alarm clock in doha the top stories here on al-jazeera venezuela's president because with terror has ordered a revision of diplomatic relations with the u.s. that's a response to vice president might penn's declaring support for opposition leader want to go to who is calling on venezuelans to protest on wednesday throws about as more. bottom pans being used to send a message of protest to the government of president the little meeting. the video was shot by protesters on monday night hours after twenty seven soldiers rebelled against the government they were later detained by security forces. people around

the area took to the streets of the capital in protest they were repelled by the bolivarian national guard. on tuesday u.s. vice president mike pence center video message of encouragement to the protestors and condemnation of nicola my little ola i'm mike pence the vice president of the united states and on behalf of president donald trump and all the american people let me express the unwavering support of the united states as you the people of venezuela raise your voices in a call for freedom. nicolas maduro is a dictator with no legitimate claim to power. he's never won the presidency in a free and fair election and he's maintained his grip of power by imprisoning anyone who dares to oppose his. pen statement comes as venezuela's supreme court this vowed one why though as the precedent of the powerless opposition controlled

congress he's become the latest face of the venice would end up a station that the venezuelan government says the united states is promoting instability to force my ludo out of office even with your basic that is simply because mr pence doesn't have a job now he wants to come and run venezuela handing out instructions on what should happen in venezuela openly calling for a coup d'etat in venezuela i will say it like the venezuelan people would say to you yankee go home we're not going to allow you to intrude on issues of the country and all of our and the country of hugo chavez. on wednesday the opposition plans to hold marches nationwide as part of an annual event that marks the fall of a military government in one thousand nine hundred eighty eight they say this time my rule is the dictator that needs to go. a car

bomb has hit the syrian government stronghold of latakia the second device was defused one civilian was killed and fourteen were injured it's a rare attack in an area seen as a traditional home with the assad family a few days earlier another bomb hits a government stronghold in damascus. the wife of an anti-government activists arrested in sioux dog has told out zero she's had no word on her husband's whereabouts sudanese american would wonder would was detained six days ago. in the u.s. to help free him symbiote ways human rights commission is accusing security forces of systematic torture after recent protests turned violent president amisom men on guard used twitter to condemn violence at demonstrations he's promised an urgent investigation. the u.s. senate is likely to vote this week on measures that could end the month long government shutdown competing proposals by republicans and democrats would see several federal agencies reopen it's a long discussion and shut down in u.s. history with hundreds of thousands of workers going without

a paycheck mexico's president a man will open a door has responded to last week's deadly pipeline blast with measures to improve living conditions reforms aimed at regions where fuel theft is more likely to take place the program focuses on jobs pensions and credit for farmers ninety three people were killed at the pipeline follow on friday world leaders are missing the annual well the economic forum to focus on domestic problems the u.s. president is dealing with the shutdown while the british prime minister is busy of course with breaks at the leaders of france china russia india all absent at the meeting a friend oxfam announced a survey revealing that twenty six people now own hof the world's wealth got to date for the headlines coming up next it is unfair.

the election of the forty fifth president of the united states raises ethical and potentially legal question. 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 coming. 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 is 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 the than that 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 an innocent b c and it's like relentless they can't stand bad he beat them 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 analogous 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 and here and 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 are 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. as quote politics but do so in a very divisive way they're rail against immigrants to this country they rail against people of muslim faith they you know devote 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 division has been in politics for forty years for him it would be a mistake to think that fake news has no impact on american alec toro 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 and 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-propagating 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 i feel i've heard that for it 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 serve 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 a platform 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 has been climbing since one thousand nine hundred three. carol cadwallader has been investigating this computer engineer turned billionaire robot. 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 there right 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. to send and of the work that he did you know he is with the brilliant computer engineer 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 field written source so it's something which still remains a bit secret about hard to make profit in markets but the origin of it is in applying a computer techniques to the data without worrying about fear of where the economy is going or 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 an all ration 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 if you're annoyed 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 and 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 he's funding for all of 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 again three 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 s. 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 it is interpret merce's personal views. in

a few much. 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 as 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 you know 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 merced. political action committee for ted cruz became number two. david bossie a mercer family stalwart became number three. robert mercer has assembled team was in place. bannon basi and conaway would from this point forward steer the republican candidate strategy. when the merc versus 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's 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 benen. 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 analytical 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. short films of hope. and inspiration. a series of short hustle stories that highlight the human triumph against the odds. i could afford four hundred people it was you know he had to be the. savior if it up cook it up because if it everybody wants our jazeera selects.

