01/07/20 01/07/20 [captioning made possible by democracy now!] amy: from new york, this is democracy now! >> all oyour intactions, of yo interacons, your cdidit ca swiwipe web archeseslocations, likes -- they are a collect i in al-time to a triion n doar a ar indndtry. >> the real gamehanger w cambdgdge analytica. itit washe t tru campaign and brexit camampaign. they started using information warfare.

amy: you details are emerging about how the shadowy data firm cambridge analytica worked to manipulate voters across the globe from the 2016 election in the unid stateso the brit campgn. weill lookt the oscar shortlisted docuntntary he grt hahack" and speak to mbmbridgananalyta whiseblower itittanyaiseser, who has begu releasing a trove of internal mpany domements. >> the reason why google and fabook are t most porful mpanies the wor is cause last year's data spassed ivalue. it is the most valuable asset on eah. am we will also spk to the awarwiwinnin directo of "t"t great t hack," jehe noujai and karim amer, as well ase, auor of "propanda macne: inside cambridge analytica and the digital influence industry." all l that and more, coming up.

welcome to democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. former white house national security adviser john bolton has said he would be willing to testify at president trump's impeachment trial in the senate if he is subpoenaed. bolton's announcement increases the pressure on senate majority leader mitch mcconnell and other republicans to agree to call witnesses to trump's senate trial. mcconnell has previously said he will not call witnesses, that he will coordinate the trial with the white house and he himself is not an impartial juror. protesters rallied and the hart senate office building as part of a swarm the senate protest, demanding the senate hold the trial now for president trump.. ththe pentagon andnd the trump administration have issued confusing and at times contradictory messages on the

united states' positions on iraq and iran amid an escalation of global tensions following the united states' assassination of iranian commander qassim suleimani. on monday, the u.s. command in baghdad issued a memo to the iraqi government that appeared to suggest the united states would withdraw u.s. forces from iraq. the memo came after the iraqi parliament's voted to expel all u.s. military forces from iraq. but only hours after the memo was released, defense secretary mark esper said the u.s. was not withdrawing troops from iraq, prompting a wave of questions and confusion that ended only after chairman of the joint chiefs of staff general mark milley admitted to reporters that the memo was a poorly-worded draft and that it was released by mistake. the pentagon also contradicted president trump monday, saying the united states would not

attack iranian cultural sites as trump said he e would, and acknowledged that attacking cultural sites without military justification is a war crime. over the weekend, president trump threatened to target 52 locations in iran, including cucuural siteses, if iran retaliates against thehe u.s. trump said the number 5252 was r iran's taking o of 52 hostagege0 yeyears ago. the united states also denied a visa to iranian foreign minister javad zarif, who was slated to address the united nations security council in new york later this week. denying him a visa is a violation of a 1947 united states-united nations agreement. european powers are continuing to call for a dsk nation -- de-escalation of the tensions. this is french foreign affairs minister jean yves le drian. >> t the situation i is serious, vevery serious.

escalation is becoming very worrying in which he continues, could lead to a situation of conflict. yes, i it is true. we need to why mobilize all o of our efforts in order to stop this very diststurbing procecess, which cn lead us to a disasaster which cn then get out of control. amy: meanwhile, there e are reports that dozens of people were killed in iran during a stampede at the funeral procession for general qassim suleimani in his hometown in the southeastern city of kerman. over a million people in iran and iraq have poured into the streets to mourn his death. "the new york times" is reporting iriran's supreme leadr ayatollah ali khamamenei told officials inin a meeting at ir's national security council ththat he wants the retaliation for suleimani's assassination to be a direct attack on u.s. interests, carried out by iranian forces -- not iranian proxies. and more details have emerged about how the border patrol detained and questioned as many

asas 200 iranianan-americans ate u.s.-canada border over the weekend. "the new york times" reports some of those detained were questioned for hours, including being asked about their opinions on the united states and the situation with iran. two froront running 202020 democrcratic presidentntial candidates, formerer vice prpresident joe b biden and vert senator bernie sanders, are sharply disagreeing about the u.s. assassination of the iranian commander qassim suleimani. senator sanders has condemned the assassination as introduced legislation, along with california congressmember ro khanna, that would block funding for any military action in or against iran without congressional authorization. biden has tried to use the increasing tensions to argue that his past foreign-policy experience would make him the best president in the event the united states goes to war with iran.

