and being subject to the criminal investigation
by the Information Commissioner's Office.
And I hope we'll be able to update people
about that early next week. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
[Carroll] Shit!
[woman] The proceeding has ended.
Yes, it has!
[laughs]
[indistinct chatter]
[upbeat music playing over speakers]
I just got a text from Alexander.
[chuckles] Alexander Nix.
[man] What did he say?
"Well done, Britt. Looked quite tough, and you did okay."
With a winky face little emoji.
It makes me kind of sad. You know what I mean?
Like, it's not like he spent three and a half years
being an asshole to me. He didn't.
[Hilder] He spent three and a half years being nice to you
to get you to do what he wanted you to do.
Yeah. But he is rather fun. [laughs]
-[phone vibrates] -[Hilder] I know, I know.
[Carroll] Hey, Justin.
[Justin over phone] Hey, what's up? What did you think?
I'm processing it. There were a lot of revelations.
SCL has to file its defense at the end of the month,
so, it'll be really interesting to see, like,
what they think they can do, especially after this.
[Justin] That's right.
[Carroll] I mean, shit.
She said that basically psychographics should be classified as a weapon.
It seems like Kaiser has some moral compass in her.
But, so many times, she knew that she was
in a dark world
and didn't step away.
And they-- they got-- got her on that a couple of times.
Yeah.
[interviewer] You did work for a man who, upon meeting you,
said to you, you know, "Let me get you drunk
and steal your secrets."
You knew the kind of company that you were working for.
I don't know. I guess I trusted him.
I worked for him for three and a half years.
He was a friend and mentor. I mean...
He actually just sent me a text,
although I haven't spoken to him in, I don't know, at least over a month.
[interviewer] So, he was watching you.
-He watched, yes. -[interviewer] What did he say?
He said that it looked pretty tough but that I did a good job.
-[interviewer] Did you reply? -No.
[interviewer] Will you?
No, I don't think that's appropriate at this time.
[interviewer] So, there's no friendship there?
Well, I now question, you know, how much of a friendship it actually was.
[Cadwalladr] The thing which I give Brittany credit for...
it's really amazed me how many people are just keeping their mouths shut.
I mean, it was a jaw-dropping moment
when Brittany said these are classified as weapons-grade technology.
And it was actually illegal to use those
without the permission of the British government.
It's psyops.
Psyops is psychological operations.
And it's a-- it's a term that the military uses
to describe what you do in warfare which isn't warfare.
So, essentially, you know,
in a place like Afghanistan, you've got a choice.
You either bomb the shit out of a village
or you try and use other techniques
to persuade them that actually, "The Taliban's not very good,
and you'd be much better off without them."
SCL started out as a military contractor.
SCL Defense.
[Nix] We have a fairly substantial defense business.
We actually train the British Army, the British Navy,
the U.S. Army, U.S. Special Forces.
We train NATO, the CIA, State Department, Pentagon.
It's using research to influence behavior of hostile audiences.
You know, how do you persuade 14- to 30-year-old Muslim boys
not to join Al-Qaeda?
Essentially communication warfare.
-[man] Allahu Akbar! -[all] Allahu Akbar!
[Cadwalladr] They'd worked in Afghanistan, they'd worked in Iraq,
they'd worked in various places in Eastern Europe.
But the real game changer
was they started using information warfare in elections.
[Nix] There's a lot of overlap, because it's all the same methodology.
[Cadwalladr] All of the campaigns which Cambridge Analytica/SCL did
for the developing world,
it was all about practicing some new technology or trick.
How to persuade people,
how to suppress turnout, or how to increase turnout.
And then it's like,
"Okay, now we've got the hang of it, let's use it in Britain and America."
[Nix]
[overlapping restaurant chatter]
[man] Yes.
...and expands, but with no branding,
so it's unattributable, untrackable.
