join the global conversation on how to zero. zero zero zero where ever you. are on. the top stories on a protest there's a back on the streets in sudan as anger grows over the government's crackdown on dissent the opposition says forty seven people have now been killed since demonstrations began last month in the government raise the price of bread. and an anti-government activist in sudan has gone missing sources have told. was arrested by security agents he was last seen on wednesday when he went shopping in the

capital zimbabwe's human rights commission is accusing security forces of systematic torture after recent protests turned violent president emerson mongo is calling for a national dialogue to address the protests over rising living costs but i goggled condemn demonstrations which he said were not peaceful but he also criticised the police response. well he made those comments just hours after cutting short his trip abroad way he'd been looking for foreign investment shah bellus reports. zimbabwe's president emerson men and descended the steps of his least seven eight seven digit this is one of the world's most luxurious private planes he had used it for a fundraising mission to russia kazakhstan. took off ten days ago just hours after stunning zimbabwe ends with the news he was doubling fuel prices due to an economic crisis on the tarmac the man he had left in

charge vice president general constantino chewing. people demonstrated against the fuel hike to ingo oversaw a government crackdown on protesters were killed many more were shot by security forces more than six hundred people have been arrested the latest high profile arrest was jeff at morier the head of the main trade union confederation he organized a general strike last week as proteus whip the country the government also shut down the internet only people with something to hide shut down the internet only people who are up to no good sat down people's rights to express in to sharing information to shedding light on a situation on monday the high court ruled the internet blackout illegal and demanded it be restored nationwide the director was issued by the minister we have no power in terms of enabling x.

to issue such a directive the power to issue a directive in terms of the interceptions of communications was it is there through the president himself nor are the president's men in power from up mugabi just over a year ago he promised to revive the shattered economy but it still struggling the decision to double fuel prices was his answer to months of shortages that's what q drives. hours to fill up essential slike brayton medicine have also been hard to find and loads. the zimbabwean economy has collapsed and even with the president back it won't help the situation won't change years all the results these years the people in the you must also realize that is a. manager of fifteen sixteen million people as many gaga emerge from what's known as the dream get some barbarians watch to see if he can deliver and aims to the economic and now security concerns challenge ballasts

al-jazeera. global and business and political leaders are in davos for the world economic forum and the international monetary fund is warning of a worldwide economic slowdown us president donald trump is one of several leaders who stayed away to deal with domestic issues at home the un special rapporteur on human rights in myanmar has been granted access to the brush on char island in bangladesh yanni lee will visit the area on thursday it will house more than one hundred thousand range of refugees but rights groups compare conditions there to a prison bangladesh is hoping it will ease congestion in the camps along the border that house over seven hundred thousand eight hundred many fled a military crackdown in myanmar as one hind state and twenty seventeen a memorial service is being held in kenya for six people who were killed in an attack last tuesday twenty one died when al-shabaab fight to storm the dusit hotel in nairobi those are the headlines up next this unfair again.

the election of the forty fifth president of the united states raises ethical and potentially legal questions. today mainstream media can easily be disrupted and personal online data easily accessed. how can this information be used to sway the outcome off an election. and can it undermine the basic tenets of democracy that are so cherished.

i think if americans knew this was happening they would be outraged. we just weren't mentally able at that point in time to see that. this is democracy taking place in darkness it's not democracy. i woke presenting the facts plainly and hottest. staten island's new york. in a state that's considered a stronghold for democrats this suburb is an exception. most of the people here voted for donald trump. scott libido lives here patriots artists

and a big supporter of the president's. is unconventional. i am unconventional i mean new york city artist i'm selling for forty five dollars because he's the forty fifth president there's a new sheriff in town knows we're going to get a clean house we can kick some ass did you need the media to win an election when a state that it was stacked against him you know it's always stacked against a republican no matter who won it's the media is like that and just like that than that the ugly hatred you know the exterior the obvious it's like you put on you know c.n.n. knows the psych alright alright alright alright but i'll flip around and it's like holy. you know it's and this and b c and it's like relentless they can't stand bad he beat vam because they said he wasn't going to win.

