you take a al-jazeera bring you the news and current affairs that matter to you. down to 0. i'm held my head in until how with the top stories on al-jazeera the top u.s. intelligence agencies are warning of enter fear inspire russia and iran in the upcoming presidential elections the director of national intelligence and the heads of the f.b.i. said it's the nations have obtained voter registration data and want to cause confusion and social unrest mike hanna reports from washington d.c. . these are members of a choir right wing group calling itself the proud boys according to the f.b.i. iranian agents are planting evil's to democratic party voters purporting to come

from the prior boys with the intention of creating social unrest to that end we have already seen iran sending spoofed emails designed to intimidate voters incite social unrest and damage president trump repeatedly recently when asked to condemn the proud boys president trump instead asked them to stand back and stand by both the director of national intelligence and the f.b.i. head been accused of attempting to downplay russian interference allegedly in accordance with the president's wishes but russia was also named 1st we have confirmed that some voter registration information has been obtained by iran and separately by russia this data can be used by foreign actors to attempt to communicate false information to registered voters that they hope will cause

confusion so chaos and undermine your confidence in american democracy barack obama had been warned of russian interference in the months leading to the 2016 election won by president trump but the only thing apparently on his mind on this day was to catapult his former vice president to victory physically. painting for the 1st time a bomber displayed the charm that made him a 2 term president and you know my very good in your work i have to say that because of my years this actually accentuates. the. physical things that were. so there really look like i could just take up at any time but a full throated attack on president trump he hasn't shown any interest in doing the work or helping anybody but himself and his friends for treating the presidency like a reality show that he can use to get attach it was no coincidence that the bombers

1st appearance in the campaign came in the capital of pennsylvania barack obama took pennsylvania in 200820128 was flipped by donald trump in 2016 the state has a high proportion of african american voters and joe biden and his campaign managers have identified pennsylvania as the single most important state to win if he is to make his way to the white house. donald trump continued on his campaign trail apparently not pausing to prepare for the final debate with joe biden that will be taking place on thursday my kind of al-jazeera washington. nigerian protesters have to find a curfew to continue to mistreating against police brutality the rights group amnesty international says at least 12 people were killed on cheese day.

and israeli delegation has made a rare visit to sudan to discuss normalizing toys that's according to israeli media it follows a deal between washington and khartoum to remove sudan from the u.s. list of state sponsors of terror the u.s. has been instrumental in helping israel reestablish relations with countries recently the u.a.e. and bahrain. thailand's government says lifted an emergency decree banning gatherings that's after 8 days of process in the capital bangkok calling for reforms to the monarchy and the governments and pope francis has endorsed same sex civil unions the 1st such statement by a catholic pope the comments from aids in a new documentary francesco where he refers to homosexual couples as children of gods that see up to date stay with us here and i'll just sirrah.

be election of the 45th president of the united states raises ethical and potentially legal questions. today mainstream media can easily be disrupted and personal online data easily acts and. 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 out.

we just weren't mentally able at that point in time to see that coming. this is democracy taking place in dark states no democracy you or. i will present the facts plainly and honestly. 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 patriot's artist and a big supporter of the president's. he's unconventional i am unconventional i

mean new york city artist i'm selling for $45.00 because he's the 45th president there's a new sheriff in town now there's we're going to get a clean house we can kick some ass did you need the media to win an election when 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 and we hate you know the exterior the obvious it's like you put on you know c.n.n. us in 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 just 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 scott 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 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 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 in a league 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 examples of

what is now called fake news. scott is far from being the only one to refer to the sources. martin uses one such source known for its misleading stories. on breitbart we can find 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 the 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 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 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 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 of 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 toral 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 you know 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 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 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 and the traditional press was pressed aside sort of the 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 don'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 are a few companies that would seem to have no connection. to the 1st is break news regarded as a platform for the so-called ultra 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 he's been climbing since 1993 . carol cadwallader has been investigating this computer engineer turned

