to be solicitor carrying an australian investigation into china systematic repression of the weakest tell the wild on al-jazeera. i'm going with al and doha the top stories on al-jazeera british prime minister barak's johnson has been admitted to hospital 10 days after testing positive for call that 19 his office says it was a precautionary measure because he still has symptoms has more from rory telling him that. one of course anything connected to cave in and see him at a hospital admission is serious downing street is saying that this hospital admission for us johnson is not because his condition has necessarily got any worse but it's because it has been going on for so long it's persistence we are being

told that boris johnson is still continuing to leave the country but if things get much worse then it will be dominic rob the foreign secretary will step in to take over also in the u.k. britain's queen elizabeth made a rare address to the nation the 93 year old monarch urged people to remain united and resolute to overcome the virus john hall has a story 2 weeks into the u.k.'s lockdown and deserted city scenes are testament to a new way of life most people staying home for as long as science and the government decide they must also on lockdown in windsor castle her residence outside london the queen 93 years old reminded britain's that this crisis too would pass we should take comfort that while we may have more still to endure better days will return. we will be with our friends again we will be with their families again

we will meet again but the government is worried about isolation for tea and a minority of people embracing the warm spring weather to picnic and sunbathe in the parks on prominence and beaches the more people follow the rules then the faster we will all be through it so i say this to this small minority of people who are breaking the rules or pushing the boundaries you're risking your own life and the lives of others and you're making it harder for all banning all this the ability to go outside to exercise in public as the health secretary has said he might have to do would be intolerable to many particularly those who live in cramped apartments with no outside space only compounding the effect isolation has on physical and mental health but the argument goes that if people aren't going to

change their behavior themselves well then they might have to be forced to in order to save lives best friends in meal and gabriel a keeping in touch at a safe distance through the fence is still our best friend and we're very good friends so i think that's one of the hardest things about it so we're trying to be a sponsor full. and we just come for a walk once a day but this is really really difficult as far as i know like this is what the government has recommended you get outside and you get as much silence fresh air as you can obviously stay away from people so i think we're doing the social distancing quite well with the police exercising emergency powers to move people on it's expected that britain will get a pretty good idea whether lockdown efforts have helped reduce the peak when it comes in the next week or so but even then a way out of this crisis involving eventual widespread community testing and contact tracing to manage a 2nd wave is many weeks away yet jonah hole al-jazeera london there's some hope in

spain with the number of deaths dropping for a 4th straight day according to the health ministry 637 people died in the past day just 2 days ago more than 800 people died president donald trump has sounded a note of optimism saying there is light at the end of the tunnel that's despite a warning from his nation's top surgeon that americans should prepare for their hardest and saddest week strayer a criminal investigation as they ne into how hundreds of passengers were allowed to leave a cruise ship despite some showing flu like symptoms 11 deaths and 600 coronavirus infections have been connected to the ruby princess which docked in sydney last month the news continues here on al-jazeera after unfair game don't go away.

the election of the 45th 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. think if americans knew this was happening they would be out.

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 look presenting the facts plainly and hottest. staten island 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. his unconventional. i am unconventional i

mean new york city artist i'm selling for $45.00 because he's the 45th 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 the 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 extent 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 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 it now 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 we're hearing 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 believed 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 800000 illegal votes. i'm not saying all 3000000 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 a child but that's 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. is far from being the only one to refer to these sources. breitbart news is 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. the right part is 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 the step. as 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 tactics 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 2016 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 2 of them working together as creating a threat annex almost an existential 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 divin has been in politics for 40 years for him it would be a mistake to think that fake news has no impact on american alec torro 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 his in office i mean we turn on the news at 630 at night and we'd watch 3 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 an 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 4 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 large 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 from the 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 pressed aside sort of a way that these campaigns of 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 own version of it. i didn't know

that corruption has reached a level like never ever before in our country. 8383 will serve boulevard and address among the most prestigious offices in los angeles behind these windows at number 1000 or a few companies that would seem to have no connection. the 1st is break news regarded as a platform for the so-called right. the 2nd 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 1993 . carol cadwallader has been investigating this computer engineer turned

billionaire robert 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 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 that is 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

. 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 advanced 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 renaissance because the performance of the fund which he had his own money and. was extraordinary i mean if it goes up 30 percent 35 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 2014 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 2010. 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 private 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 2012 to 2015 mercer financed a number of institutes and lobbies among them the heritage foundation which fights taxes and economic regulation $1500000.00 the media research center which fights leftist media bias $12000000.00 the government accountability institute which tracks government corruption and publishes books against hillary clinton 3.7 $1000000.00 the heartland institute which defends climate change skeptics $2800000.00. in new york he even paid for an ad

denouncing the construction of a mosque near ground 0 in just 2 years robert mercer became one of the 10 most influential billionaires in politics according to the washington post's. in 2011 breitbart news the right wing online newspaper was in financial difficulty . mercer saw an opportunity and he invested $10000000.00 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 1990 s. he wanted to make films and t.v. series to promote his ultra conservative political views. mercer and then in our very closely associated and by mercer associating himself with somebody like steve