and more election news, former democratic presidential candidate julian castro says he is endorsing massachusetts senator elizabeth warr for presidt.t. >> there is one candidate i see th is unafidid of ghght like hell, who will make sure no matter whe y you le in america or where your family ce e from in the world, ve a path opportunity. that is why i am proud to endorse elizabeth warren for president. amy: that's julian castro speaking in a video he posted on twitter monday, just days after he dropped out of the race. senator warren responded by tweeting -- "you've been a powerful voice for bold, progressive change and i'm honored to have your support. together, we'll fight to make sure every single family in america has a path to opportunity." castro and warren are hosting a campaign rally tonight in brooklyn, new york. in immigration news, mexicans

seeking asylum in the united states can now be sent to guatemala to seek asylum there under a bilateral agreement between the trump administration and guatemala's outgoing president jimmy morales. the u.s. government has already begun deporting honduran and salvadoran asylum seekers to guatemala. a local reporter in guatemala said 15 salvadoran asylum seekers, including eight children n d 18 honduduran asylm seseekers, includingng 10 child, werere deported to guatemala yesterday. the trump admiministration has also started sending other asylum seekersrs to the e border town of nogagales, sonora, as pt of the controversial "remain in mexico" policy, whichch has ford tens of ththousands of asylum seekers to wait in mexico for their immigratation heararings. those sent to nogales, sonora, will now have to make a dadangerous 340-mile journey to their hearings in el paso, texas. human rights groups say asylum seekers in mexico have been

assaulted, robbed, and kidnapped while waiting for or traveling to their immigration hearings. and immigration and customs enforcement and customs and border protection have begun a pilot program to harvest the dna of asylum seekers detained in immigration jails. the immigration agencies said the justice department aided in the development of the program, which was rolled out yesterday. in news on the climate crisis, the uncontrollable wildfires raging in australia have blankeketed the contntinent with thick smoke that has now travaveled nearly y 7000 miles acacross the pacific ocean and reached chile. it's expected to be visible over argentina in the coming days. this comes as new data shows india has suffered its hottest decade on record. extreme weather killed 1500 people in india last year alone. india's national weather office

said the impact of global warming is unmistakable. disgraced hollywood mogul harvey weinstein has been charged with rape in los angeles county, facing up to 28 years in prison if convicted. >> for those crimes, defendant weinstein is charged with one felony count each of forcible copulation,le oral and sexual penetration by use of force. he also faces one felony count of sexual battery by restraint of another woman. we allege the second assault took place the next evening in a hotel suite in beverly hills. amy: that was los angeles county district attorney jackie lacey. the charges were unveiled the same day harvey weinstein's rape trial in manhattan began. he faces life in prison on those charges. over 100 women have accused the disgraced film producer of rape, sexual assault, sexual

harassment, and professional retaliation. in mexico, authorities say more than 60,000 people have been disappeared since the beginning of the u.s.-backed drug war in 2006. human rights activists say both cartels and mexican security forces are responsible for the disappearances. the number of those disappeared in mexico has now surpassed the numberers of forced disappearans during some of the u.s.-backed dirty wars and dictatorships in latin america in the 1970's and 1980's. in bolivivia, the interirim governmentnt has set a date for nenew national elections followg the ouster o of longtime presidt evo morales in what he and others describe as a military coup. whohe electoral tribunal called the election on sunday, ..y 3, 2020, soo elect

amy: that was salvador romero, president of bolivia's electoral tribunal. evo morales will not be a candidate in the elections, but he has been appointed to lead the campaign of his movement toward socialism party, which will announce its candidate later this month. in venezuela, u.s.-backed opposition figure juan guaido plans to return to the national simply today as confusion reigns over who is president of the national assembly. on sunday, guaido also claimed he wasn't allowed to enter the legislative palace in caracas to participate in the disputed vote. videos of him attempting to jump a fence guarded by military security circulated in social media and news outlets. but his version of the events is being called into question by opposition members who did take part in the session and say guaido could have participated, too. venezuelans are calling on congress to clarify who is the president of the national assembly as the political crisis escalates. >> the person who should d be in

charge of the national assembly is the one with congressional deputies swore in. at the lawmakers choose person x, then person x is the one who should be in charge. i think it is wrong that guaido sworn himself in. it is not right. amy: a 6.5-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of puerto rico, knocking out electricity across thehe island. the earthquake comes less than one day y after a 5.8-magtude quake struck on mondaydadamaging the coastal l town of guananica. the stone arch a and natural landmark of f punta a ventana ao collapsed en the e ethquake hihit. todaday's power r outage comeser puerto rico experienenced the longngest blackoutut in u.s. hiy -- a and the seconond-longest blblackout in woworld history -- following devastating hurricane maria in 2017. eight men are suing the boy scouts of america for allegations of sexual abuse that

