The dark secrets,of Facebook

H/T Michael Green who provided most of the stories

Explosive Facebook Memo Defended Company’s Strategy, Even If It Got People Killed

“We connect people. Period. That’s why all the work we do in growth is justified,” an executive wrote in 2016.

Huffington Post,

30 April, 2018

A top Facebook executive wrote an internal memo in 2016 that defended the company’s growth as necessary and justified, even if the social network was used to bully someone to death or help plan a terrorist attack.

The leaked document, obtained by BuzzFeed News and published Thursday, was written by Vice President Andrew “Boz” Bosworth. Titled “The Ugly,” Bosworth roundly defended Facebook’s acquisition of user data, what he calls “all the questionable contact importing practices” and “all the subtle language that helps people stay searchable by friends.”

“We connect people. Period. That’s why all the work we do in growth is justified,” he wrote. “All of the work we do to bring more communication in. The work we will likely have to do in China some day. All of it.”

He continued: “That can be bad if they make it negative. Maybe it costs someone a life by exposing someone to bullies. Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools.”

“And still we connect people.”

Bosworth acknowledged that he wrote the memo but said he no longer agrees with the post today and “didn’t agree with it even when I wrote it.” He is seen as an outspoken figure at Facebook, the outlet reported, known for being blunt.

Boz

✔@boztank

Replying to @boztank

"why did you write a post you don't agree with?" It was intended to be provocative. This was one of the most unpopular things I’ve ever written internally and the ensuing debate helped shape our tools for the better.

10:23 AM - Mar 30, 2018

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• 394 people are talking about this

“The purpose of this post ... was to bring to the surface issues I felt deserved more discussion,” he said. “Having a debate around hard topics like these is a critical part of our process, and to do that effectively we have to be able to consider even bad ideas.”

The document showcases Facebook executives’ awareness of its power, both good and bad, years before the company was embroiled in controversy over the misuse of user data. Earlier this month, The New York Times reported that the data firm Cambridge Analytica misused the data of 50 million people, prompting calls for Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg to testify before Congress.

Zuckerberg decried the memo in a statement released Thursday, saying it was something he “disagreed with strongly.”

“Boz is a talented leader who says many provocative things,” he said in the statement. “This was one that most people at Facebook including myself disagreed with strongly. We’ve never believed the ends justify the means.”

Read the full memo at BuzzFeed News.

Growth At Any Cost: Top Facebook Executive Defended Data Collection In 2016 Memo — And Warned That Facebook Could Get People Killed

Facebook Vice President Andrew “Boz” Bosworth said that “questionable contact importing practices,” “subtle language that helps people stay searchable,” and other growth techniques are justified by the company’s connecting of people.

On June 18, 2016, one of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s most trusted lieutenants circulated an extraordinary memo weighing the costs of the company’s relentless quest for growth.

“We connect people. Period. That’s why all the work we do in growth is justified. All the questionable contact importing practices. All the subtle language that helps people stay searchable by friends. All of the work we do to bring more communication in. The work we will likely have to do in China some day. All of it,” VP Andrew “Boz” Bosworth wrote.

“So we connect more people,” he wrote in another section of the memo. “That can be bad if they make it negative. Maybe it costs someone a life by exposing someone to bullies.

“Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools.”

The explosive internal memo is titled “The Ugly,” and has not been previously circulated outside the Silicon Valley social media giant.

The Bosworth memo reveals the extent to which Facebook’s leadership understood the physical and social risks the platform’s products carried — even as the company downplayed those risks in public. It suggests that senior executives had deep qualms about conduct that they are now seeking to defend. And as the company reels amid a scandal over improper outside data collection on its users, the memo shows that one senior executive — one of Zuckerberg’s longest-serving deputies — prioritized all-encompassing growth over all else, a view that has led to questionable data collection and manipulative treatment of its users. You can read the full post below. Facebook was unable to provide comment at the time of publication.....

Here are the internal Facebook posts of employees discussing today’s leaked memo

“I’ve always thought our ‘open but punitive’ stance was particularly vulnerable to suicide bombers.”

The publication of a June 2016 memo describing the consequences of Facebook’s growth-at-all-costs triggered an emotional conversation at the company today. An internal post reacting to the memo found employees angry and heartbroken that their teammates were sharing internal company discussions with the media. Many called on the company to step up its war on leakers and hire employees with more “integrity.”