-[applause] -And my view...
is that if you can't run your own house,
-you certainly can't run the White House. -[crowd cheering]
-Can't do it. -[cheering]
[Trump] Crooked Hillary, right? Crooked. She's crooked as you can be.
[crowd chanting] Lock her up! Lock her up!
[man] Yep, that's right, lock her up!
Lock her up! Lock her up!
[crowd continues shouting]
Let's defeat her in November.
[man] What was it like for you to watch
the Channel 4 undercover video?
Nobody recognized it.
When we watched that video...
I watched it in the New York office with, um, all the staff there.
And we knew it was coming out.
And I think everybody was...
in a state of shock.
Everybody walked away from the screen in silence back to their desks.
[reporter 1] Tonight, an undercover interview by Channel 4 News in London
shows Cambridge executives,
including CEO Alexander Nix,
boasting about the company's role in Trump's win.
This series of undercover interviews by Channel 4 News
also caught Nix on tape
talking about potential bribery and entrapment.
[man] I don't understand.
[reporter 1] Mr. Nix, can I ask you what your message is
to Cambridge Analytica employees today?
[reporter 2] We've just got a statement from Cambridge Analytica.
Alexander Nix has been suspended with immediate effect.
The company accused of harvesting the data of more than 87 million Facebook users
says it is shutting down.
The company says it intends to file for bankruptcy in the US and the UK.
[reporter] Critics believe Cambridge Analytica
and SCL Elections may be shutting operations
to limit or restrict the ability of the authority's investigations
and also to get rid of evidence.
[Wheatland] The Cambridge Analytica scandal,
is it now the Facebook scandal?
I mean, this is not about one company.
This technology is going on unabated and will continue to go on.
But Cambridge Analytica's gone.
In some senses, I feel that, um...
that because of the way that this technology is moving so fast,
and because people don't really understand it,
and because there's a lot of concerns about it,
there was always going to be a Cambridge Analytica.
It just sucks for me it was Cambridge Analytica.
[Cadwalladr] After we dealt with the threats
from Cambridge Analytica over the course of a year,
then the thing which made our heads explode
was the day before publication, when we got a letter from Facebook.
Yeah, it felt like an attempt to-- to cow us into submission.
It didn't feel like a sort of--
To me, it didn't feel like a legitimate response--
And you sort of go, you know, why is a great, big organization like you
using UK lawyers?
And again, a very aggressive threat
for which, actually, they then-- Didn't they apologize?
Yes, they said it was not their finest hour.
-[all laugh] -[Cadwalladr] Yeah.
And up until that point,
it was like the tech giants were still, like,
the nice guys who wear hoodies,
-who connected the world. -[Phillips] Yep.
And there was a shift away
from big tech being good
to saying well, actually, we do need to start asking questions
about this and what it is.
[Cadwalladr] Cambridge Analytica is gone,
but it's really important to understand that the Cambridge Analytica story
actually points to this much bigger, more worrying story
which is that our personal data is out there and being used against us
in ways we don't understand.
And if David gets his data back,
we can hopefully start getting some answers.
[Carroll] The deadline is today for SCL to comply with the law
and give me my data.
We're at the precipice of evasion or accountability.
Carole tweeted,
"Prof. Carroll also giving evidence to European Parliament today
on day of deadline for Cambridge Analytica to turn over his data to him.
If it fails to do so, it becomes a matter for criminal proceedings."
[Carroll] "Hey Ravi, have you heard anything?"
"Not yet."
I've been waiting to hear from my lawyer, and we have heard nothing.
And so they have not respected the regulator.
They are not respecting the law.
So now that this is becoming a criminal matter,
we are now in uncharted waters.
And I will continue to pursue it
because their model has the potential to affect a population
even if it's just a tiny slice of the population,
because in the United States,
only about 70,000 voters in three states decided the election.
Thank you very much, um, Professor Carroll. Um...
Mr. Batten.
[Batten] My question is for Carole Cadwalladr from The Guardian.