fed up with traditional media gets his information on the internet it's you know i'll spend like an hour like i said before i go to sleep i'll have my phone on and you know i'll go from this to that and then all chant made a speech i didn't hear it today let me hear it now and i mean and sometimes it's i don't even honestly i don't look like who's giving it. like millions across america scott believe most of what he saw on the web with little question. for example this article trump believes millions voted illegally. or this one that hillary clinton received over eight hundred thousand illegal votes. i'm not saying all three million are but i'm sure a lot of them are absolutely you should not be able to vote if you are an elite if you're not a legal citizen that's i'm sorry but that's how it works and then they want to change that like no that's not how it works. this information is of course

false it would be nearly impossible for illegal immigrants to vote in the united states articles like the news or examples of what is now called fake news. scott is far from being the only one to refer to these sources. martin uses one such source known for its misleading stories. on breitbart we can trying to articles like this does feminism make women ugly. or this would you rather your child had feminism or cancer. breitbart is also obsessed with the west versus islam is the new cold war. or political correctness protects muslim culture. its content has been called missile genetic xenophobic and racist by liberals and conservatives alike.

breitbart as you know it's a it's a right wing media outlet that was founded by the late andrew breitbart a conservative activist and commentator and journalist. breitbart is a real french publication it's a representative of what they call the old right you know people who want to take on this stuff. quote politics but do so in a very divisive way there they rail against immigrants to this country they rail against people of muslim faith they you know devout use taxes to divide people on the basis of gender on the basis of race. breitbart became a main source of information for the american far right it's the sensually served as an organ for sort of the tribe of men. the worldview projected by breitbart was in line with donald trump's and it touched a nerve with his outlook towards. people wanted to describe the trump voters as

angry i'm not sure they were angry i think they were more fearful worried concerned scared about about the future in the spring of two thousand and sixteen if we looked at the people who were voting in republican primaries these people were very concerned about terrorism very concerned about immigration they they saw the two of them working together as creating a threat annex almost an extension threat to the to the united states and this was something that was being spoken about by donald trump and not necessarily by other republican candidates these concerns were heightened as trump played to existing anxieties. ted devean has been in politics for forty years for him it would be

a mistake to think that fake news has no impact on american alex moral behavior here's what's happening in our politics people are consuming information entirely different ways that we used to you know when i started doing presidential campaigns when jimmy carter you know has an office i mean we turn on the news at six thirty at night and we'd watch three networks at once and that was the way america. essentially consume news now there is a constant flood of information both on television in the cable environment and particularly online you know that that online consumption of information is having a real effect on things because what's happening is the legitimate media is being supplanted by you know this fake news where people get information which sounds like it's real and true but has no basis in fact and in fact much of it is just made up and delivered you know by people who are attempting to you know affect the outcome in the election by introducing false narrative information into the flow of

information so you know so yeah i think it does have a real impact. like of regard for the truth became more apparent than in any other us presidential campaign. according to politico fact an independent fact checking websites only four percent of donald trump statements during the campaign were true false information was constantly circulating in fact it became self property you have to look at our media landscape and how americans get their news nowadays conservatives get their news only from fox news or alternative sites like breitbart so that's the only news they see and they view the manged what they call the liberal media the mainstream media with distrust and they don't believe the kind of c.n.n. new york times washington post so they are only getting their news or law most of their news from very slanted sources and so. what trump will say trump picks up

his information from the same news sources these voters hear something conspiracy theory and breitbart news or something on fox trump hears it too says it and the voters as i've i've heard different on the news and i heard that from president trump so he must be telling the truth if they're in a silo and it's really hard to break that silence so it's a self reinforcing cycle of mr. it became more difficult to discern fact from fiction the traditional press was brushed aside sort of a way that these campaigns have you know traditionally been covered and. and that model of campaign coverage was not sort of created with donald trump in my hand trumps disregard for making true statements is something that a lot of reporters have had trouble dealing with as we're not used to it we're not used to politicians or press people just sort of straight out lying the mainstream media is disrupted and because the mainstream media is disrupted truth is disrupted

