Understanding the impact of Cambridge Analytica

By Denis Birungi

Understanding the impact of Cambridge Analytica: A modern era public fraud

The strategy behind the recent populist surge was finally exposed by media houses in Britain. In a broadcast by Channel 4 news, senior executives of the Cambridge Analytica, a political consultancy firm, are caught on camera revealing the dirty tricks they use to help political aspirants in various countries to swing elections in their favour.

The dirty tricks include use of sex workers, bribes, propaganda and misinformation against opponents.

The company uses data from companies like Facebook to inform politicians of voters' "tastes and preferences" and helping them to compose a message that resonates with voters' fears and frustrations. In in Kenya this involved sending videos of war, hunger and terrorism and warning that voting Odinga risks more of such occurrences.

In a U-tube video, one executive remarks: "it's no longer about facts; it's about playing with people's emotions" and boasts on how emotions were played with in the US and other countries to influence election results!

This trend is quite scary! It is a true manifestation of modern era corruption. It is the greatest public fraud that can be committed by any individual against his or her country.

This type of public fraud is a complex challenge to fight as it benefits the most powerful of society.

While the evolution and modernisation of society in multifarious ways including the internet of things has brought enormous progress to humanity, it brings with it a platform and opportunities for unscrupulous people to achieve selfish and evil ends that risks turning humanity back to a pre- legal society, where survival is only for the fittest at playing dirty.

In the past two years since Brexit and the US election outcome, misuse of social media companies such as Facebook has become the greatest threat to democracy. Tyrannical regimes such as Russia have found this a better tool to sow discord in democratic countries.

Democracy works only when political actors, citizens and institutions can make decisions on the basis of empirically verifiable facts. When misinformation, propaganda and intrigue sets in to curtail the pure flow of democratic processes, then democracy fails, and what remains is a shadow of democracy- dry, useless and meaningless.

Yes, with a shadow of democracy, elections will continue to take place, but the voter will not be the sober citizen who follows policy propositions and the character of the political aspirants but rather a citizen biased by a foreign country/company on behalf of the aspirant who sees things only from the side of the aspirant.

The citizen becomes a captive of the aspirant, entangled, and tuned to respond only according to the propaganda remote control of the aspirant. The aspirant sets the agenda of what the voter will hear and see as truth.

The consent of the voter is procured through fraud and misrepresentation and was it to be a bilateral contract between two individuals; it stands to be annulled by court for lack of genuine consent.

The citizen makes decision not on the basis of what is factual and true but on the basis of what the aspirant (for lack of a better word) implants in his or her mind.

At this point, elections, which are the engines of a functional democracy, become useless.

When ethical standards, legal constraints and moral codes that keep society functional risk to break at such vast scale- from the United States to Europe, to Asian and to Africa, and at such a critical angle- elections, which make orderly governance possible, then we risk reverting back to savagery.

Legislators and policy makers in democratic countries should up their game in countering this horrific trend by imposing legal obligations on internet firms to protect personal data and prevent wrong people from accessing it and addressing loopholes in electoral laws. The European Union has taken the lead with tougher privacy laws on online firms. Others should follow.

The writer is a lawyer, social and political analyst