I am not familiar with too much discussion on the role of think tanks in the press, which does give it something of a USP. Geoghegan also conducted many interviews but few of the interviewees are willing to be named, so there is quite a lot of reliance on Steve Bannon, who is the protagonist of every political story in his eyes. Generally though, this is a considered text about democracy behind the scenes, and there are certain recurring protagonists such as Matthew Elliott. American academic Sheri Berman explains how this discontent is borne from leaders’ failure to deal with economic challenges that have led to growing inequality, and political scientist Larry Diamond explains how the very basic tenets of democracy have been compromised to serve specific and influential interests. The new research paper from the American Economic Liberties--entitled Project Democracy for Sale: Examining the Effects of Concentration on Lobbying in the United States (pdf)--was authored by Reed Showalter, an attorney and a fellow at the anti-monopoly group.

And the thing that’s terrifying is that while Cambridge has been disbanded, the same actors are out there. And there’s nothing has been — nothing has changed to allow us to start putting in place legislation to say there is something called information crimes. In this era of information warfare, in this era of information economies, what is an information crime? What does it look like? Who determines it? And yet, without that, we are still living in this unfiltered, unregulated space, where places like Facebook are continuing to choose profit over the protection of the republic. And I think that’s what’s so outrageous. BRITTANY KAISER: The massive problems that came from the data collection, specifically, are where my original accusations come from, because data was collected under the auspices of being for academic research and was used for political and commercial purposes. There are also different data sets that are not supposed to be matched and used without explicit transparency and consent in the United Kingdom, because they actually have good national data protection laws and international data protection laws through the European Union to protect voters. Unfortunately, in the United States, we only have seen the state of California coming out and doing it. This forensic and highly readable book shows how so many of our democratic processes have moved into the murky, unregulated spaces of globalisation and digital innovation' Peter Pomerantsev Slowly, the suburban train cut through verdant countryside, past relics of former industrial glory. Sunderland was once, it is said, the largest shipbuilding town in the world. I forgot about the advert, opened my laptop and began drafting my report for the next day’s paper. Dark money is an American neologism for an increasingly global phenomenon: funds from unknown sources that influence our politics.Bribery was so endemic in an 1880 by-election in Sandwich that the constituency was subsequently abolished. David Lloyd George shamelessly sold peerages to wartime spivs and profiteers to fund his prime ministerial lifestyle. As politics becomes increasingly voracious of time and occupies more and more space on digital media, the scope for hidden influence through spending outside of the narrow regulated window in the period before a vote is all too obvious.

The never-trumped lies blatantly again (pps.195, 215-217, 260, 274-275, 279) when he regurgitates the left's lie of Russian interference in the 2016 US election. The FBI, themselves vehemently anti-Trump, found no evidence of Russian interference even after 4 years of desperately searching for it. But there again we must remember, the truth does not matter to the left. While he likes to say that they spent a lot of time abiding by regulations, I would beg to differ. Cambridge Analytica did not even have a data protection officer until 2018, right before they shut down. I begged for one for many years. I begged for more time with our lawyers and was told I was creating too many invoices. And for a long time, because I had multiple law degrees, I was asked to write contracts. And so were other — You don’t need to be sensitive to have detected a whiff coming off politics in certain countries in recent years. Brexit is the thing that brought the odour to immediate attention in this part of western Europe, but it didn’t begin with the campaign for Britain to leave the European Union, and after reading Peter Geoghegan’s unsparing account of shady money in politics, you would be naive to believe it will end there. This book is written by the far-left, for the far-left, to ensure the far-left can now justify usurping the power from the people and "fixing" all that they see as being "wrong" with "democracy". This book will appeal to the far-left, liberal loons who hate everything and everyone. CAROLE CADWALLADR: The real game changer was Cambridge Analytica. They worked for the Trump campaign and for the Brexit campaign. They started using information warfare.

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Perhaps more than any other character in this book, Banks embodies its distilled twin concerns: the presence of opaque money in politics, and the opportunity afforded by modern digital media to spend that money to extremely unseemly ends. The Russian and Chinese ‘dirty money’ being thrown like confetti onto the streets around Whitehall and Westminster is the real and future threat to our democracy and any investigative journalist within the hubbub of London life would know that. And those two powers are not right-wing activists/extremists from foreign shores; they are authoritarian regimes (the dark forces) and Putin is who? The Dark Vader? This super PAC was headed by David Bossie, someone that you might remember from Citizens United, who basically brought dark money into our politics and allowed endless amounts of money to be funneled into these types of vehicles so that we don’t know where all of the money is coming from for these types of manipulative communications. And he was in charge of this campaign. We are only at the beginning of understanding how the 21st-century confluence of opaque money, extreme politics and digital technology has frayed our democracy. This book is an important part of that process. We are a long way from having viable solutions, but we owe a debt to relentless journalists like Geoghegan for starting the work of rooting out the source of stench before it overwhelms us.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, explain that, psychographic groupings, and especially for people who are not on Facebook, who don’t understand its enormous power and the intimate knowledge it has of people. Think of someone you’re talking to who’s never experienced Facebook. Explain what is there. AMY GOODMAN: So they were doing this before Cambridge Analytica. But describe — I want to actually go to a Bannon clip, Steve Bannon, who takes credit for naming Cambridge Analytica, right? Because you had SCL before, Defence.And the thing that’s allowing this to happen is these information platforms like Facebook. And that is what’s so upsetting, because we can actually do something about that. We are the only country in the world that can hold Facebook accountable, yet we still have not done so. And we still keep going to their leadership hoping they do the right thing, but they have not. And why is that? Because no industry has ever shown in American history that it can regulate itself. There is a reason why antitrust laws exist in this country. There’s a tradition of holding companies accountable, and we need to re-embrace that tradition, especially as we enter into 2020, where the stakes could not be higher. If you're concerned about the health of British democracy, read this book – it is thorough, gripping and vitally important' Oliver Bullough, author of Moneyland. AMY GOODMAN: You talk about people coming forward and not coming forward. I wanted to turn to former Cambridge Analytica COO, the chief operating officer, Julian Wheatland, speaking on the podcast Recode Decode. Among the lessons Farage gleaned from Five Star was the electoral benefit of being seen as coming from outside traditional politics altogether. This money gets into the political system in an increasing variety of ways, from loopholes in election law and online campaign fundraising through to anonymously funded, agenda-setting pressure groups. In her authoritative book on election finance, Dark Money, American journalist Jane Mayer outlines how US democracy was effectively bought by a cadre of the super-rich and their surrogates, often through faceless political action committees – so-called ‘super Pacs’ – that can spend limitless amounts of money.