better than me that may be a clue it is interpret merce's personal views. in a few my. it's a ban and made breitbart an outlet dedicated to reactionary i.d.'s. 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 a 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 a candidate. in 2015 he began by supporting texas

senator ted cruz a figurehead of the american far right. but after donald trump 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 $15000000.00 his role in trump's campaign quickly expanded. in july 26th 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 2. david bossie a mercer family stalwart became number 3. 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 5 month tenure there was no trace of payments for steve benen. but when we look at the payments made by robert mercer his political action committee one name appears several times. glittering steel a video production company. in total the company received $302500.00 from the committee in 5 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 of ai making payments abandoned through glittering steel at all see this consulting firms last movie production company located in california at the same address as an ins own consulting firm. glittering steel and breitbart are not the only companies tied

to the trump campaign $8383.00 will serve boulevard in los angeles also hosts cambridge analytics 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 for and its role in donald trump's campaign is regarded as manipulation of public opinion. a story of popular resistance political intrigue. and betray. a son's quest for justice or sometimes i feel like a total and i mean you know pin for the new. al-jazeera world goes in search of the

truth about the 2 new zealand independence from. that's how i should wait to. find out just see. how much is the coronavirus on the stock market affecting the rights to the white house we need to find a good sound as you secure the democratic nomination i believe we can be down trying to follow the developments in the us election campaign on al-jazeera. from the al-jazeera london polka center to special guests in conversation as the resistance and i see joy in the midst of pain your books do that on from today it's uninterrupted where all of the people of color and they're just one color this way that is why don't they should they be people of no color exactly fatima bhutto meets marc lamont hill i very much thought i was going to get shot and look at a bad movie studio to be unscripted on al-jazeera.

al-jazeera. every. alone can but eleanor hall the top stories on al-jazeera british prime minister abbas johnson has been admitted to hospital 10 days after testing positive for covered 19 his office says it was a precautionary measure because he still has symptoms johnson has continued to run the government while in isolation has moved from retellings in london. well of course anything connected to cave in on sea at a hospital admission is serious downing street is saying that this hospital admissions of virus johnson is not because his condition has necessarily got any

worse but it's because it has been going on for so long it's persistence we are being told that the boris johnson is still consuming to leave the country but if things get much worse then it will be dominic rob the foreign secretary he will step in to take over versions queen elizabeth has made a rare t.v. address to the nation the 933 year old monarch urged people to remain united and resolute the queen's message came as officials warned the u.k. could be heading into the most difficult weeks of the outbreak. there's some hope in spain with the number of deaths dropping for a 4th straight day according to the health ministry 637 people died in the past day just 2 days ago more than 800 people died. u.s. president donald trump has sounded a note of optimism saying there is light at the end of the tunnel that's despite a warning from his nation's top surgeon that americans should prepare for their

harvest in saddest week. japan's prime minister shinzo alba is preparing to declare a state of emergency and create a one trillion dollars stimulus package as infections surge in major cities said the state of emergency would last about a month. the democratic republic of congo's government has shut down the capital's main commercial hub for 14 days. is the epicenter of the nationwide outbreak the virus has infected 161 people killed 18 nationwide. and a stray or a criminal investigation has been launched into how hundreds of passengers were allowed to leave a cruise ship despite some showing flu like symptoms 11 deaths and 600 corona virus infections have been connected to the ruby princess which docked in sydney last month and fair game is coming up next.

the election of the 45th 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 the 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 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 its whole discipline it's an academic subject it can be used in different ways. the firm is very clear about its 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 work. 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 2007 to win fluence the elections. s e l also intervene during an election on the island of st vincent in the caribbean. a different example it is not just on his own parliament they have he just really moved it clear program of occlusion a stance pretty scared of candidate that can have a problem because of the 400 to 4 of a player but his would. ensure it. 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 analytic tech 7 wanted to suggest that a structure just doesn't take it is it he was it says any of cambridge and into think you've hit on the wall and i'm service. to create cambridge analytics 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 'd 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 to spend the smartest money in today's political world campaigns are getting more expensive and 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 that. 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 425000 pieces of data for over $230000000.00 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 $5000.00 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 for. 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 you said of using question 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 cold ocean tests they measure personality based on 5 criteria. openness conscientiousness extroversion agreeableness and neuroticism. it's done with seemingly

innocuous questionnaires that can be completed online like these. in 2008 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 6000000 people to take the question there and a large fraction of these people's who 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 as a result of michelle kosinski hospital largest psychometric database in the world.