On Thursday evening, BuzzFeed published a memo from Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, a vice president at Facebook who currently leads its hardware efforts. In the memo, Bosworth says that the company’s core function is to connect people, despite consequences that he repeatedly called “ugly.” “That’s why all the work we do in growth is justified. All the questionable contact importing practices,” he wrote. “All the subtle language that helps people stay searchable by friends. All of the work we do to bring more communication in. The work we will likely have to do in China some day. All of it.”

Mark Zuckerberg Proposes Facebook ‘Supreme Court’ to Rule on ‘Hate Speech’

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has proposed a ‘Facebook Supreme Court’ to rule on hate speech reports on the social media platform.

In an interview with Vox.com Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg outlined the future of the social media platform, at one point suggesting that a “Supreme Court” model could be used when judging what counts as hate speech on the platform. As the company reels from their latest user data scandal — which saw stock prices plummet — and a market value loss of approximately $100 billion, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been attempting to open discussion about how Facebook can improve.

Zuckerberg was asked about the site’s governance structure and the general lack of oversight of the company. Ezra Klein noted that there was no “quadrennial election for CEO of Facebook,” which may lead to a lack of accountability for the company. Zuckerberg responded to this by outlining Facebook’s supposed principles; “Here are a few of the principles. One is transparency,” said Zuckerberg. “Right now, I don’t think we are transparent enough around the prevalence of different issues on the platform. We haven’t done a good job of publishing and being transparent about the prevalence of those kinds of issues, and the work that we’re doing and the trends of how we’re driving those things down over time.”

The Facebook CEO then discussed the lack of accountability for Facebook’s moderation team who decide what content should be allowed on the platform. “A second is some sort of independent appeal process. Right now, if you post something on Facebook and someone reports it and our Community Operations and Review Team looks at it and decides that it needs to get taken down, there’s not really a way to appeal that. I think in any kind of good-functioning democratic system, there needs to be a way to appeal. And I think we can build that internally as a first step.”

Zuckerberg’s solution? A Facebook hate speech “Supreme Court.”

Zuckerberg stated “What I’d really like to get to is an independent appeal. So maybe folks at Facebook make the first decision based on the community standards that are outlined, and then people can get a second opinion. You can imagine some sort of structure, almost like a Supreme Court, that is made up of independent folks who don’t work for Facebook, who ultimately make the final judgment call on what should be acceptable speech in a community that reflects the social norms and values of people all around the world.”....

Facebook has suspended the account of the whistleblower who exposed Cambridge Analytica

Tech hath no fury like a multi-billion dollar social media giant scorned.

In the latest turn of the developing scandal around how Facebook's user data wound up in the hands of Cambridge Analytica -- for use in the in development in psychographic profiles that may or may not have played a part in the election victory of Donald Trump -- the company has taken the unusual step of suspending the account of the whistleblower who helped expose the issues.

Christopher Wylie

✔@chrisinsilico

Suspended by @facebook. For blowing the whistle. On something they have known privately for 2 years.

11:37 PM - Mar 18, 2018

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Cambridge Analytica offices in Britain raided

UK investigators raid Cambridge Analytica offices in Facebook data mining probe

RT,

23 March, 2018

Investigators from the Information Commissioner’s Office have searched the London offices of Cambridge Analytica and seized files and servers. The raid forms part of an investigation into its Facebook data harvesting.

Around 20 officials wearing black jackets emblazoned with "ICO Enforcement" entered the offices on Friday, according to reports. A UK High Court judge had granted the Information Commissioner’s Office’s application for a warrant to search the London offices of Cambridge Analytica earlier on Friday evening. Judge Leonard told the court he will outline his reasons for granting the application next Tuesday.

“We are pleased with the decision of the Judge, and the warrant is now being executed,” ICO said in a statement late Friday. “This is just one part of a larger investigation into the use of personal data and analytics for political purposes. As you will expect, we will now need to collect, assess and consider the evidence before coming to any conclusions.”

UK Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham will use Cambridge Analytica’s files and servers as part of the investigation into how the firm harvested data on 50 million Facebook users without their knowledge. A whistleblower detailed how users’ data was illegally acquired and used to build profiles of American voters ahead of the 2016 US presidential election.