Is The Guardian's stand on this a purely politically partisan one
in its own intention to assist in any way that it can
to reverse and overturn the result of the referendum?
This is not a partisan issue, I cannot say that more strongly.
This is about the integrity of our democracy.
It's about our national sovereignty.
And I would think that you would have an interest in that also.
[pounding applause]
I think that we desperately need more information,
because we don't how people were targeted
and we don't know what data that was based upon.
One thing we do know is that Facebook has been obstructive in its efforts
to help the British Parliament investigate this matter.
Uh, really, really, really, you've got to, like, look higher
and really see the bigger issue here
and the bigger picture and the bigger risks to us all.
[applause]
[reporter] Roger, even if, uh, Facebook hasn't broken any laws,
have they broken a sort of moral trust that they have with their consumers?
Well, I-- They have with me.
I mean, I spent three months, starting in October 2016, trying to say,
"Guys, I think you're killing democracy, and you're gonna kill your business."
-Hi, how are you? I'm Roger. -Hi, how are you?
-[McNamee] Pleasure to meet you. -Pleasure to meet you.
Facebook is designed to monopolize attention.
Just taking all of the basic tricks of propaganda,
marrying them to the tricks of casino gambling.
You know, slot machines and the like.
And basically playing on instincts,
and fear and anger are the two most dependable ways of doing that.
And so, they created a set of tools
to allow advertisers to exploit that emotional audience
with individual-level targeting, right?
There's 2.1 billion people, each with their own reality.
And once everybody has their own reality,
-it's relatively easy to manipulate them. -Mmm. Yeah.
And the other thing about this is, they know that it's killing me...
-[Kaiser] Yeah. -...to be critical
of what I've viewed as my baby.
It is a lot easier to just sort of say, "I'm not gonna think about it."
[Hilder] Yes.
-But... -[Kaiser] Yeah.
...you get tested in your life a few times, right? And...
for me, this was one of those moments.
I was either gonna stand up and do something about this,
or I wasn't gonna stand up and do anything about anything. Right?
Because my fingerprints are on this thing.
-[Kaiser] I know. -I mean, I felt really guilty.
And I just want to be able to...
sleep at night.
[Hilder] One of the things that I was really struck by was...
what happened with you
and the Obama people and the Hillary people.
[Kaiser] Uh, none of them ever wanted to offer to pay me.
And, um, when your family loses all their money
and loses their family home
and your father, who's the main breadwinner,
has brain surgery and can never work again,
you have to work for people that pay you.
[thunder rumbles]
[Hilder] Your family lost their money in 2008?
Um, yeah, but it took a while for it all to really fall apart.
-[man] Yeah. -Um...
We lost our family home in 2014, when I started working for Cambridge.
[reporter 1] Alexander Nix appears before Parliament's Media Committee
after previously refusing to testify
due to law enforcement investigations into the firm.
[overlapping questions]
-Hi, Jo, how are you? -Hello.
[Carroll] The last time I was in London,
I remember considering challenging SCL
and running through my head, like, how scary it was.
The Committee's very grateful, uh, to Alexander Nix
for agreeing to come back in front of the committee today
to answer our questions...
[Carroll] Now, to be back here and, uh...
these guys are down for the count and...
the villain is up against the wall.
[chuckles] You know, does he have any allies left in the world
or has everybody turned against him?
[sighs] Right.
I'd like to make a few short clarifications.
Um, these will only take a few minutes,
uh, but it is important to be able to frame, uh, my answers.
He's so nervous.
Mr. Nix, I'd be grateful if you'd start with the committee's questions
and then see how we go through the hearing.
Ordinarily, uh, I would respect that, but these aren't ordinary circumstances,
and so, if I may, I'd like to start with a very brief statement
just to set out my position.
I would rather take this on a question by question basis
rather than being dealt with as a statement at the beginning.
Mr. Collins, you'll have plenty of opportunity,
as will all the Committee, to ask me as many questions as you want,
but I have to insist on--
-How could you possibly start like that-- -[Collins] It's not your place to insist.
