Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower Describes Attack on Social Media

Big puzzle piece in the Trump/Russia scandal dropping over the weekend.
For quick outline, see above short interview from the (!) Today show.
More below.

ThinkProgress:

In an unprecedented move, Facebook announced it is suspending the political data analytics firm, Cambridge Analytica, from the social media site.

Cambridge Analytica said it helped the Trump campaign pull off its narrow win in key swing states by psychologically profiling millions of voters using data from Facebook, so those voters could be microtargeted with messages tailored and tested to persuade them. Now it turns out that much of that data was obtained fraudulently.

The firm “harvested private information from the Facebook profiles of more than 50 million users without their permission,” according to a major New York Times investigation published Saturday, “making it one of the largest data leaks in the social network’s history.”

Cambridge Analytica, which is backed by billionaire conservative donor Robert Mercer and has former Trump strategist Steve Bannon on its board, is already under investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller for possible connections to Russian interference in the election. It’s also under investigation by the UK Parliament for potential violations of data privacy and claims it did illegal work for the pro-Brexit campaign.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXdYSQ6nu-M