and if truth is disrupted you can just spread your. i didn't know that corruption has reached a level like never ever before in our country. eighty three eighty three will sure boulevard and address among the most prestigious offices in los angeles behind these windows at number one thousand or a few companies that would seem to have no connection. the first is brit regarded as apart form for the so-called right. the second is going to ring steel it's a small audio visual production company and these companies are linked to a billionaire who's rarely in the public eye. his name robert mercer. he is co c.e.o. of a hedge fund firm renaissance technologies whose ranks he's been climbing since one

nine hundred ninety three. carol cadwallader has been investigating this computer engineer turned billionaire robot is he is an absolutely brilliant scientist. really pioneering work. in the sixty's and in the field of natural language processing which is the base of. basically and he was that royce at the start of it and working out how to do my machine translation between languages so that google translates which we use all the time. descendant of the work that he did you know he is without doubt one of the brilliant computer engineers of his generation and he was just an ordinary middle class guy doing

a professional job and he got an offer from renascence technologies this hedge fund . for them and he did. it was in the early ninety's that robert mercer left i.b.m. to work for run a song technologies. there he applied his methods of calculation on the stock exchange in order to predict its fluctuations. at technologies he pioneered. algorithmic trading which now is you know a massive deal written. something which still remains a bit secret about to make profit in markets but the origin of it is in applying a computer techniques to the data without worrying about theory of where the economy is going. what are the actual meaning of instruments or trading if you're

buying wheat. or if you're buying a car company. you don't really care that it's a car company or that it's wheat you just look at the performance of these futures or these stocks and the key thing was to view this just as a set of numbers by applying his mathematical tools robert mercer revolutionized renaissance technologies investment methods making it the world's most profitable fund into this. mess it became very rich source because the performance of the fund which he had his own money and. was extraordinary i mean if it goes up thirty percent thirty five percent every year then pretty quickly you become very rich. robert mercer is known to be very private he almost never speaks publicly.

even google has a difficult time producing photos of the few that exist are always the same. there is also a poor quality video a public speech in twenty fourteen during a ceremony in his honor. found out after ike this i'm sure i'll accept this award but i would have to make it all right on some topic or other for an hour now which by the way is more than i typically talk and in a month. robert mercer might have quietly enjoyed his new fortune but he decided to invest in politics. he's been recognized as one of the most generous republican donors since twenty ten. merce's donations appear to be motivated by his own special interests.

the political system in america is so broken right now because of the special interest money which floods campaigns i mean what happens is when the special interests have an agenda you're annoying company for example and you'd like to continue you know drilling for fossil fuel you know or your polluter and you want to make sure you can continue to pollute you go in you support politicians who believe in your agenda politicians who will say for example that you know climate change is not happening because of bad made activities you know they will they will promote that publicly because that protects the special interests who fund their campaigns. robert mercer set up his own foundation. the mercer family foundation. headed by his daughter rebecca. but what exactly are these special interests he's protecting. it's hard to say since robert mercer never expresses his opinions

publicly anyway you'll never know what's going on in robert this is brian said just look that's what is funding the money that way and i think that kind of bill for the paycheck. to understand the ideas that robert mercer wants to promote we can. look at where he's been spending we can do so with tax documents declarations of the foundation's fiscal allocations for the years twenty twelve to twenty fifteen mercer financed a number of institutes and lobbies among them the heritage foundation which fights taxes and economic regulation one point five million dollars. the media research center which fights leftist media bias twelve million dollars the government accountability institute which tracks government corruption and publishes books against hillary clinton three point seven million dollars the heartland institute

which defends climate change skeptics two point eight million dollars. in new york he even paid for an ad denouncing the construction of a mosque near ground zero in just two years robert mercer became one of the ten most influential billionaires in politics according to the washington post's. in twenty eleven breitbart news the right wing online newspaper was in financial difficulty. mercer saw an opportunity and he invested ten million dollars in the web site. the executive chairman of breitbart was a prominent figure closely linked to trump's campaign stephen bannon. a former goldman sachs trader he became a hollywood producer in the late one nine hundred ninety. he wanted to make films and t.v. series to promote his ultra conservative political views. mercer and bad and are