Meanwhile, evidence is mounting surrounding alleged links between the UK Conservative Party and the UK government with the scandal-hit firm. Theresa May was questioned in Parliament on Wednesday over reports that her party received more than £700,000 in donations from a director of the company.

In addition, it was revealed this week that Cambridge Analytica’s parent company SCL received nearly £200,000 for two Ministry of Defence projects which would have given it access to top secret files.

READ MORE: May ambushed in parliament over Tories’ extensive links to shady research firm Cambridge Analytica

Cambridge Analytica has said it is willing to cooperate with the ICO in the probe. The British consulting firm denies any wrongdoing, while Facebook admitted “mistakes” in mishandling data back in 2014, and promised tougher steps to restrict access to data.

Google and the censorship of the Internet

Google sets up “news initiative” to censor political opposition and promote mainstream media
By Andre Damon

WSWS,
22 March 2018

Google announced Wednesday that it is partnering with the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Financial Times and other major news outlets to reinforce their monopoly over news coverage by blocking independent news organizations.



The New York Times, whose stock price soared after the announcement, said Google’s initiative was aimed at combatting “the epidemic of false and unreliable information on the internet,” by “pledging to spend $300 million over the next three years to support authoritative journalism.”



In reality, Google’s action is the latest step in a protracted campaign on the part of the major technology companies, working with the Democratic Party and the US intelligence agencies, to censor the Internet.



The campaign for Internet censorship has been spearheaded by the major media outlets, including the Times and the Post, who have seen their subscription base eroded by the growth of oppositional news outlets and “citizen journalism.” By working with the technology giants and intelligence agencies to censor smaller news outlets, the media giants hope to regain the monopoly over the distribution of news they held before the rise of the Internet.



In April of last year, Google announced measures to promote “authoritative content” over “alternative viewpoints,” which led search traffic to left-wing, antiwar, and socialist web sites to plunge by over 50 percent.



After Google’s announcement last year, other major technology companies followed suit in implementing their own measures to censor the Internet. This year, Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that it would promote “trusted” news sources, such as the New York Times, over public postings by individuals and independent news agencies. At a congressional hearing this year, Facebook said it had hired some 10,000 content moderators, and would double that number by the end of the year.



But despite Facebook’s moves to rapidly implement the demands of the intelligence agencies for Internet censorship, leading Democrats, including Senator Mark Warner, have called on them to do more to crack down on social opposition.



Amid a growing strike wave by workers all over the world, including struggles this month by teachers in West Virginia and Oklahoma, university lecturers in the United Kingdom, and Amazon warehouse workers in Spain, leading news outlets have repeatedly warned that Facebook was being used to mobilize social opposition outside of the framework of the trade union establishment.



Within this context, the major news outlets have, in pursuit of their own aims, seized upon revelations that the election data firm Cambridge Analytica harvested the personal information of some 50 million Facebook users without their knowledge in 2014. At the time, the firm was owned by Robert Mercer, a billionaire who would later back the Trump campaign, and was headed by Steve Bannon, who would later serve as Trump’s campaign manager.



While the type of data harvesting conducted by Cambridge Analytica raises serious privacy concerns, the media firestorm that has followed the revelations is highly selective.



Cambridge Analytica had access to only a fraction of the data that Facebook itself collects and uses—often in secret—for political purposes. The company’s actions, moreover, are par for the course for the conduct of bourgeois election campaigns, which have come more and more to rely on data analytics and artificial intelligence to assess and impact voters’ political views.



A recent report by Investor’s Business Daily noted “In 2012, the Obama campaign encouraged supporters to download an Obama 2012 Facebook app that, when activated, let the campaign collect Facebook data both on users and their friends.” According to the report, up to 190 million people may have “had at least some of their Facebook data vacuumed up by the Obama campaign — without their knowledge or consent.”



Commenting on the Obama campaign’s data mining operation, former campaign director Carol Davidsen tweeted, “Facebook was surprised we were able to suck out the whole social graph, but they didn’t stop us once they realized that was what we were doing.”



In leaked emails released by WikiLeaks in 2016, Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg told Clinton campaign officials that she “badly” wanted Clinton to win, and that she had met with the candidate and campaign officials on multiple occasions.



While the actions taken by Cambridge Analytica point to a substantial violation of users’ privacy, they pale in comparison to the massive surveillance and content harvesting operation carried out by Facebook itself, with the assistance of the leading US intelligence agencies and Democratic Party, which, in the name of fighting “fake news” and extremist content, aim to review and censor everything posted on the social media platform.