the in the united states i learned that the first amendment is really key to being a freedom i'm. just going to be. led to the resources that are available but it's al-jazeera story is that we just don't tell you what the subject of the silly people know the government is not going to do the one thing the demonstrators want apologize 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 and australia's arid desert is a skill few still possess they took us to a small wet spot in the snow 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 into one is against all odds an aging population is posse

on its knowledge the rainmakers of the outback on a. night on the clock and the top stories here on out there are venezuela's president nicolas maduro has ordered a revision of diplomatic relations with the united states that's in response to vice president mike pence the cleri support for opposition figure one. whose quote leading calls to oust president nicolas maduro nationwide demonstrations to take place on wednesday. nicolas maduro is a dictator with no legitimate claim to power he's never won the presidency in a free and fair election and he's maintained his grip of power by imprisoning anyone who dares to oppose him. the united states joins with all freedom loving

nations in recognizing the national assembly as the last vestige of democracy in your country for it's the only body elected by you the people as such the united states supports the courageous decision by one goh i don't know the president of your national assembly to assert that body's constitutional powers declare madeira or your serp or and call for the establishment of a transitional government a car bomb has hit the syrian government stronghold of latakia the second device was defused one civilian was killed and fourteen were injured it is a rare attack in an area seen as the traditional home of the assad family a few days earlier another bomb hit another government stronghold in damascus the wife of a ninety government activists arrested in sudan and sold out zero she's had no word on her husband's whereabouts sudanese american rued one diode was detained six days ago once downward is in the u.s.

to help free him. zimbabwe's human rights commission is accusing security forces of systematic torture after recent protests that turned violent president amisom men on guard is promising an investigation the u.s. senate is likely to vote this week on bills that could if passed in the month long possible government shutdown the competing proposals by republicans and democrats would see several federal agencies react it's a long this government shutdown in u.s. history with hundreds of thousands of workers going without a paycheck may scares president has responded to last week's pipeline blouse with measures to improve living conditions the program focuses on jobs and chins in credit for farms ninety three people were killed trying to take fuel on friday. that's it son fair game his coming right up i don't know. a colleague must much hussein is now being held in pretrial detention for two years what is his crime.

why hasn't he been tried yet why hasn't justice been applied in this case is he detained because he said journalists as journalism become a crime have moles become a tool to silence weiss's of truth we will continue i news coverage with professionalism and impartiality our work will remain credible and accurate but journalism is not a crime incarcerating journalists is not acceptable we demand the immediate release of our colleague mahmoud to say and all journalists detained in a gyptian jails free mahmoud's and all his colleagues we stand for press freedom. 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 allies 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 harder flunder and. in these offices of 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. it did for example it is not just on his own parliament they have he just really moved it clear program of a collision a stance pretty good luck candidate the curva can have once problem okies over clinton for 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 a structure just doesn't take into it is it does only it was it doesn't you can bridge the need to check 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. 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 analytical 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 debate down voters in the 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. nation 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 question to ask you about your thoughts feelings experiences and past behavior such as are your 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 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 question there 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 very detailed and very accurate 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 provided

it is broken into three tabs core 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 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 unreligious third 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. 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 others. 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 tiniest 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 that you know 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 electorate's 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 sit in on top is when bashed his book such a massage. and book readers should determine that it christmas 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 on you that make critical mistakes are not so i thought as 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. as 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 you 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 when it's on facebook said this 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 also 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. 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 music and it was like actually harry is we've been talking all this time about how great you know technology is it thanks for the not disruptive technology and i was like this is technology disrupting politics and and it's not just politics it's democracy and donald trump is the great disrupt. after trump's election when two former employees at cambridge analytical claim 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 analytics. britney kaiser the former business development director was the second. on march the twentieth twenty eighteen c.e.o. of cambridge analytic 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 and closing all of its operations including its subsidiary cambridge analytical. 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 as. however the acceptance of this digital strategy continues to be

challenged as the manipulation of public opinion becomes clearer. donald trump's campaign strategy exposed 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 destroy politics all over the world.

hello there we've got another storm system that's marching its way across north america look at the satellite picture we can see the cloud hero edging its way eastwards is that system begins to pull itself together in the north we'll see a fair amount of snow from it in the south a fair amount of rain and actually ahead of it it's going to be dragging winds up from the south so it will feel a little bit more oil to than it has been recently behind it though it's going to be cold at once more as the air digs down from canada so the top temperature in winnipeg will be shooting down minus twenty one will just be on much of a temperature that system still with us along that far eastern coast as we head through thursday but for the other coast along the west it should be falling enjoy fifteen there in san francisco now some of that wet weather across the u.s. also works its way a bit further south with so it's edging its way towards the yucatan peninsula for the day some rather heavy rain here ahead of it largely fine and dry for most of us

maybe just the old shower perhaps if your unlucky the wet weather that's been over parts of argentina has eased but instead we're seeing more showers just to the south of rio one of two of them i hate to see in rio but south paolo is looking pretty wet not only on wednesday but also on thursday too to the north of all of that plenty of showers across the amazonian basin as you'd expect at this time of year some of them pushing a little bit further towards the west now through parts of peru as well for this day. russian filmmaker under a necker self continues his journey across his homeland to discover what life is like under putin during his travels he meets christians and muslims patriots and separatists i talked to the locals in the southeast we're on our side when i arrive and offer something completely different someone to leave petitions russia but for others the russian passport means hope and the challenge of happens in search of

putin's russia on al-jazeera. this is al-jazeera. live there on the clock because this is news hour live from doha coming up in the next sixty minutes. but chanting the bear out but venezuela's president remains defiant against pressure from protesters and the united states. and.