very closely associated and by mercer associating himself with somebody like steve better that maybe that may be a clue to his interpreter merce's personal views. in a few months abandon made breitbart an outlet dedicated to reactionary ideas. you see that with the breitbart publications over the course of many years it was someone like bannon who just proclaims this publicly that they're going to take on these us situations and they're going to try to deconstruct the government of the united states to pursue the agenda that they have which is. to you know fundamentally change this nation and turn it into you know a place where people experience a level of division that i don't think we've seen since well going back to the civil war. robert mercer had built a political media network. to promote his ideas he was only missing one thing

i can did it. in twenty fifteen he began by supporting texas senator ted cruz a figurehead of the american far right. but after donald trump's surprise victory in the republican primaries he placed his bet on trump. robert mercer created a pro trump political action committee called make america number one endowed with fifteen million dollars his role in trump's campaign quickly expanded. in july twenty sixth seen a dinner was held in a hotel in new york. it brings together among others rebecca robert mercer's daughter and donald trump the dinner resulted in key campaign changes. trump's campaign manager was replaced. the chair of making america number one rebecca mercer whose family also fund the super pac. was able to influence the

trump campaign to hire stephen bannon as campaign c.e.o. . steve benen became donald trump's campaign director. kellyanne conway who headed the mercer political action committee for ted cruz became number two. david bossie a mercer families became number three. robert mercer has assembled a team was in place. bannon basi and conaway wood from this point forward steer the republican candidate strategy. when the merck nurses decide to support a candidate they expect the candidates to be responsive to their needs both in terms of how the candidate runs their campaign it also also after if the kid is successful and there are and they are elected as an office holder it's reasonable to presume that the mercers expect that the office holder will be responsive to the

mercer's needs needs as well and their policy preferences. robert mercer his plan was proving to be successful. but a mistake was made that made steve bannon's role controversial. here is what was discovered by looking at donald trump's official campaign books each of these lines corresponds to an expense during his five months tenure there was no trace of payments for steve bannon. but when we look at the payments made by robert mercer as political action committee one name appears several times. glittering steel a video production company. in total the company received three hundred two thousand five hundred dollars from the committee in five months the company is run by steve bannon. that would mean that his work for trump's official campaign

might have been paid via glittering steel which would be illegal campaign financing . the campaign legal center decided to file a complaint. and . steve bannon faced a fine and an investigation by the justice department. we believe or we think it's possible that the super pac make america number one was subsidizing stephen bannon's work for the trump campaign by making payments abandoned through glittering steel at all see this consulting firms last movie production company located in california at the same address as ben's own

consulting firm. glittering steel and breitbart are not the only companies tied to the trump campaign eighty three eighty three will serve boulevard in los angeles also hosts cambridge analytic a company that came under the spotlight for its influence in politics around the globe. cambridge analytic claim to have revolutionary data modeling techniques that can change political campaigning. it was a subsidiary of an english firm and its role in donald trump's campaign is regarded as manipulation of public opinion. in the united states i learned that the first amendment is really going to be the freedom of the challenge is going to be. men and women to the resources that are

available what else is there a story is that we just don't tell you what the subject of the story wants to know the government is not going to do the one thing the demonstrators want. paula giles for that's what al-jazeera does we ask the questions so that we can get closer to the truth. where there is water there is life but finding it on australia's arid deserts is a skill few still possess and they took us to a small wet spot in the in the desert and this was this a very important place that i've been telling us about for the last five days through training. and under orders against all odds an aging population is possibly on its knowledge the rainmakers of the outback on a jersey. and monday put it well on the. u.s. and british companies have announced the biggest discovery of natural gas in west africa but what to do with these untapped natural resources is already a source of heated debate nothing much has changed they still spend most of their