Even more importantly, the Democrats’ highly selective outrage over the Cambridge Analytica scandal is being used to hold Facebook’s feet to the fire, with the aim of forcing it to more aggressively censor social opposition in the name of cracking down on Russian “bots and trolls.” Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee and a leading proponent of internet censorship, seized on the scandal to put further pressure on Facebook to declare that it was “misused” by the “Russians” in the 2016 election campaign.



Warner told ABC, “Facebook, since the beginnings of this investigation, has been reluctant, to say the least, to be fully forthcoming. I think it’s time for the CEO, Mr. Zuckerberg, and other top officials, to come and testify, and not tell part of the story, but tell the whole story of their involvement, not only with the Trump campaign, but their ability to have their platform misused by the Russians.”



In an op-ed entitled “Facebook Doesn’t Get It,” New York Times columnist David Leonhardt claimed that, “By spreading false news stories and giving a megaphone to Russian trolls, Facebook — a vastly larger social network than Twitter — played a meaningful role in the presidential campaign.”



In fact, the massive data mining operations carried out by both the Democratic and Republican parties render absurd the argument that a few hundred thousand dollars of Facebook advertisements allegedly bought by “Russians” swayed the 2016 election. Both parties spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the type of data operations carried out by Cambridge Analytica, seeking to analyze, quantify, and affect the political viewpoints of hundreds of millions of people.



In fact, undercutting his own argument, Leonhardt called alleged Russian meddling a “scapegoat” for the election of Donald Trump and the electoral defeat of Hillary Clinton. Regardless, the “scapegoat” of “Russian meddling” is being used to fuel an even further crackdown on the Internet, in the name of blocking “fake news” and “divisive content.”



In just one example of the growing crackdown on freedom of expression on the Internet, over the past 48 hours, Facebook deleted a link published by the World Socialist Web Site to its recent review of the Ken Burns documentary on the Vietnam War, allegedly because the posting contained “nudity.” In fact, the article contained well-known images of Vietnamese civilians fleeing the atrocities of the United States and its proxy South Vietnamese forces; photos that have been published in dozens of leading newspapers all over the world.



With the class struggle heating up throughout the world, the US ruling elite is working with ever-greater speed to block the expression of social opposition on the Internet. We urge workers and young people seeking to defend the freedom of expression to contact the World Socialist Web Site and join its campaign against Internet censorship.

Nov, 2017 documentary on Cambridge Analytica

Interesting how this was posted onto Vimeo whereas there is only an advert on You Tube where most Real News material resides.

Meet The Man Behind Cambridge Analytica, Who Made Trump President 

By TRNN Documentary - First Broadcast November, 2017

This is the story of Robert Mercer. A far-right billionaire, who is a major investor in Cambridge Analytica that data scrubbed Facebook for Trump, brought Bannon to the White House, and made his daughter the major owner of Breitbart News and board member of Cambridge Analytica

Looking behind the headlines on Cambridge Analytica and Facebook

UK govt asked Cambridge Analytica Trump team for advice on “data in foreign policy”

SCL Elections briefed Foreign Office officials in 2017 on how use of data for US presidential elections could be applied for UK diplomatic and foreign policy interests

By Nafeez Ahmed

Medium.com,

21 March, 2018

A whistleblower has thrown new light on how Cambridge Analytica, the notorious data analytics firm, breached Facebook rules to acquire private information on over 50 million people to target American voters.

The revelations raise urgent questions about the use of psychological manipulation techniques on Facebook to influence voter choices, not just in the 2016 presidential elections, but also in the Brexit referendum.

Yet there are a number of key threads that have been forgotten, or missing entirely, from much of the recent reporting.

One is that Cambridge Analytica is an offshoot of SCL Group, a former UK Ministry of Defence contractor which retains close ties to the British Foreign Office (FCO) and other elements of the UK political and financial establishment.

So close, that just last year the Foreign Office executive agency, Wilton Park, invited SCL Group subsidiary, SCL Elections, to speak about how the use of data in the 2016 Presidential election could be applied in the British government’s diplomatic and foreign policy agenda.