-- at the hands of scoutmasters and other boy scout leaders decades ago. the lawsuit is being filed in washington, d.c., to bypass statute of limitations laws. the lawsuit would pave the way for other survivors of sexual abuse in the boy scouts to file similar lawsuits in washington, d.c., regardless of where or when the alleged abuse took place. in mississippi, violence has erupted at multiple prisons, leaving at least five prisoners dead. at least three of the deaths occurred at the state penitentiary at paparchman.. mississippi hahas one of the nation's highest rates of incarceration, with chronic overcrowding in prisons across the state. and here in new york city, up to 25,000 people e marched om lower manhattan over the brooklyn bridge on sunday to denounce anti-semitism. the march follows a string of anti-semitic attacks in the greater new york area, including the stabbing of jewish worshipers who had gathered at a rabbi's house to celebrate hanukkah in monsey, new york, just over one week ago. this is gail senten, one of the protesters sunday.

>> it was wonderful. it was very inspiring and i hope that people recognize that we are strong and that we will not allow all of this anti-semitism that has been rampant in new york city and in the t tri-state area and in america continue. amy: and those are some of the headlines. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. new details are emerging about how the shadowy data firm cambridge analytica worked to manipulate voters across the globe from the 2016 election in the united states to the brexit campaign in britain to elections in over 60 countries, including ukraine, malaysia, kenya, and brazil. cambridge analytica was founded by the right-wing billionaire robert mercer. trump's former adviser steve bannon of breitbart news was one of the company's key strategists.

he claims to have named the company. the company collapsed in may observer" "the newspaper revealed the company had harvested some 87 million facebook profiles without the users' knowledge or consent. cambridge analytica used the data to sway voters during the 2016 campaign. a new trove of internal cambridge analytica documents and emails are being posted on twitter detailing the company's operations across the globe including its work with president trump's former national security advisor john bolton. the e documentnts come from cambridge analytica whistleblower brittany kaiser who worked at the firm for three and a half years before leaving in 2018. kaiser is featured prominently in the netflix documentary "the great hack," which has been shortlisted for an oscar. this is the trailer to the film.

>> who has seen an advertisement that has convinced youhat your micropho is listening to your coconvertionons? interactions, or credit card swipes, bb archches locations, likes -- they'rere all collected in re-t-time into a trillion dlalar year indusy. >> t real ga changer was cambridge analytica. they workefor the umump campaignnd the bret campgn. they started usingnformati rfare. >> cambridge alytica claimed to have 5000 data points on every ameranan voter. >> i startedracking wnwn all of the cambrid analyti ex-empyeyees. >> somne else you should be cacallinis britty kakais. brittany kaiserwas a ke player inse e cambdgee alytytic, casting herself as a

whistleblower. >> the reason why ggle and facebo are of thmost werful cpanies i the wor is bause lasyear dat surpasd in valu datata is the most valule asset on ethth. targeted those whose min w we thght we could chae.e. the way the world w wantethemem t the targeting to was nsidered weapon. >> there's a poibilityhe americanublic habebeen expeperinted o o >> this is becomina a crimal matter. >> when ople see the extent of the surveillance, i tnknk ey''re goioi to be shocked. for your life. but i c't ep quiet. fundamental rights. >> ts is about the ingrgrity ofof ouremocracy thplatformwhich we created to conct us ve now been

aponize. it is impossible t knowhat this w because nothing is what it seems. amy: that is the trailer to the netflix documentary "the great hack." well, we are joined now by four guests. jehane noujaim and karim amer are the co-directors of "the great hack." it was just nominated for a b afta, the british equivalent of oscars come and has been shortlisted for thehe oscars. jehane past films include "the square" and "control room." brittany kaiser is the cambridge analytica whistleblower featured in the film. she is the author of "targeted:: the cambridge analytica whistleblower's inside story of how big data, trump, and facebook broke democracy and how it can happen again." we are also joined by emma briant, a visiting research associate in human rights at bard college who specializes in researching propaganda.