days looking forward to for the drivers of bands like this one five years on the syrians still feel battered or even those who managed to escape their country haven't truly been able to escape the war. alone hasn't taken any dog the headlines on ages in a protest back on the streets in sudan as anger grows over the government's crackdown on dissent the opposition says forty seven people have now been killed since demonstrations began last month when the government raised the price of bread and an anti-government activist in sudan has gone missing sources have told old one was arrested by security agents was last seen on wednesday when he went shopping in

the capital of a morgan has more from hard to. protests and part of some of the have already started some of the university students and one of them in the first of what the near came out to protest against president i'm going to be here and demand that he and his rule and step down now this has been going on for more than a month the biggest challenge to president obama bashir since he came into power nearly thirty years ago and there doesn't seem to be any end to it but people have been very concerned about how security forces have been responding to the wave of our protesters they've the people who are demonstrating say they're very peaceful they're on armed and all they're trying to do is to get their message across to across the government that it should step down and hand over power to the interim independent council and to elections are held to zimbabwe's human rights commission is accusing security forces of systematic torture of the recent protests that turned violent president emerson non-god war is calling for a national dialogue to address the protests of a rising living costs he used twitter to condemn demonstrations which he said were not peaceful global leaders are in davos for the world economic forum as the i.m.f.

warns of a global worldwide slowdown us president donald trump is one of several leaders who stayed away to deal with domestic issues the un special rapporteur on human rights in myanmar has been granted access to the bush and char island in bangladesh young he will visit the area on thursday uninhabited area is will house more than one hundred thousand refugees but rights groups compare conditions there to living in a prison bangladesh hopes it will ease congestion in camps along the border that housed more than seven hundred thousand one hundred. memorial service is being held in kenya for six people who were killed in an attack last tuesday twenty one people died when al-shabaab fighters stormed the dusit hotel in nairobi five people arrested on suspicion of us assisting the attackers have appeared in court those are the headlines now back to unfair again.

the election of the forty fifth president of the united states raised ethical and potentially legal questions. the possibility to undermine basic democratic principles has significantly increased. there will be no lies we will honor the american people with it truth and nothing else. the headquarters of a firm little known to the general public called s.c.l. group strategic communication laboratories is located in the heart of london. in these offices data scientists compiled and analyzed terabytes of personal information. their objective was to determine what motivates

human behavior in order to influence a. they specialize in psyops. which is. a military term psychological operations it's a whole discipline it's an academic subject it can be used in different ways. the vermin is very clear about it services on its. clients include nato the british ministry of defense the n.s.a. and the u.s. state department. as c.l. has helped identify key leaders in afghanistan facilitating u.s. intervention. it's also organized communications for vaccination campaign

in ghana. but the company's practices remain questionable. it's a way of not cheap people that's the working towards better outcomes for them but it also can be used to manipulate people without being aware and it can and has been used by authoritarian regimes. the company organized protests in nigeria in two thousand and seven to win fluence the elections. s e l also intervene during an election on the island of st vincent in the caribbean. as. a different example it is not just on his own what it meant to have he just really moved it clear program of occlusion a stance pretty for school of candidate the survey can have once problem okies

obama clinton four hundred two but for a player that has. ensured. c.l. sets up ultra targeted influenced strategies. the advent of the web and the vast amount of data circulating created an entirely new dimension of business. in order to extend their market as c.l. group created a new subsidiary in the us cambridge analytical tech seven i wanted to suggest that the structure just doesn't take into it is that there's only like it was it says you need can bridge and into the cue ball fit on the ball and i'm so just. to create cambridge analytic. partnered with the american billionaire robert mercer a mathematician specialized in data. steve bannon served as vice president of the firm. from the outset the objective was

clear nothing less than a revolution in the election campaign process despite multiple interview requests cambridge analytical has refused to speak with us. but it's possible to understand the work they did by simply watching their advertisements political campaigns have changed they're no longer about running the most t.v. spots sending out the most direct mail or spending the most money they're about who spends the smartest money in today's political world what campaigns are getting more expensive in elections are won by small but crucial numbers of votes putting the right message in front of the right person at the right moment is more important than ever this is where cambridge analytical in our revolutionary data modeling techniques can help. it sounds like a more logical approach to campaign strategizing however the reality is more