As I reported in an investigation into Facebook’s path toward achieving greater surveillance reach than even the NSA, the two SCL Group executives who addressed FCO officials in February 2017 were Mark Turnbull, managing director of SCL Elections, and David Wilkinson, then lead data scientist.

Facebook will become more powerful than the NSA in less than 10 years — unless we stop it

What do NATO, private military contractors, giant arms manufacturers, wine merchants, the NSA, Trump, British property…

Cambridge Analytica, the US-based data firm, was created by SCL Elections as an incorporated venture with right-wing billionaire Robert Mercer. But SCL and Cambridge Analytica are, for all intents and purposes, “one and the same.”

According to a Wilton Park conference program document, Turnbull and Wilkinson addressed the FCO conference on the subject of “examining the application of data in the recent US Presidential election”.

The meeting was attended and opened by Jonathan Allen — then the FCO’s Acting Director General for Defence and Intelligence. Allen is now Theresa May’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations

Jonathan Allen, former FCO head of national security, acting director general for defence and intelligence, now UK deputy permanent representative to the UN

The document describes the conference as designed to “explore new opportunities for the FCO to make better use of data in diplomacy, but also emerging threats that challenge the current ways of working.”

The forum’s focus was on assessing “opportunities and threats” that are “of particular application to the FCO’s role in diplomacy and making international policy.” Intended outcomes of the meeting included:

“Ideas and recommendations for the FCO to consider in making better use of data in foreign policy.”

SCL Elections’ Mark Turnbull has a rich history of overseeing psychological warfare operations on behalf of the US and UK governments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

During a long stint at PR firm Bell Pottinger, he oversaw a $540m US Department of Defense contract for “information operations and psychological operations”.

This involved creating and distributing fake al-Qaeda videos in Iraq.

Before landing the SCL gig, Turnbull set up a specialist strategic communications division for Aegis Defense Services, another giant UK defence contractor operating in Iraq and Afghanistan under a number of hundred million dollar contracts with the Pentagon.

In this context, it is not surprising that the SCL’s Foreign Office connections appear to go back a long way. According to now deleted extracts from an archived version of the company’s old website, SCL boasted of “an extensive worldwide track record and enquires can be directed through any British High Commission or Embassy.

The reference to an open door enquiry process via any British embassies in the world indicated a symbiotic relationship with the British Foreign Office.

When I contacted the FCO about this, the response was decidedly evasive. I asked not only about whether SCL Group still held such a symbiotic relationship with the FCO, but further whether the company’s Facebook campaign operations to influence national elections had ever been pursued in service to British foreign policy interests.

A spokesperson replied simply with:

“I am looking into your query however I have been advised you may wish to contact the Ministry of Defence on this matter.”

Despite follow up requests, no further clarification on SCL Group’s relationship to the FCO, symbiotic or otherwise, was forthcoming.

When I contacted the Ministry of Defence, a government spokesperson confirmed that the SCL Group has no active contracts with the MoD, and therefore “no access to classified or confidential MoD information.” However, the spokesperson did not clarify when SCL Group was last contracted by the MoD, and for what purpose

For a considerable period in the past, SCL Group was classified by the MoD as a ‘List X’ contractor. List X contractors work on UK government contracts which require them to hold classified information at their own premises or other specific sites.

Information released under Freedom of Information (thanks to journalist Liam O’Hare for highlighting) reveals that ‘Strategic Communications Laboratories Ltd’, SCL Group’s previous company name, had in fact been contracted by the MoD for ‘Target Audience Analysis’ as recently as about a year before the 2016 presidential elections — specifically for fiscal year 2014/15.

An FOI request from September 2016 reveals that the UK Ministry of Defence has bought training and audience analysis…

SCL had also in 2015 received $1m (CAD) from the Canadian government to deliver a NATO course in “advanced counter-propaganda techniques” in Eastern Europe.

Alarm over emerging details on SCL/Cambridge Analytica’s use of mass behavioural profiles developed from Facebook to influence public opinion is, of course, entirely warranted. But these techniques are not exclusive to this particular firm.

These techniques designed to influence mass populations have been developed and applied in the bowels of the Anglo-American military-industrial complex for decades, and continue to be deeply researched at multiple levels by numerous national security agencies.

The Pentagon’s secret pre-crime program to know your thoughts, predict your future

US military contractors are mining social media to influence your ‘cognitive behavior’ when you get angry at the state

That breakaway entities such as Cambridge Analytica seek to profit from these techniques simply extends and follows through with the internal logic of a system which promotes the state-backed privatisation of mass surveillance.