her forthcoming book is called "propaganda machine: inside cambridge analytica and the digital influence industry." we welcome you all to democracy now! begun to you have just release a trove of documents from cambridge analytica, involves scores of countries including the united states, including john bolton, including iran. talk about why you decided to begin this release and what are in these documents. >> absolutely. i decided to release the indsight files because -- have been waiting and working with investigators and journalists around the world for the past two years. what i have seen is we don't have enough change in order for voters to be protected. 27 just november, but in

days the first votes that are cast for the 2020 election. i think digital literacy is the most important point i'm trying to make your. if you understand the tactics and the strategies that are being used to manipulate you, then you can protect yourself from that. i want to be able to empower voters ahead of casting the first votes this year. amy: talk about these documents, where they came from, and what is in them. >> these are documents for my time at cambridge analytica. i worked at the company for over three years. it is internal communications and negotiations for data-driven communications projects all around the world. it's propoposals, contracts, and case studies of what has been dead to intervene and democracy. i think it is so important for people to understand while sometimes these tactics are benign, sometimes they are incredibly malignant and there is evidence of voter suppression , fake news, and disinformation and i justm, sexism,

want to make sure that there is real action that is going to be taken -- not just ahead of the next election, but for countries all around the world. we need privacy legislation so badly. we need to regulate big tech and habitability to enforce -- have an ability to enforce our voting laws. right now we can. unfortunately companies like facebook are not doing enough to protect us. amy: for people who are new to what cambridge analytica is, why don't you describe what it is and why you have these documents, what cambridge analytica's role was in all of these countries -- including the united states. >> cambridge analytica was one of the companies under the sel group, strategic communication laboratories. this is a company that is been around for over 25 years and they started by using data-driven strategies in order to understand people's psyche, how they make decisions, how

they can be persuaded to take certain actions were to prevent people from taking certain actions. amy: a defense contractor? >> originally, yes. once they found out how successful that was -- that was the nelson mandela election in 1993, 1994 in south africa, preventing violence for defense contract. they realize that was useful in elections. the strategies developed over 2.5 decades in order to no longer just do good things and good impact work, but, unfortunately, to undermine our democracy. amy: i want t to turn to a clip from the documentary "the great hack." carole cadwalladr talks about brittany kaiser cambridge analytica's company scl. we also hear the voice of alexander nix, who was prprevious a a dirtorr a s scl. scl startedut as a litaryry cocontraoror.

scl defee. trained the british army, u.s. arm u.s. spial forc. werained no, cia, ate depament. it is using research to influeee behavior. persuade muslim was to not join a qaeda? >> they workn n afghistatan, in iraq, in various pleses in eaeastn europe. but the real game changer was theytatarted using informaon waare in electns. >> the's lot of orlap, but .t is all ee same messa >> all of e campais, which

id fore alytica the deveping world, isll abou practicing some new techlogygy o trickhow to suppressople ho to turnout orncncreasturnrnou and then, let's use it in britain and america. and because of that is a clip from "the great hack." when we come back from break, we're also joined by the directors. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war r and peace report. i'm amy goodman. stay with us. ♪ [music break]

amy: "all of the things you are." this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. we are spending the hour looking at cambridge analytica.

wase british company that cofounded by the well-known president trump special advisor steve bannon. he was vice president of cambridge analytica, which came out of a military contracting group and now is accused of having been invnvolved, essentially, with psi ops, using tens of millions of people's information it had harvested from facebook. are the award-winning film makers karim amer and jehane noujaim, directors of "the great hack," which has just been nominated for the bafta and shortlisted for an oscar. and brittany kaiser, whistleblower who worked at cambridge analytica for more than three years. in washington, we're joined by emma briant, who has been looking at cambridge analytica for years. let me ask you, jehane noujaim,

why you decided to spend years of your life looking at cambridge analytica and making this film "the great hack" and why yoyou calleded it that? >> this has been a film for me 20 years in the making 20 years ago i made a film called "start-up.com," which was about the beginning of the dot come world starting and where people online ande got start internet companies and make millions and millions of dollars. fash board 20 years and they are online. i have always been obsessed with how we get our information and soon after that film,, "control room," looking at the iraq were independent on what they were looking at al jazeera or fox news or cnn, you had a completely different understanding of reality on the ground. i had this question of, how come if you don't have some kind of