billionaire robot mess. 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 ai basically and he was there 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 that is a descendent 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 god i am doing a professional job and he got an offer from renascence technologies this hedge fund to go with 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 relaxants technologies he pioneered algorithmic trading which now is you know a massive deal written sources so it was something which still remains a big secret about tarzan make profit in markets but the origin of it is in applying and for unst 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 futures 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 tool. robert mercer revolutionized renaissance technologies investment methods making it the world's most profitable fund into a new year's. message became very rich read a source because the performance of the fund which he had his own money or. it 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 or 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 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 $3700000.00 the heartland institute which defends climate change skeptics 2 point $8000000.00. 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 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 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 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 a candidate. in 2015 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 15000000 dollars 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 make america number one record mercer whose family also fund the super pac. was able to influence 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 2. david bossie a mercer families became number 3. robert mercer has assembled 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 5 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 $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. 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 analytic 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. the 1st reaction was. across the us meatpacking thompson covert 19 sports these are people being treated as togs on a machine rather than actually being cared for for clients investigates with a corporate america has put profit before the lives of its workers they care more about pieces of meat going to. in the tree then they care about their team members

virus on the poultry line on al-jazeera while about half an hour when the president of the united states speaks out the rest of the world takes notice. aggressive negotiation on trade deals. unparalleled military might international agreements hanging by a thread will the next u.s. foreign policy put america 1st. or be a leading light for the world at large. sam in the key issues of the us elections on al-jazeera he began with war and to put it just here i can't show i felt i felt like i was that a documentary filmmaker once granted unconditional assigner contrasts his experiences with those seeking refuge today and intimate you know of the consequences of the policies of detainment is really unnecessary all this misery they cannot absorb this number that people have to suffer in this way it is

unacceptable and refugees tant on to 0. 0. 0. i'm hella mohit in doha with the top stories on al-jazeera the us federal bureau of investigations says iran and russia have a say and information own voters the f.b.i. says the aim is to cause confusion and chaos in the upcoming u.s. presidential election we have identified that 2 foreign actors iran and russia have taken specific actions to influence public opinion relating to our elections. first we have confirmed that some voter registration information has been obtained by iran and separately by russia this data can be used by foreign

actors to attempt to communicate false information to registered voters that they hope will cause confusion so chaos and undermine your confidence in american democracy nigerian protesters have defied a curfew to continue demonstrating against police brutality the rights group amnesty international says at least 12 people were killed on tuesday. an israeli delegation has made a rare visit to sudan to discuss normalizing ties that's according to israeli media it follows a deal which in washington and her tune to remove sudan from the u.s. list of state sponsors of terror the u.s. has been instrumental in helping israel reestablish relations with countries most recently the u.a.e. and battery in and thailand's government has lifted an emergency decree banning gatherings that's after 8 days of process in the capital bangkok calling for

reforms to the governments and the monarchy the ban was only sporadically enforced and did nothing to deter the thousands on to the streets. and pope francis has endorsed same sex civil unions the 1st such statements by a catholic pope the comments were made in a new documentary francesco where he references it refers to you who are sexual couples as children of god with the rights to see a family a mass process has taken place in the colombian capital gains the social and economic policies of president ivan do k. the process opponents of a broader national strike being led by union members students teachers and colombia's indigenous population that's you're up to date snare is back to unfair game. the health of humanity is at stake a global pandemic requires a global response. w.h.o.

is the guardian of global health delivering life saving tools supplies and training to help the world's most vulnerable people uniting across borders to speed up the development of test treatments and a vaccine working with scientists and health workers to learn all we can about the virus keeping you up to date with what's happening on the ground in the ward and in the land advocating for everyone to have access to essential health services now more than ever the world needs w.h.o. making a healthier world for you. for everyone. 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 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 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 site. clients include nato the british ministry of defense the n.s.a. and the u.s. state department. s 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 change 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.c.l. also intervened during an election on the island of st vincent in the caribbean. for example it is not just on his own what it meant to have he just really moved it clear up a gram of a pleasure nest and speak for scale of candidate the survey can have its problems okies of them are clear on $400.00 to $4.00 for a player but it would. ensure that i.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 took 7 only did the suggestion structure just doesn't tick them. it was it has an e temperature in it into the q 4 fit and all and i'm service. to create cambridge analytical s.c.l. partnered with the american billionaire robert mercer a mathematician specialized in data. steve bannon served as vice president of the for. from the i. 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 in today's political world but 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 and 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 analytical 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 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 $4.00 to $5000.00 pieces of data for over $230000000.00 adults living in. the united states. this is how they plan to use in 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 information they already have on them to know

