But if the ongoing investigations conclude that the Trump campaign did help
Russia target voters, expect to hear more about Cambridge Analytica.
Not exact matches
Collins asked why Facebook didn't spot
Russia's use of the social network to
target voters sooner.
The agencies said in a 2017 report that
Russia engaged in a
targeted effort to influence US
voters through propaganda and other means, in order to swing the presidential election in Trump's favor.
And according to a top - secret National Security Agency document leaked to the Intercept and published earlier this month, hackers associated with
Russia's military intelligence agency
targeted a company with information on US voting software days before the election and used the data to launch «
voter - registration - themed» cyberattacks on local government officials.
The latest allegations — that a Trump campaign consulting firm with Russian connections used improperly obtained Facebook data on tens of millions of Americans to
target voters — raise disturbing questions about the roles of both Facebook and
Russia.
Since Brexiteers and the 2016 Cruz and Trump campaigns contracted with Cambridge for help
targeting voters in the UK and US, and special counsel Robert Mueller has subpeoned documents from the company in his investigation into possible Trump /
Russia collusion, politicians quickly took notice.
These advertisements, which
targeted voters with divisive political content, added even more evidence of
Russia's attempts to meddle with the election.
«We've never worked in
Russia,» said Mr. Nix, head of a data consulting firm that advised the Trump campaign on
targeting voters.
Russia didn't need to scout
voter rolls to influence them for Trump on Facebook; Cambridge Analytica performed that
targeting on its own, delivering stories based on hacked materials to Trump
voters — doing the Kremlin's work for them.
When the Russian ads are finally released publicly, Sandberg pledged the
targeting info from those ads would also be released — meaning we'll see the cohorts of
voters Russia was trying to influence.
If CA was able to obtain information on
voters through Facebook, they would know where to specifically
target propaganda to influence elections — just as
Russia's Internet Research Agency did in 2016.
On one perspective, $ 100,000 might not be that much for advertisements, but the mere fact that a group specifically published ads that attempted to
target voters during the election is a groundbreaking discovery, one that would probably add some fuel to Trump's alleged collusion with
Russia.