shared understanding of truth, how can there be nuance conversation and discussion, which is what is necessary for a democracy to function? "the forward to as making square," and at that time social media was a tool for change, positive change. amy: you're talking to rear square. >> this is where we made the film. at that time, even when i was arrested, twitter was used to find me. it was a very positive tool for change. then we see the pendulum swing and the other direction and we see social l media can used in a very different way. it was used by the army and then we started to see it being used in the brexit campaign and the trump campaign. we started here this word "hack," " and the hacking of the elections. but what we realized is the real hack needed to look at was the hack of the mind and what is happening inside our newsfeeds

and what happens when people are creating their own truth because they are being micro-targeted. we started to look at this company cambridge analytica. and what we found was fascinating because we realized there was this invisible story that is happening inside our computer screens come inside our heads, which is leading to everybody having a completely different understanding of reality based on their newsfeeds. that is when we met brittany kaiser, who at the time w was jt about to become a whistleblower and come out about what she knew. she was basically saying, i'm going to thailand and if you want to talk to me, then come meet me here. i can't tell you exactly where it is going to be, where i'm going, but land at this airport. we met her there and that is where the film began. amy: i want to go to a clip of "the great hack." brittany kaiser explains the concept of the persuadables.

rememr those cebook quizzes we stilll form personitity mols f forll ters in the u.s.? is, we did not taetet eryy american teter equally thbulk of r resources went to targeting tse whoseinds thought we could change. we called th the persuadable. they are evewhere inhe cotry, buthe persuables at matted wewerehe onene in swing ates lik micgan, wisconn, pennsylvania,ndnd flida. now, eacof thesetates we brok down by precinc you canay there are2,000 persuadae voterinhis precinct. we targed enoug persuable people in the right precinct, then those states would turn red instead of blue.

and because of that is a clip from "the great hack." brittany kaiser, explain further this idea of persuadables. >> you might have heard them referred to as swing voters. in brand advertising, they're called switchers because it is easy to try to persuade someone to tryry something new or change their mind. identifying persuadables is what everyone does for political modeling. every political consultant in the books is trying to do this. identify the people whose minds can be changed. because quite a lot of people have not made up their mind yet. when you're trying to introduce a character as controversial as donald trump, the idea was find the people who could be convinced, even though you probably had never voted for anyone like him before. amy: talk about your trajectory. ehane, you do and j this very well in the film, but it is an unlikely path to a firm

that may well have been illegal in what it did in working with facebook, harvesting all of this information, that ultimately helped to get trump elected. but that is not really where you came from. in the film, i'm looking at pictures of you and michelle obama. you were a key figure in president obama's social media team, and his election campaign. >> i have always been a political and human rights activist. that is where i came from. so it was really easy to snap back into that kind of work. in the third year of my phd, writing about prevention of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against community, when i first met the former ceo of cambridge analytica alexander nix. my phd ended up being about how you could get real-time information, how you could use big data systems in order to build early warning systems to get people who make decisions like the decision that was just made about iran, give them

real-time information so they can prevent war before it happens. unfortunately, no one at my law school could teach me anything about protected algorithms. i joined this company part-time in order to start to learn how these early warning systems could possibly be built. amy: explain. explain your meeting with alexander nix, who is -- came from the defense contractor scl and then was the head of cambridge analytica, said, let me get you drunk and steal your secrets. >> yes, he did. not that becoming. but he is always been an incredibly good salesman. in one of my first meetings with him, he showed me a contract that that company had with nato in order to identify young people in the united kingdom who were vulnerable to being recruited into isis and running cutter propaganda communications to keep them at home safe with their families instead of sneaking themselves into syria.

obviously, that type of work was incredibly attractive to me and i thought, hey, data can be used for good and for human rights impact. this is something i want to learn how to do. amy: but soon you were on your way to the united states with alexander nix, meeting with corey lewandowski, the time was the campaign manager for donald trump. when did those red flags go up for you? >> there are red flags here and there, especially when i would call our lawyers who are actually giuliani's firm at the time, in order to ask for advice on what i could and could not do with certain data projects. and i always got told, hey, you're creating too many invoices. but what really landed the plane for me was a month after donald trump's election, everyone at cambridge analytica who had worked both on the trump campaign and the trump super pac -- which ran the crooked hillary campaign -- they gave us a two day long debrief, which i write about in detail in my book "targeted," about what they did.