a database he can cross-reference with the facebook profiles of the 6000000 people who respond it's. so basic you can turn your facebook likes into an accurate 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 ask 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 10 of your likes on facebook the algorithm knows you better than your call the next with a 100 likes it knows you better than your family. and with 230 likes it knows you better than your spouse now given how much food friends 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 members. prediction of human behavior through the combination of personal data and psychological tests shockingly accurate. david garrow is a media professor at parsons university in new york. modeled 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 3 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 and it has figured out my birthday my address the zip code down to you know all of my address it's connected it 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 0 in and target the model is my profile so you can see the different topics were ranked in order of importance my registered partisanship my unreligious or 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 26th seen the partnership with a done deal. on july the 29th the 1st payment was sent to the company you can find it's in the campaign account. with 4 payments between july and october 26th in cambridge an emoticon would receive nearly $6000000.00. at the same time the political action committee for donald trump funded by robert mercer paid cambridge analytic top $5000000.00 between november 25th in november 26th in. ultimately the firm would receive $11000000.00 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 devised a 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 50 states. not all states have the same number of electors making some states more important to win 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 3 of which mr trump carried on in november. this was the strategy reportedly recommended by cambridge and america not to try to convince millions of voters across the entire nation to vote for trump but rather to target only the 10s of thousands that the

firm knew through its analyses were hesitating. if you are somebody who's as clever as robert. and you are 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 the money and i think this idea of using data and the potential manipulation through a platform facebook is that 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 and i'm going to be. using the information they had on the other words they defined 32

types of personalities throughout the country. it's believed that individualized messages were sent targeting those considered to be the most concerned about issues . discussed by trump during his campaign. the firm identified many such voters in 3 states wisconsin michigan and pennsylvania 3 states bay believed could swing in favor of trump. in a press release cambridge analytical openly explained its strategy. 'd 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 on massage. and popular strong determined that it was from a search for certain movies you said but you just wanna listen a buffet it's all of us and those i cannot expect out of it if the decline in depth of badly designed for yourself is a book i make them as such but also when they get if not can you that make critical mistakes i know so i thought as for this christmas as the above but it might have to pick. it's 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 you out in the open you know who is all doing 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 computers and with anything they

could have been saying anything we'll never know because that's gone when it's on facebook said 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 8th 2016 against all odds trump took wisconsin 523000 votes michigan 511000 pennsylvania 543000. in total 77000 votes in these 3 key states kerry trying to victory when he was 3000000 votes behind over the entire country. the digital targeting strategy had proved effective we can see that approximately 70000 voters made the decision for everyone else because they were the ones in the districts that ended up

deciding to really i 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 journalism and music and it was like ashley harry we've been talking all this time about how great you know technology is it. the next 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 2 former employees of cambridge analytic claim that the front collected the data of tens of

millions of facebook users i don't believe collection was done in violation of privacy policies. christopher wiley was the 1st whistleblower he's the former director of research at cambridge analytic. britney kaiser the former business development director was the 2nd on march the 20th 2018 c.e.o. of cambridge 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 2nd 2018 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 challenge 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 is significant change in privacy policies personal online data i can continue to be used to destruct politics all over the world.

but. we got some west of weather pushing towards the northeast and parts of a little line of cloud here with spills this way across europe wide back into power why that's becoming a little old and i so we are going to see some west of weather just coming into the fosse out these to brazil as well as we go on through the next couple days a key and lastly when there rattling along the coastal fringes of that have a play to further north in the last wet weather that just around that western side of the amazon basin picked up we'll see as per usual the showers they will spread their way across into ecuador once again and also in some parts of venezuela some really heavy rain also into the north of oblivion i don't want bad

a cloud of rain that will not just way up towards rio as we go on through each is day south pala also seeing some lives. the system makes its way through can see a few showers pushing towards hispania over the next day or so before much of the caribbean is a thing 5 and dry plenty of sunshine there we go i want to say hate of the day showers just brewing up around dominican republic maybe into haiti showers to just sliding their way over towards panama maybe to nicaragua and also into costa rica but as i say for the most part it's fine and lots of warm sunshine thanks to the top temperature of 31. talk to al jazeera. what will force were when you saw that document for the 1st story we listen to after the war saying you have been to go build united states of you but we will not be with you we meet with global news makers and talk about the

stories that matter on the ground 0 on counting the cost for nations seek emergency funding from the world bank and i.m.f. to battle the coronavirus pandemic argentina puts people before that crisis and from helicopter money to universal basic income what governments must do to keep the economy alive counting the cost on al-jazeera. april on al jazeera. countries are imposing drastic measures to contain the corona virus pandemic we'll bring you all the latest developments from around the world pulse and untold stories from across asia and the pacific one i want east brings new insights from the well's most populated region as the democratic presidential race now rolls how will the corona virus outbreak impact the u.s. election campaign an in-depth look be investigated where belling cat group of independent journalists i'm back here in the global fight against. the u.s.

will count its population and a once in a decade census with coronavirus concerns will it get the full picture april on al-jazeera. this is al-jazeera playing. along this is the news hour live from doha coming up in the next 60 minutes 70000 people have now died from crowd a virus with europe accounting 450000 of those deaths. 10 days after testing positive.