"I accept that some of my answers could have been clearer--"
[Collins] So, instead, you're just reading out the statement.
-Can you answer the first question... -Why is he doing that?
-Could you repeat your first question? -[Collins] Yes, thank you.
You did pitch to work on the Referendum,
and I don't want to dwell on Leave.EU because you've made your position clear.
We're really scratching around here, Mr. Farrelly. Um...
We've been working, or I've been working with this company for 15 years. Um...
We've never undertaken an election in the UK.
[Collins] Well, I was--
-I hope I wasn't scratching around. -That is not true.
[Collins] I was comparing what you told us with the evidence
that's subsequently emerged,
-and you clearly felt... -[phone chimes, vibrates]
...that the work that you've done, uh... [stammers, continues indistinctly]
[Kaiser] So, I got an email from Carole.
She knows that I met Julian Assange in February.
[chuckles] Um...
And she knows that I donated to WikiLeaks at some point in Bitcoin.
If she prints something about it today, it's going to make...
my conversations with my own government really difficult.
[Collins] Um, it came up in Brittany Kaiser's evidence,
because you spoke to us about, uh, Julian Assange the last time you came,
saying that you made an attempt to gain access to the emails
that Julian Assange had, um,
the Hillary Clinton emails, in order to benefit your client,
the Trump campaign.
Well, these were very contentious emails, potentially...
-[Collins] Yeah. -...and we wanted to understand--
as did every journalist
and, I would say, most political consultants
on both sides of the aisle in the United States,
um, what was contained in them.
[stammers] I don't think that curiosity is indicative of anything nefarious.
-[hearing continues indistinctly] -Oh, my God. Carole published the article.
I didn't discuss the US election!
-Oh, my God, this is insane! -[phone ringing]
Paul!
-[Paul] Hello, how are you! -Paul!
I have said to you, it's all coming out,
and the question is how.
I didn't conspire to leak Hillary's emails,
and I have nothing... [clears throat] ...to do with Russia, so...
[Paul] Yes.
The fact is...
[clears throat]
-...it looks like I did both. -Does it look like you did both?
If I wasn't me, I would say yes, that's what it looks like!
-[chuckles nervously] -[Paul laughs]
That's why I'm freaking out.
There's gonna be so many people that literally never believe me.
I will die with people still not believing me.
-Uh, that is possible. -[chuckles]
-That is definitely possible. [laughs] -I know!
Agh! [slams table]
All right...
[Kaiser sniffles] I think I need to get the fuck out of here.
[O'Hara] From where I'm sitting, since you've come here today,
you have attempted to paint yourself as the victim here,
though, by no stretch of the imagination can you be seen as a victim.
Surely you can see that you are not the victim here.
[Nix] What if I was the victim?
What happens if, as some of these investigations are concluded,
people realize that actually we were simply...
the guys who were, uh, perceived to have contributed
to the Trump campaign
and were wrongly accredited with being the architects of Brexit
and as a result of the polarizing nature of those two political campaigns,
the global liberal media took umbrage
and decided to put us in their crosshairs
and launch a coordinated attack on us as a company
in order to destroy our reputations and our business,
and all of this was underpinned by a stream of allegations,
unfounded, groundless allegations that came from Mr. Wylie,
who gave the media the ammunition that they needed...
that they wanted,
to be able to attack us for something that, in the case of Brexit,
we simply didn't do.
[O'Hara] So you are the victim in all of this.
Well, if you're sitting where I am right now, you'd probably feel...
uh... [stammers]
...quite victimized.
Where the fuck is my passport?
[exhales]
Not having a good day right now.
Did I put it somewhere else?
[sighs] Oh, my God.
I've never put it there before in my life.
Not that I'm thinking straight today, so...
[sighs]
I'm flustered. Sorry, guys.
Coco Mademoiselle makes me feel better.