they showed us how much data they collected, how they modeled it, how they identify people as individuals that could be convinced not to vote and the types of disinformation they sent these people in order to change their minds. it was the most horrific two days of my life. amy: what did you do after that? >> i spent a while trying to figure out if there was still anything i could salvage from what i learned there. was it possible to use these tools were good? when i realized the company had gone way too far in the wrong direction, i started working with journalists in order to go through and figure out what i had in my documents i could possibly assist in saving democracy in the future. amy: you testify before the british parliament. you were subpoenaed by robert mueller. you have been involved in a lot of information given during these investigations. in an odd way, would you describe yourself as a persuadable? >> definitely.

that is actually a story that is very prevalent in my book. most people don't like to think they are persuadable. we all like to think we cannot be manipulated. but trust me, we are not as digitally literate as we think we are. that is why i released the hindsight files because i want everyone to rerealize how easy t is for us to be manipulated and that we need to be aware in order to protect ourselves. amy: karim amer, for people who are still sitting here going, cambridge analytica, facebook, what does this have to do with each other? zuckerberg testifying before congress. explain what was the magic sauce. what happened here between these two companies? what did cambridge analytica do -- i will also ask britney this question -- and what did facebook understand was done and what did they do about it? >> i think the situation that we find ourselves in is one in which all of our behavior, which

is essentially what data is, reportable human behavior, is constantly being tracked and gathered. that is part of the deal or the devil's bargain we have made in this new economy where we get our data up and in return we get services. most of us go ahead and sign these terms and conditions, but we don't really read or understand what they are about. what we realized is we are giving up a certain level of autonomy that we may not have understood the implications of. what is that? insight into everything you do all the time. something that is tracking from the most public of spaces when you're posting to the most intimate of spaces when you are watching porn or messaging someone or staring at photos of a loved one or someone else. all of that behavior is constantly beieing trackcked. it is used to create essentially a boo doll of you that can predict your behavior r with que a lot of accuracy was the e prof

of that is that is the business model of facebook and google. it is about p predictining your behavior and selling access to that prediction. think of it as being in a casino that is constantly running, trying to make bets on what you're going to do next. that casino access is being sold in real-time to all kinds of brands around the world. cambridge identified they could take voter data and p personaliy data and they could map them together and create the most accurate profiles. that is why they bragged about having 5000 data points on every u.s. voter, which was one of their unique offerings. with that insight, they realized if you knew which districts you had to target and how to target the key people in those districts, with the perfect messaging, you have the greatest chance of success. where that leads us to is we used to live in a world of political leader had to write one big story to inspire great

people to go on to a great cause. inspire great people to go on to a great cause. now we live in a world of a politician can customize a straight of every single voter and do it in a way which is operating in darkness without transparency. what we mean? until this dayay, we still do nt know what ads were placed on facebook in 20, who was targeted, who paid for those ads, how it was conducted, where these ads paid for by a foreign country or not, what happened or did not happen? i think we deserve to know. why? we have seen this has become a place of weaponized information that can be used to not only promote amazing ideas, but convince people not to vote -- which is active voter suppression. is ans troubling is this information crime. whether it is legal or illegal doesn't matter in my opinion. many things in our country were legal in our country, including slavery, which we realize is not ok. at the current moment, facebook

is a crime scene was the facebook has the answers. facebook knows what happened to our democracy, yet it is still unwilling to participate in giving us the evidence we need. amy: i want to turn to another one of your clips, one of the clips of "the great hack." this is one of the main subjects of the documentary, professor david carroll. i was teaing digital medi devepiping apps, so i knew the data from our onli activity wasn't ju evavapoting.. realizeddug deeper, i these digital trac o of into aes are being mined ilillionollalar year i iustry. now the commodity. but we were so in love with the gigift o this free connectity at no onbothered to read the

terms and conditions. amy: david carroll is featured in this documentary "the great hack." in 2018, we spoke to david carroll at democracy now! come associate professor be toto desn at parsonsns school of design.n. he has filed a full disclosure cambridge ananalytica claim against in the u.k. i asked him what he was demanding. a clip of this also appears in "the great hack." >> where did they get our data, how do they process it, who did they share it with, and do we have a right to opt out? so the basic rights that i think a lot of people would like to have in the basic notions that a lot of people are asking. amy: and we will find out just what happened with these demands, these questions he had when he took them to britain to take on cambridge analytica and how he, as well as brittany kaiser and others, took