The emergence of Big Data in the context of an increasingly militarised form of neoliberal capitalism has opened up a new digital ‘frontier’ for corporate profit maximisation: the digitisation of even the minutest details of private and public lives. Which is why platforms like Facebook, Google and others are lobbying for the deregulation of data.

Cambridge Analytica’s data breach on Facebook is a tip of the iceberg. An increasingly lucrative business model of the platform, one that is perfectly rational given the logic of the digitisation of capital, is to sell information tools to governments on opposite sides of, often, very real physical battlefields. That, of course, is simply one subset of the wider game which sells such tools of persuasion to any business or corporation that can afford it.

There is a war on for our minds, and Big Data platforms are in the business of profiting from it.

But the solution to this is not, as the British government’s ongoing fascination with SCL/Cambridge Analytica shows, simply government regulation. The real solution is an approach to data which recognises the sovereignty of the people it truly belongs to.

This story was 100% reader-funded. Please support our independent journalism for as little as $1 a month, and share widely.

Dr. Nafeez Ahmed is the founding editor of INSURGE intelligence. Nafeez is a 16-year investigative journalist, formerly of The Guardian where he reported on the geopolitics of social, economic and environmental crises. Nafeez reports on ‘global system change’ for VICE’s Motherboard, and on regional geopolitics for Middle East Eye. He has bylines in The Independent on Sunday, The Independent, The Scotsman, Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, Quartz, New York Observer, The New Statesman, Prospect, Le Monde diplomatique, among other places. He has twice won the Project Censored Award for his investigative reporting; twice been featured in the Evening Standard’s top 1,000 list of most influential Londoners; and won the Naples Prize, Italy’s most prestigious literary award created by the President of the Republic. Nafeez is also a widely-published and cited interdisciplinary academic applying complex systems analysis to ecological and political violence.

Cambridge Analytica is deeply embedded within the British political, military and royal establishment.

The links of SCL, Cambridge Analytica with the British Tory Party

Some very dark secrets are revealed

SCL – a Very British Coup

Liam O’Hara

Bella Caledonia,

20 March, 2018

Liam O Hare on the deep connections between Cambridge Analytica’s parent company Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL Group)  and the Conservative Party and military establishment, ‘Board members include an array of Lords, Tory donors, ex-British army officers and defense contractors. This is scandal that cuts to the heart of the British establishment.’

The scandal around mass data harvesting by Cambridge Analytica took a new twist on Monday.

A Channel 4 news undercover investigation revealed that the company’s Eton-educated CEO Alexander Nix offered to use dirty tricks – including the use of bribery and sex workers – to entrap politicians and subvert elections.

Much of the media spotlight is now on Cambridge Analytica and their shadowy antics in elections worldwide, including that of Donald Trump.

However, Cambridge Analytica is a mere offshoot of Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL Group) – an organisation with its roots deeply embedded within the British political, military and royal establishment.

Indeed, as the Observer article which broke the scandal said “For all intents and purposes, SCL/Cambridge Analytica are one and the same.”

Like Cambridge Analytica, SCL group is behavioral research and strategic communication company.

In 2005, SCL went public with a glitzy exhibit at the DSEI conference, the UK’s largest showcase for military technology.

It’s ‘hard sell’ was a demonstration of how the UK government could use a sophisticated media campaign of mass deception to fool the British people into the thinking an accident at a chemical plant had occurred and threatened central London. Genuinely.

Board members include an array of Lords, Tory donors, ex-British army officers and defense contractors. This is scandal that cuts to the heart of the British establishment.

SCL Group says on its website that it provides “data, analytics and strategy to governments and military organizations worldwide.”

The organisation boasts that it has conducted “behavioral change programs” in over 60 countries and its clients have included the British Ministry of Defence, the US State Department and NATO.

A freedom of information request from August 2016, shows that the MOD has twice bought services from Strategic Communication Laboratories in recent years.

In 2010/11, the MOD paid £40,000 to SCL for the “provision of external training”. Meanwhile, in 2014/2015, it paid SCL £150,000 for the “procurement of target audience analysis”.