complex and above all much murkier than cambridge and in that it was willing to admit it's. since coming to the. united states the firm embarked on an unprecedented operation to compile data on the american population without its knowledge here's how it works. imagine that inside this car is mr x. like anyone he leaves thousands of pieces of personal information on the internet his address age income hobbies purchases religion and whether or not he owns a gun. cambridge analytic legally bought this data from credit companies banks social security and web giants like facebook google and twitter. in total the firm claim to possess about four to five thousand pieces of data for

over two hundred thirty million adults living in the united states. this is how they plan to use its traditional political campaigns use geography and demographics like age and gender to break down voters into target groups this can work up to a point but it misses the important personal details that really drive voter behavior we combine geographic and demographic information with up to five thousand data points of national political consumer and lifestyle behavior for every voter in the united states then we add a unique extra layer of data about personality decision making and motivation. this creates an unparalleled rich and detailed view of voters in the issues they care about so you know exactly who to target with exactly what type of message we call this behavioral micro targeting our team of data scientists psychologists and campaign experts can show you which individual voters you need to win over in order to secure victory. the idea is to give people psychological tests

and then compare the results with the in from. and they already have on them to know what motivates them and thus influence their vote it's a technique that existed before cambridge analytical one of its inventors teaches psychometrics at stanford university california his name is michelle kosinski metrics is basically a science of psychological measurement so basically have not is that instead of using questioners to ask you about your thoughts feelings experiences and past behavior such as are you a well organized person you can basically look at your digital footprints and see whether you in fact i well organized person in real life. tests to determine a person's psychological traits are called ocean tests they measure personality based on five criteria. openness conscientiousness

extroversion agreeableness and neuroticism. it's done with seemingly innocuous questionnaires that can be completed online like these. in two thousand and eight said michelle kosinski created the most famous of these tasks on facebook called my personality a questionnaire to learn more about yourself. became really popular we had over six million people to take the questionnaire and a large fraction of these people also donated their facebook profile information to us and from this information you can use. algorithms to transform this information into a very detailed and very i curate intimate profiles so as

a result michelle kosinski hospital largest psychometric database in the world. a database he can cross-reference with the facebook profiles of the six million people who respond it's. so basic you can turn your facebook likes into an actor it's a prediction of your political views religious views your personality intelligence happiness sexual intake or even whether your parents were divorced or not people often ask me how accurate those algorithms are at predicting our intimate traits and i think that a great example comes from our recent study where we have compared the curacy of algorithms with a curiosity of other people so what we did we took friends and family members of our participants and we asked these friends and family members to feel in the personality question as in the name of our participants now we would provide

algorithm with a set of facebook likes and have it do the same thing so based on your facebook likes trying to predict your personality the results of this experiment are staggering by studying ten of your likes on facebook the algorithm knows you better than your call the. with one hundred likes it knows you better than your family. and with two hundred thirty likes it knows you better than your spouse. now given how much footprints how many footprints we're living every day while using internet and splaying of our phones. it basically means that computers can clearly know us better in many ways than even our close family member this. prediction of human behavior through the combination of personal data and psychological tests is shockingly accurate.

david garrow is a media professor at parsons university in new york. he battled for months to retrieve the data that cambridge analytical had on him. he was amazed by what he discovered. this is the excel spreadsheet that they have provided it is broken into three tabs score data election returns and models the model on the one hand personal data that the firm has gathered from the web and then my registered now this is all the voter data here and this is what would normally be public in voter records but it it's all accurate it has the day i registered to vote and it has figured out my birthday my address the zip code down to you know all of my address it's connected to census information and it's connected to all the different kinds of elections so u.s.

congressional state senate state house state legislative then you have some consumer information here like the designated mark information and f i p s it is another kind of consumer voter code and when you're on the other hand the psychometric interpretation of his personality together that's how you can really zero in and target the model is my profile so you can see the different topics were ranked in order of importance my registered. artisanship my underage is your partisanship you clearly see who their client was it didn't measure me as a democrat or republican just a very unlikely republican and you can also see sort of the model itself is in the interest of sort of finding. conservative voters especially conservative voters who might be registered as a democrat but are actually going to vote republican so being able to go down to the zip code level and then reus o.c.