cambridge analytica down. this is democracy now! stay with us. ♪ [music break]

amy: this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. our guests per this hour are jehane noujaim and karim amer, the award-winning filmmaker's who made "the great hack." it has just been shortlisted for an oscar and nominated for the british oscar , thebafta. brittany kaiser is with us. it is her first major interview since she has begun a major document leak. troves of documents about cameras analytica role. inin a moment we will ask her jn bolton and iran.

john bolton has just that he will testify at an impeachment trial in the senate, which has turned its -- turn the senate on its head. and we're joined by emma briant who specializes in researching propaganda. her forthcoming book "propaganda machine ." to thisisten conversation, your work in cambridge analytica has been going on for a long time. can you relate what they were doing, also facebook, in manipulating popopulations as we ?ove into this current election is basicallywork psycychological operations? >> thank you, amy. i actually first came across the company scl, the parent company

of cambridge analytica, and 2007 as part of my masters and doctoral researcrch. i've been following their techniques and how they evolved over the years. startedealized when i to discover the political work they were doing beyond the counterterrorism campaigns that we were studying, was just horrifying to me. the potential for what -- during justsort of 2010's is phenomenal. so we started to see them doing these big data projects for the military and so on. this was quitete a change of directioion for them from the earlier work, which was a lot more about qualitative data, doing interviews with people, and so forth, for the research. the kind ofo change target audience analysis.

this kind of analytics of what, if you like, the persuadables, the people you want t to target your communications at, how those groups were being profiled by the military, then was being taken out and deployed in electitions. this is deeply disturbing to me because of the fact that i think these companies have been established with a particular motive in mind, with a particular way of doing things and methodology. and to be repurposed and that when you have been doing work with defense research agency in the u.s. as well as the british equivalent, the spl, to develop these kinds of techniques and then you're going off and taking workingclients that are in shady political campaigns around the world, and working for human rights of users, that

is really disturbing. anand then moving back into our own elections. amy: well, talk about -- started to, i realize they were working -- they worked on brexit and they worked on the trump campaign. i started to do a lot more interviews with the company, including meeting brittany for the first time. i also met the filmmakers from "the great hack." was weighed down by the responsibility for what i was discovering from my interviews. i was interviewing people like nigel oakes, as you can see frm the evidence that i submitted to the british parliament, was telling me about the unethical doing,ies that they were for instance, for kenyatta and the role they played in kenya

and the role they played also in the election of donald trump. and he was telling me about how they had basically deployed the same kinds of techniques of the nazis in the u.s. election. now, this horrified me. i had to go further and further and haven't stopped researching this. i think the most important thihg is also to put this in the context of ththeir military wor. because actually, these firms are working in multiple domains. you have commercial data use. you have military data use. you have political data use i in the same company. we have no regulation over what is happening in the uniteted states with companies like this. there is l little transparency over these companies in united kingdom, two, which is how we have ended up with this real catastrophe for democracy.

we don't know that how dadata was being abused by this company. we know some examples of itit. we certaininly know theyey had a flat r regard for consent from whwhat has been revealed in "the great hackck"" by carolele cadwr , and the data was s being repurpososed from research doney academics for their political campaigns. been else might they have repurcrchasing data from? this i is the thing that really scares me the most. this is rampant i think across the industry. i see many, many more companies as they're working in these multiple domains with little accountability. amy: i would like to go back to october when your commerce member like sandra cossey a protest question facebook ceo -- alexandria ocasio-cortez

question facebook ceo mark zuckerberg. >> did anyone on your team know about cambridge analytica prior to the report by "the guardian"? >> congresswoman, i believe so, and some folks were tracking it internally. this, i dosking think i was aware of cambridge analytica as an entity earlier, i don't know if i was tracking how they were using facebook specifically. >> when was this discussed with your board member peter thiel? >> i don't know that. >> this is the largest data scanner with respect your company that had catastrophic impact on the 2016 election. you don't know? amy: so that is aoc, congress member alexandria ocasio-cortez, questioning jeffrey zuckerberg. brittany kaiser, was he telling the truth? >> i have found during multiple rounds of questioning -- amy: mark zuckerberg.