what motivates them and thus influence their votes it's a technique that existed before cambridge analytic. one if its inventor is teaches psychometrics at stanford university california his name is michelle kosinski 2nd 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 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. is done with seemingly

innocuous questionnaires that can be completed online like these. in 2008 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 6000000 people to take the question there and a large fraction of these peoples have 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 6000000 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 what are your parents were divorced or not people often ask me how accurate those algorithms are predicting our intimate traits and i think that a great example comes from our recent study where we have compared the accuracy of algorithms with accuracy 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 personality question as in the name of our participants now we would provide algorithm with a set of. likes and have it do the same thing so based on your facebook likes tried to predict you know 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 box 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 for 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 member this. prediction of human behavior through the combination of personal data and psychological tests is shockingly accurate. david kero 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 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 it has figured out my birthday my address the zip code down to you know all of my address is 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 marked information and f i p s it is another kind of consumer voter code and when you 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 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 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. 2015 nov 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 election. certainly be it 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 us voting system. in the united states the president is not alike to 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 key states. 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 analytic 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 can just be 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 electorates 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 . as 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. 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 book readers should determine that because from a search for certain movies you said but you just wanna listen about but it's all a 1st for those i cannot expect out of it if the decline in depth of battling desire to yourself is a book i make them as such but also when they get if not can you that make critical mistakes are not so i thought as for this christmas as the above but i had the 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 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 computer and anything you think 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. 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 we've been talking all this time about how great you know technology is it disrupting things for the next 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 2 former employees at cambridge and a little claimed that the front collected the data of tens of millions of facebook

users i don't collect on was done in violation of privacy policies. christopher wiley was the 1st whistleblower he's the former director of research at cambridge analytic. brittany 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 of 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 closing all of its operations including its subsidiary cambridge. cambridge 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 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 destruct politics all over the world.

hello the eastern mediterranean is getting quite stall be at the moment significant showers in crete and in turkey and you think that might influence the weather in the levant but not really a bit of an onshore breezes cool things down a little bit but not substantially still 30 degrees in jerusalem and 27 in beirut on thursday that's both and above normal it's about right everywhere else a bag that's a little bit warm same is true of kuwait there hasa where should be the breeze is a gentle northerly not particularly dusty is a light dust in it and the seas off the coast of a man have now come down once more but we still do have some heat and in damascus it shows the point the average about 2530 or 28 for the next 3 days it's on the high side and to invest in nestle very that much in this part of the world. 3rd

assess this is where the rain should be it is still showering in south sudan and just as many as they were mr lee but they are still there and they're still fighting on the ground but the heavy rain is for this size and it goes right through the our congo and this far west is gobbling fact we'll see some pretty big showers over the next day or so but the rain does go much further south and that is prompting a few showers in parts of south africa where the moment it is quite warm but that won't last. till he now global community we are our biggest conversation elbow. grease is the response that looks like the part of the debate you can jump into the conversation right away when no topic is off the table you're not afraid of anyone taking power we just can't. use these 3 to getting richer and the poor getting poorer it's not kill destroy the system it's just to look at the system and. this street on out is

the. cause confusion so chaos and undermine your confidence in american democracy the f.b.i. accuses russia and iran of using voters information trying to mutate and influence people ahead of the u.s. election. hello everyone from again this is al jazeera live from doha also coming up thailand's government lifts the emergency measures which largely failed to stifle mass protests in bangkok. a u.s. drugmaker agrees to pay up for its well.