that to all other election districts allows you to geo target. so precisely and that's how you're going to move the needle in u.s. elections i think if americans knew this was happening and happening internationally they would be outraged. funded by robert mercer and headed by steve benen naturally cambridge on a lot of how would offer its services to candid donald trump. by late june twenty sixth seen the partnership with a done deal. on july the twenty ninth the first payment was sent to the company you can find it's in the campaign account. with four payments between july and october twenty sixth in cambridge an emoticon would receive nearly six million dollars. at the same time the political action committee for donald trump funded by robert mercer paid cambridge analytic top five million dollars between

november twenty fifth and november twenty sixth in. ultimately the firm would receive eleven million dollars to work with the trump campaign. a digital targeting strategy was made possible and set to run for donald trump. all that was needed was a way to put it to use in the american elections certainly beat some camp which include cambridge analytical saw something in the american electorate that the clinton campaign and the media certainly did not see. it's been reported that thanks to cambridge analytic cuz knowledge of the electorate trumps advisors devise the highly targeted strategy based on the particularities. of the u.s. voting system. in the united states the president is not elected directly by the people but by the electoral college appointed in each of the fifty states. not all

states have the same number of electors making some states more important to women than other. the trump camp suspected that they would not win the national vote so with strategists decided to concentrate on the state. knowing that they would lose the national popular vote. how do you win well you win by capturing the electoral college how do you do that you try and figure out a way of where you can go to appeal to relatively small numbers of people he was going to places that a lot of people thought why is he doing that he shouldn't be doing that he should be going someplace someplace else we didn't there was a strategy of looking at places that had been thought of as consistently democratic states states like michigan wisconsin and pennsylvania all three of which mr trump carried on in november. this was the strategy reportedly recommended by

cambridge analytical not to try to convince millions of voters across the entire nation to vote for trump but rather to target only the tens of thousands that the firm knew through its analyses were hesitating. if you are somebody who's. clever. and you're just you're looking i mean what he does algorithmic trading it's all about finding the time vs edge is that tiny tiny tiny edge that you have of your competitors that you can leverage and make a massive difference and that's why you make the money and i think this idea of using data and the potential manipulation through a platform facebook is stacked in just enough to give you that edge that then you can exploit through things like faith and all these other techniques and tactics.

here are the techniques that motion by the data scientists i cambridge i'm. using the information they had on the other words they defined thirty two types of personalities throughout the country. it's believed that individualized messages were sent targeting those considered to be the most concerned about issues. was discussed by trump during his campaign. the firm identified many such voters in three states wisconsin michigan and pennsylvania three states bay believed could swing in favor of trump. in a press release cambridge analytical openly explained its strategy.

there remains one question that the firm does not address just how did they reach these targeted voters. they did it using a little known facebook feature dark posts. they do six not all peers will bash his book on massage. and book readers from determine that because my search for certain movies you said populace one of them a certain about but it's all of. those i cannot expect out of it if the decline of depth of but only design to yourself is a book i make them as such but also when they get if look can you that make good on his facts are not so i thought us for this christmas as the above but i had the manuscript it. is so dark posts are very personalized messages

visible only to the person for whom they are intended how does that work exactly let's go back to mr x. analysis of his online data i can determine whether or not he's in favor of carrying firearms a message can then be created targeting him did you know that hillary clinton wants to take your gun away. he'll receive this message in his facebook news feed at a specific time porting to his happen and digital fingerprints. no one but him will see the targeted ads and it will disappear a few hours later. there's no record of them you've got no way of investigating that you have no idea who saw what and this is democracy taking place in darkness it's not democracy if you're going to have a political debate have it out in the open you know who is arguing what and here is being told what and the idea of just sort of like sneakily targeting people with