At least I smell good.
I have no idea what's gonna happen in the next coming days.
I literally came back here because I wanted to be cooperative,
I want to help.
[low, indistinct radio chatter]
[reporter] Today, The Guardian newspaper in Britain reports
that a senior executive at Cambridge Analytica
met with Julian Assange from WikiLeaks,
which is the entity that distributed the documents that Russia had stolen.
She says they discussed the US election.
[Kaiser] The Mueller investigation called when I booked my flight
and they decided to issue a subpoena.
We were talking to them in a very, like, friendly, cooperative way
and then Carole's article completely changed the way that they see me.
And, yeah, I...
worked at Cambridge Analytica
while they had Facebook data sets.
And, you know, I...
went to Russia one time while I worked for Cambridge.
I visited Julian Assange while I worked for Cambridge.
I once donated to WikiLeaks.
I pitched the Trump campaign and wrote the first contract.
Like, all of these things make it look like I am...
at the center of some big, crazy thing.
And I see that, and I can't argue with that.
I might need to rethink the way that I've been doing things
for the past few years.
[Cadwalladr] This is a story which we haven't published yet
talking about all the investigations
which have been kicked off in Britain and the US
since the story came out.
So, there's an investigation by the FBI,
by the US, the SEC,
by the Department of Justice,
by Robert Mueller,
and by the Senate Intelligence Committee,
the Judiciary Committee, the House Intelligence Committee.
And then these are all the ones which are going on
which are connected in Britain.
Parliament spent 18 months investigating.
They called in all these witnesses.
And at the end of it, their report says very clearly,
"Our electoral laws are not fit for purpose."
We literally cannot have a free and fair election in this country.
And we can't have it because of Facebook,
because of the tech giants who are still completely unaccountable.
It sounds, like, quite apocalyptic.
But it does feel like we are entering into a whole new era.
We can see that authoritarian governments are on the rise.
And they're all using these politics of hate and fear on Facebook.
-Look at Brazil. -[crowd cheering]
[Cadwalladr] There's this right-wing extremist
who's been elected.
And we know that WhatsApp, which is a part of Facebook,
was really clearly implicated in the dissemination of fake news there.
And look at what happened in Myanmar.
There is evidence that Facebook was used
to incite racial hatred
which caused a genocide.
We also know that the Russian government was using Facebook's tools in the US.
There's evidence that Russian intelligence created fake Black Lives Matter memes.
And when people clicked on them, they were taken to pages
where they were actually invited to protests
that were organized by the Russian government.
-[crowd chants] Justice! Now! -[man] When do we want it?
[Cadwalladr] At the same time, they were setting up pages
targeting adversary groups, like Blue Lives Matter.
It's about stoking fear and hate
to turn the country against itself.
Divide and conquer.
[overlapping shouts]
White power!
Fascist and proud!
[overlapping protests]
[chanting] Fuck Donald Trump! Fuck Donald Trump!
[Cadwalladr] These platforms which were created to connect us
have now been weaponized.
And it's impossible to know what is what
because it's happening on exactly the same platforms
that we chat to our friends or share baby photos.
Nothing is what it seems.
-[Kaiser] Hi, how are you? -[man] Doing wonderful, yourself?
I'm all right.
Um, I stayed here last week and I checked in a suitcase and two bags.
And I had to go to the airport and just, like, left.
So my bags have been here for a week.
[reporter] My guest, Carole Cadwalladr,
writes for the British newspapers The Observer and The Guardian.
Can you just say a little bit more about the Facebook data?
[Cadwalladr] This thing of the data, so how Americans were targeted,
and what they were targeted with,
is a sort of key part of Mueller's investigation.
[Kaiser] I am headed to Washington, DC,
for my testimony for the Mueller investigation.
[indistinct radio chatter]
[Kaiser] I definitely didn't think that while we're sitting there
counting votes on our data screen
that some of those votes
were made by people who had seen fake news stories
paid for by Russia on their Facebook page.