In addition, SCL also carries a secret clearance as a ‘list X’ contractor for the MOD. A List X site is a commercial site on British soil that is approved to hold UK government information marked as ‘confidential’ and above. Essentially, SCL got the green light to hold British government secrets on its premises.

Meanwhile, the US State Department has a contract for $500,000 with SLC. According to an official, this was to provide  “research and analytical support in connection with our mission to counter terrorist propaganda and disinformation overseas.” This was not the only work that SCL has been contracted for with the US government, the source added.

In May 2015, SLC Defense, another subsidiary of the umbrella organisation, received $1 million (CAD) to support NATO operations in Eastern Europe targeting Russia.

The company delivered a three-month course in Riga which taught “advanced counter-propaganda techniques designed to help member states assess and counter Russia’s propaganda in Eastern Europe”.

The NATO website said the “revolutionary” training would “help Ukrainians better defend themselves against the Russian threat”.

What is clear is that all of SLC’s activities were inextricably linked to its Cambridge Analytica arm.

As recently as July 2017, the website for Cambridge Analytica said its methods has been approved by the “UK Ministry of Defence, the US State Department, Sandia and NATO” and carried their logos on its website.

Mark Turnbull, who joined Alexander Nix at the secretly filmed meetings, heads up SCL Elections as well as Cambridge Analytica Political Global.

His profile at the University of Exeter Strategy and Security Institute boasts of his record in achieving “campaign success via measurable behavioural change” in “over 100 campaigns in Europe, North and South America, Asia, Africa and the Caribbean”.

Turnbull previously spent 18 years at Bell Pottinger, heading up the Pentagon funded PR drive in occupied Iraq which included the production of fake al-Qaeda videos.

Turnbull’s involvement is just one sign of the sweeping links the company has with powerful Anglo-American political and military interests.

The firm is headed up by Nigel Oakes, another old Etonian, who, according to the website PowerBase has links to the British royals and was once rumoured to be an Mi5 spy.

In 1992, Oakes described his work in a trade journal as using the “same techniques as Aristotle and Hitler. … We appeal to people on an emotional level to get them to agree on a functional level.”

The President of SLC is Sir Geoffrey Pattie, a former Conservative MP and the Defence Minister in Margaret Thatcher’s government. Pattie also co-founded Terrington Management which lists BAE Systems and Lockheed Martin among its clients.

One of the company’s directors’ is wine millionaire and former British special forces officer in Borneo and Kenya, Roger Gabb, who in 2006 donated £500,000 to the Conservative party.

Gabb was also fined by the Electoral Commission for failing to include his name on an advert in a number of local newspapers arguing for a Leave vote in the Brexit referendum.

SLC’s links to the Conservative party continues through the company’s chairman and venture capitalist Julian Wheatland. He also happens to be chairman of Oxfordshire Conservatives Association.

The organisation has also been funded by Jonathan Marland who is the former Conservative Party Treasurer, a trade envoy under David Cameron, and a close friend of Tory election strategist Lynton Crosby.

Property tycoon and Conservative party donor Vincent Tchenguiz was also the single largest SCL shareholder for a decade.

Meanwhile, another director is Gavin McNicoll, founder of counter-terrorism Eden Intelligence firm who ran a G8 Plus meeting on Financial Intelligence Cooperation at the behest of the British government.

Previous board members include Sir James Allen Mitchell, the former Prime Minister of the previous British colony St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Mitchell has been a privy counselor on the Queen’s advisory board since 1985.

The British military and royal establishment links to SCL are further highlighted through another director Rear Admiral John Tolhurst, a former assistant director of naval warfare in the Ministry of Defence and aide de camp to the Queen.

The Queen’s third cousin, Lord Ivar Mountbatten, was also sitting on SCL’s advisory board but it’s unclear if he still holds that role.

The above examples barely scrape the surface of just how deep the ties go between the UK defence establishment and Strategic Communication Laboratories.

Indeed, it seems evident that the organisation is a product of murky alliances formed between venture capitalists and former British military and intelligence officers. Unsurprisingly, they also happen to be closely tied to the higher echelons of the Conservative party.

International deception and meddling is the name of the game for SCL. We finally have the most concrete evidence yet of shadowy actors using dirty tricks in order to rig elections. But these characters aren’t operating from Moscow intelligence bunkers.

Instead, they are British, Eton educated, headquartered in the city of London and have close ties to Her Majesty’s government.