who know what's on their phones and on their computer and with anything to make you think they could have been saying anything we'll never know because that's gone well it's on facebook seven it's is interesting thanks but they're not giving up. this digital strategy for the trump campaign was focused on the last few weeks. on november the eighth twenty sixteen against all odds trump took wisconsin by twenty three thousand votes michigan by eleven thousand and pennsylvania by forty three thousand. in total seventy seven thousand votes in these three key states kerry trying to victory when he was three million votes behind over the entire country. the digital targeting strategy had proved effective we can see that approximately

seventy thousand voters made the decision for everyone else because they were the ones in the districts that ended up deciding where they think this highlights as well our electoral college system is a vulnerability that if software and data allows the most important voters to be easily. i found it and. diminishing the vote of everyone else effectively. politics and democracy was the next industry to fall we knew that technology interrupted newspapers and journalism and music and it was like actually harry is been talking all this time about how great you know technology is it saying thanks for the nuts disruptive technology and i was like well this is technology disrupting politics and and it's not just politics it's democracy and donald trump is the great disruptor. after trump's

election when two former employees at cambridge and a little claimed that the front collected the data of tens of millions of facebook users. collection was done in violation of privacy policies. christopher wiley was the first whistleblower he's the former director of research at cambridge. brittany kaiser the former business development director was the second. on march the twentieth twenty eighteen c.e.o. of cambridge and alexander nix was suspended after secret recordings were broadcast off next boasting if using fake news campaigns and honey traps to affect election campaigns globally. on may the second twenty eighteen s e l group announced that it was filing for insolvency closing all of its operations including its subsidiary cambridge analytic. cambridge analytical stated that it has been vilified for

activities that are legal and widely accepted as a standard component of online advertising in both the political and commercial arena. however the acceptance of this digital strategy continues to be challenged as the manipulation of public opinion becomes clearer. donald trump's campaign strategy expose democracy to new threats however it also drew more attention to data technologies role in politics around the globe. unless there were a significant change in privacy policies personal online data can continue to be used to disrupt politics all over the world.

by this guy nine if asian harbor or off the coast of the italian riviera. we got a good deal of warm summer sunshine across northern parts of argentina at the moment that stretches across into the north of chile as well though like the showers there the more pop into good parts of the film it is want to show is just pushing over towards israel as you go on through is day south of that will thirty one the in one of sarah's could touch thirty two in santiago santiago keeps the hate want to say as we'll see want to see showers cooler air coming in freshening up

a little as we go on into was about twenty five celsius not too bad eight their innocence you know forty celsius still a few showers close to rio round sao paolo showers further north and most of that was northeast of brazil some really heavy downpours certainly a possibility no the process south america not see bad i'm not too bad see across the caribbean the usual speckling of showers to come from time to time but the good to the sunshine as well as of a little sunshine beautiful weather thirty celsius there in kingston and share similar temperature as you go on into where the stands you can see it is largely dry across much of the region further north as some west of weather some wintry weather lots of coldest of into the northeast of the u.s. says in the process of pushing out so the way slightly dry weather coming in behind for a time new york months to. the weather sponsored by qatar and race. as it takes a tougher line on migrants organized crime in is making fast profits from their

misery. people and power investigates the state funded reception centers where the helpless are reduced to commodities ripe for exploitation. the meth fia and the migrants on al-jazeera. when the news breaks a few minutes ago we were able to hear a huge explosion fifty people are still missing when people who need to be heard and the story needs to be told we need to invest in development the new film best making sure the people are not left behind al-jazeera has teams on the ground join us for this historic step in american politics to bring you more room moved when documentaries and life moves on and online the battle over the minimum wage heated up across the country today thousands of fast food workers walked off the

job desperate for better wages if you give your average worker a little more money they're probably going to be able to pay bills maybe they'll spend a little bit more i mean to fifty right now so fifty k. painting to survive in twenty first century america i'm nervous we cannot afford for one of us a job. on al-jazeera. this is al-jazeera. has i'm sick of this is the news out live from dog coming up in the next sixty minutes. a call for more demonstrations in sudan the anger growing over the police crackdown on protesters. zimbabwe's human rights commission accuses police there of

brutality during antigovernment protests the president wants a national dialogue. hundreds of thousands of ranger refugees await to be moved to their new home the un's fine.