Maybe I wanted to believe
that Cambridge Analytica was just the best.
It's a convenient story to believe.
[indistinct announcement over PA]
...service down to our nation's capital, Washington Reagan DC airport.
[Kaiser] I don't think it's possible to shed any of this.
You can't really put something like this behind you.
"Youth engagement, persuasion...
apathy."
[Nix] Malaysia, we're working in.
[Kaiser] We did Lithuania, Romania, Kenya, Ghana.
[Nix] Oh, and the Brexit campaign, yeah.
But we don't talk about that.
-[Kaiser] Oops, we won! -[laughter on recording]
Listening to this now, it just sounds like...
a criminal admitting to everything he’s done wrong around the world.
You know?
I'm just there, nervously laughing along with him,
letting it happen.
[chuckles]
As I said, it's the opposite of what I've worked my whole life to do.
So...
it makes me angry at myself that I could sit through a meeting like that...
and not quit directly afterwards,
basically.
What was I doing?
[reporter] What investigators have you been talking to?
I'm currently working to be as helpful as possible
to any government investigations where I can provide assistance,
but I can't comment on that right now while they're ongoing.
[woman over PA] At this time, you may use your cellular service.
However, larger electronic devices must remain stowed.
[Hilder] Brittany made mistakes.
But I think it was very brave of her
to come out and then to keep cooperating
and not to walk away.
She is one of two people
who has blown the whistle in any serious way on Cambridge Analytica.
We're all responsible.
So the question is, what do we do with that responsibility?
Can we embrace it?
[Kaiser] Happy that it's finally happening
so that I can just tell people what happened and get everything...
on record
for this government, my government. [chuckles]
[reporter] You remember, though, Cambridge Analytica.
Its big claim in 2016
was that it had access to voter data
on all of the people voting in the US election.
Well, just one of the 157 million people who voted in that election,
a man called David Carroll, asked them a very simple question:
"Can I see the data you have on me?"
And they refused to give it to him.
But crucially, today, Cambridge Analytica pled guilty
at Hendon Magistrates' Court for failing to comply with the ICO notice.
[Carroll] The Cambridge Analytica case is behind me now.
They pleaded guilty for not giving me my data,
and I'll probably never get it back.
By the time my daughter is 18,
she'll have 70,000 data points defining her,
and currently she has no rights,
no control over that at all.
But the battle continues.
[applause]
I don't have to tell you
that there is this dark undertow
which is connecting us all globally.
And it is flowing via the technology platforms.
And that is why I am here
to address you directly, the Gods of Silicon Valley.
[audience cheers and applauds]
Mark Zuckerberg,
and Sheryl Sandberg,
and Larry Page, and Sergey Brin,
and Jack Dorsey.
Because you set out to connect people
and you are refusing to acknowledge
that this same technology is now driving us apart.
And what you don't seem to understand
is that this is bigger than you, and it's bigger than any of us.
And it is not about left or right, or leave or remain, or Trump or not.
It's about whether it's actually possible
to have a free and fair election ever again.
And so my question to you is: Is this what you want?
Is this how you want history to remember you?
As the handmaidens to authoritarianism?
And my question to everybody else is, is this what we want?
To sit back and play with our phones as this darkness falls?
Who is logged into Facebook right now?
Almost everybody.
So, as individuals,
we can limit the flood of data that we're leaking all over the place.
But there's no silver bullet. There's no way to go off the grid.
So, you have to understand
how your data is affecting your life.
Our dignity as humans is at stake.
[overlapping shouts of protest]
[Carroll] But the hardest part in all of this...
[Trump] Got a lot of rough people in those caravans. They are not a...
[Carroll] ...is that these wreckage sites...
-[people screaming] -...and crippling divisions...
begin with the manipulation of one individual.
Then another.
And another.
So, I can't help but ask myself:
Can I be manipulated?
Can you?