Matt Drudge Was RIGHT – “Stay off Their Platforms

Last month we revealed that Breitbart.com was data-mining for the Ted Cruz campaign. Now, another report shows how Ted Cruz is using a Zuckerberg assisted Facebook Surveillance program to track, monitor and target YOU.

( Via Veterans Today ) Ted Cruz using firm that harvested data on millions of unwitting Facebook users Exclusive: Documents reveal donor-funded US startup embedded in Republican’s campaign paid UK university academics to collect psychological profiles on potential voters.

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Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign is using psychological data based on research spanning tens of millions of Facebook users, harvested largely without their permission, to boost his surging White House run and gain an edge over Donald Trump and other Republican rivals, the Guardian can reveal.

A little-known data company, now embedded within Cruz’s campaign and indirectly financed by his primary billionaire benefactor, paid researchers at Cambridge University to gather detailed psychological profiles about the US electorate using a massive pool of mainly unwitting US Facebook users built with an online survey.

As part of an aggressive new voter-targeting operation, Cambridge Analytica – financially supported by reclusive hedge fund magnate and leading Republican donor Robert Mercer – is now using so-called “psychographic profiles” of US citizens in order to help win Cruz votes, despite earlier concerns and red flags from potential survey-takers.

Documents seen by the Guardian have uncovered longstanding ethical and privacy issues about the way academics hoovered up personal data by accessing a vast set of US Facebook profiles, in order to build sophisticated models of users’ personalities without their knowledge.

It means you have a wild west, where the campaigns can do whatever they want and get away with it  Christopher Soghoian, ACLU

obama-toasting-the-technocrats1-550x310[…] Analysis of Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings shows Cruz’s campaign has paid Cambridge Analytica at least $750,000 this year. The “behavioural microtargeting” company has also received around $2.5m over the past two years from conservative Super Pacs to which Mercer or members of his family have donated.

In an interview with the Guardian last month, Cruz said his funding and outreach apparatus “is very much the Obama model – a data-driven, grassroots-driven campaign – and it is a reason why our campaign is steadily gathering strength”.

Cruz is increasingly seen as a leading Republican contender, uniting factions within the party beyond his evangelical and Tea Party base. In Iowa – the first state to vote in the presidential primary, in less than two months – the outspoken Texas senator dethroned Trump in a poll for the first time this week as the mogul became ensnared in yet more controversy.

[…] Having donated $11m to the main pro-Cruz Super Pac, Keep the Promise I, Mercer is Cruz’s top financier – and the largest individual donor to Super Pacs or outside groups during the presidential election cycle thus far, according to data compiled by the political transparency website Open Secrets.

Mercer’s connections to both the Cruz campaign and the data firm that is apparently helping to power the senator’s advantages were previously reported by Politico and Bloomberg. But political strategists and privacy advocates agreed that Mercer’s parallel funding channels, combined with concerns over the surreptitious, commodified Facebook data – reported here for the first time – represented an intensified collision of billionaire financing and digital targeting on the campaign trail (continue reading)

This builds upon what we previously shared – – – BELOW – – –

This is apparently one of those things that is an open, and yet non-discussed, secret.

Several people have queried why they would be getting Ted Cruz campaign donation requests/solicitation directly from Breitbart, and/or getting donation requests from Ted Cruz on Breitbart letterhead.

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The answer is simple, yet perhaps like me you never knew.

The Breitbart Media Group is financially backed and funded by Hedge-fund billionaire Robert Mercer. Mercer was/is the originating financial backer for the Ted CruzKeep the Promise” (KtP 1, KtP2 and KtP3) Super-PACs. Mercer is also the financial backing behind Cambridge Analytica.

Cambridge Analytica is the receiver of the contact information provided to Breitbart when you participate in their on-line Presidential Poll.

In essence, when you participate the Breitbart poll, you are sending your personal information into a data-base controlled by the proprietary interests of Robert Mercer, Cambridge Analytica. The Ted Cruz campaign then uses the data collected to fund-raise on behalf of the Campaign.

Perhaps I’m the last person to discover that Breitbart is essentially a political operation of the Cruz campaign – but this is akin to realizing the Clinton Global Initiative is the financial underwriter for the New York Times.

While all the dots have never been fully assembled, the facts around relationship have been discussed in various articles, yet never connected:

♦ Politico outlines the Robert Mercer financial underwriting/ownership of Breitbart HERE

♦ Christian Science Monitor article showing how much Mercer is invested in Ted Cruz HERE The New York Times goes into greater detail HERE

♦ Politico July article outlining Robert Mercer’s financial underwriting of Cambridge Analytica to collect: “psychographic” analyses of voters to try to win them over with narrowly targeted micro-messages” – HERE

♦ FEC distribution showing Ted Cruz Leadership PAC – Pre-Presidential Bid – Paying Cambridge Analytica HERE

It would appear the entire reason for Breitbart.Com to put their Presidential Preference Poll together was to gather information on visitors for later distribution to the Ted Cruz campaign, with the expressed intention of micro-targeting those participating visitors…

Knowing all of this, it certainly makes sense now why so many people have noted that Breitbart goes to extraordinary lengths to avoid any critical mentions of their candidate, Ted Cruz.

After all, this unique and unconventional relationship means Breitbart Media has a vested financial interest in Ted Cruz’s candidacy, and a profound conflict of interest for any political editorial surrounding the ongoing 2016 Presidential Primary.

Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and now you know…..

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