folks that mark zuckerberg continues to deny the amount of strategies that he is aware, the amount of data abuses that he is aware of, and just saying that my team will get back to you, without being honest with the public, is a massive disaster -- not only for his own pr, but for our democracy and moving forward in a productive manner. amy: explain what alexandria ocasio-cortez was talking about when she was talking about peter thiel. >> peter thiel, as far as i'm aware, was the head of trump's technology advisory council. there were multiple meetings where alexander nix, the former ceceo of cambridge analytica, ws either being invited or attempting to be invited to those meetings thrhrough kellyae conway, through steve bannon. amy: you are with rebecca mercer on trump inauguration night. >> a salih. the mercers and a lot of other people who played a large role in funding and in the campaign for donald trump were reaching

as far as they possibly could through technology tools to achieve their goals. amy: are they doing now? looks absolutely. i think if anybody thinks this is different than 2016, they are sorely mistaken. td 2016, they saw how tactics are. there are hundreds of cambridge analyticas around the world, especially in the u.s. elections right now. amy: why don't we t talk about john bolton and iran, the files you're releasing that you had during your cambridge analytica days. can you set up this video that we want to play? >> absolutely. the files on ambassador john bolton show the work that cambridge analytica was paid to undertake for the john bolton super pac. that was work that started in 2013. it was actually one of the biggest first projects that cambridge analytica undertook in the united states. and that was to find five

different groups of voters and target them with messaging meant to resonate with your psyche and engage you depending on whether you are open, conscientious, extroverted, agreeable, or neurotic. those videos were targeted over television and youtube pre-roll in order to convince people, one, that national security was the most important political issue. two, ambassador john bolton was the biggest authority on these topics. three, that whoever john bolton was endorsing, for example tom tillis, would be a better candidate than kay hagan, for example, in that specific race. these ads were paid in order to manipulate people into being more interested in his hawkish foreign policies than their own best intnterests. amy: can y you talk about ththed that is not radioio-friendly, because it is mainly music wiwih script over it, but this is an ad for tom tillis.

>> it was targeted for people as being highly neurotic. therefore, it is black-and-white, eerie. you get very emotional music that shows surrender flags on all of america's most prominent landmarks. amy: let me play it and i will read what it says on the screen. we will listen to that music and play the ad and you can then comment further.r. ♪

amy: it was titled "white flags." tillis went on to win. >> he did. they use these tactics and a successful manner. the john bolton super pac paid for a third party to rate how successful cambridge analytica had been. they saw on this ad specifically there was over a 36% uplift in engagement on these ads versus the communications they had already been running. what scares me so much is that i know these tactics are being used right now. we are being manipulated in order to support going to war with iran. we are being manipulated in order to believe this type of violence is acceptable and that we should support candidates that support this violence. amy: there are some who have suggested that president trump did this, possibly in part, because he is so deeply concerned about his impeachment trial. and this specifically could be targeted for john bolton former national security advisor, who

almost a meal he tweeted "we have been working on this for a long time," talking about the assassination, and that trump is afraid of what he might say. so this would appease him. >> another important tranche of documents are released in the iran folder show cambridge analytica and other right-wing organizations like america rising that has all of this opposition research for the gop, where poland is the how many people in the united states were interested in iran iran the deal to drop sanctions were they were against the iran nuclear deal and more interested in were. you can see the types of questions that were asked and the reason that a model and identify people who can be persuaded to go against iran and whether or not that would be favorable for electoral fodder, should say. and right now that same polling is happening. so if you are identified as being as persuadable, will be seeing more of this propaganda in order to convince you t that war is in our best interest when

it obviously is not. amy: emma briant, , what makes this different from regular:? why do you see this as people? >> it is not pulling i think is evil, it is s what it is being used for. i i would like to put t this ina littlele bit of a wider context of, and talk a little bit about what i know. amy: you have 30 seconds and then we will do part two. >> sure. basically, they were working also in the golf from 2013. it is really important to note the saudis and the uae were also very keen to oppose the iran deal and trump selection was armswed by huge spike in sales to the saudis. i think this being a mimilitary contractor is extremely important to remember in the light of these recent development on iran. amy: we will leave it there now

and we will post part two at democracynow.org. emma briantemma briant i want to thank in washington, brittany kaiser for joining us, and jehane noujaim and karim amer