Micro-targeting: How Personal Data Stolen From Facebook Helped Elect Donald Trump

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

In the spirit of "past as prologue", I offer this brief review of how the newest high-tech cyberwarfare techniques were successfully used by the Trump campaign in 2016 to win the electoral contest despite nearly three million fewer popular votes.

Imagine a world in which corporations, political organizations, billionaires, and hostile governments had the computing power, data storage capacity, personal information about you (think Facebook), and sophisticated computer algorithms to accurately predict your behavior. What if they could predict the behavior of every adult in the United States? Then imagine they could find you on social media by filtering the entire US adult population according to the specific personality characteristics they compiled on everyone. And after identifying you by your personality, imagine that they could flood your personal media accounts with specific messages and images designed to trigger your emotions, alter your opinions, or fundamentally change your social outlook without you catching on that this is happening to you.

This science-fiction horror scenario, reminiscent of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers movie years ago, isn’t science fiction. It is the real world in which we live today.

What the above scenario describes is “micro-targeting.” It is just one of the latest high-tech propaganda weapons manipulating our personal information against us. It was first unleashed in this country by Cambridge Analytica during the 2016 Presidential election campaign, but it was previously used by them in Great Britain during the Brexit campaign. It has also been used in numerous other foreign countries during their elections. It is a certainty that micro-targeting will play a much bigger role in the 2020 election cycle.

Cambridge Analytica was a British political consulting firm that combined data mining, data brokerage, and data analysis with strategic communication during the electoral processes here and abroad. Public scrutiny that followed them after their schemes were later uncovered force the company out of business, but their successful application of micro-targeting and other sophisticated propaganda tools triggered an arms race among big businesses and powerful interest groups to master these new technologies and apply them for both competitive advantages and political control.

There is a 2019 documentary currently available on Netflix that chronicles the story of Cambridge Analytica and how our personal data is being stolen from us and used against us. It’s called “The Great Hack,” and everyone should see it after reading this. There are also many other articles now about micro-targeting and other propaganda technologies being adopted by corporations and political consulting companies. My limited purpose here is to give a concrete example of how micro-targeting was used in the 2016 Presidential campaign.

In 2016 Cambridge Analytica stole the personal data of 50 million US Facebook users to create their giant database. They fed this data into very sophisticated AI-enhanced algorithms (mathematical computer programs) to create very accurate “biopsychosocial” personality profiles on every person from whom personal data was stolen. From these profiles, they were able to accurately identify adults in the United States who either didn’t have strong political opinions or were otherwise susceptible to having their minds changed. They called these people the “persuadables,” and there were many of them all across the country. In fact, there were too many to directly target each of them, but this isn’t necessary. We don’t elect presidents by the popular vote, but by electoral votes from individual states.

To understand how micro-targeting works, it is helpful to review how state election systems works. Every state divides its electorate into scores of smaller voting precincts or polling districts, each with a long public record of how precincts voted in the past. Presidential campaigns conduct extensive polling in every state district where their candidate has a historical possibility of winning. After analyzing the polling data in conjunction with historical voting trends, they are able to identify the voting precincts that they need to win in order to win the state’s electoral votes. Campaigns use this information to determine where to campaign, where to spend money on ads and where to build strong get-out-the-vote efforts.

Cambridge Analytica went further. They identified and targeted all the persuadables in every swing precinct in four swing states, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Florida. Then they used social media networks and their knowledge of the personality profiles of each targeted person to bombard them with images and content designed specifically to get them to either vote for Donald Trump (and other Republican candidates down-ballot) or to feel so dispirited that they didn’t vote at all.

For the sake of argument, let’s assume there was a total of 24 swing precincts targeted in these four swing states. The number was probably more. Each precinct contained around 20,000 persuadable voters, according to the documentary report. That means at least 480,000 individuals were targeted by a personal media blitz to either vote for Donald Trump or be dissuaded from voting for Hillary Clinton. That’s just 480,000 voters out of 130 million.

An analysis of the 2016 election found that the results came down to the winners of the six swing states. Hillary Clinton won two of those states. Donald Trump won four of them, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Florida, the same states targeted by Cambridge Analytica.

According to an analysis by the Washington Post:

 “Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania account for 46 electoral votes. If Clinton had won these states, she could have sealed the presidency with 274 total electoral votes… This election was effectively decided by 107,000 people in these three states. Trump won the popular vote there by that combined amount. That amounts to 0.09 percent of all votes cast in this election.”

Donald Trump unexpectedly won Michigan by a narrow margin of 0.23%. This stands as the narrowest margin of victory in Michigan's presidential election history. He unexpectedly won Wisconsin by a narrow margin of just 0.77 percent, becoming the first Republican candidate to win in Wisconsin since Ronald Reagan in 1984. Trump won Pennsylvania by 44,292 votes out of more than six million votes cast, a difference of 0.72 percent and the narrowest margin in a presidential election for that state in 176 years. Trump did better in Florida where he won a plurality with 1.2 percent of the vote.

So, did Cambridge Analytica play a key role in Donald Trump’s electoral victory? It seems conceivable, but they weren’t alone. Russian cyberattacks on our election also played a significant role in helping to defeat Hillary Clinton.

Did the Robert Mueller investigation cover micro-targeting of voters during the 2016 campaign? No. This election activity was not directly linked to Russian interference and so it was outside the scope of his investigation, although there is some evidence of a nexus between Russia and Cambridge Analytica involving the Brexit campaign. Also, Robert Mueller was not charged with investigating the actual impact of Russian interference in our election results. No one is investigating that issue. It is possible that the stealing of personal Facebook data was referred out elsewhere for criminal investigation, but we don’t know.

What we do know is that the American public is compromised by the massive collection and misuse of our personal data. We are vulnerable to psychosocial based manipulations that alter our behavior without our being aware that it is happening to us. We know that micro-targeting is now a major tool in corporate marketing, which may explain why the personal data collection and analysis industry has surpassed the oil industry as the most profitable business sector on earth. And we know that little is being done to protect our privacy rights, or our elections from weaponized propaganda, or to educate the public about the threats to which we are exposed every day. And we can all be very sure micro-targeting will be a prominent factor in the next election and every future election to come.



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Image credit: https://thehumornation.com/know-facebook-addiction/

A War of Perceptions

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

[Bloggers note, 12/25/17: The latest perception bending attacks are coming from GOP members of Congress who are using documents from their House investigations and secret meetings to destroy the credibility of the FBI and the Mueller investigation. They are both using, and being influenced by right wing media outlets, some of which are Russian based fronts. You have to wonder if they are themselves compromised by intelligence collected on them from the hacked RNC documents, etc.  Why else would they be acting so contrary to their better instincts?] 

We are at war, but it isn't a kinetic war where things explode. It's a perceptual war that uses our advanced social medium platforms and weaponized psycho-social messaging against us. It radically "emotionalizes" every issue or belief system that naturally exists in our socially diverse, pluralistic society. Every difference is ripped open into an emotional divide until we can't discuss it without rancor. Friends and relatives whose company we once enjoyed we now avoid because conversations with them have become so contentious on the facts and crippled with emotions. 

We are in a global information war against democratic societies. It attacks our trust in self-government. It undermines our faith in civil institutions and the free press. It divides us, polarizes us, confuses us and eventually turns us against our neighbors. It eats away at the values, morals and principles that unit people. It fills us with mistrust, greed, envy and hate. We are led to see the world in stark contrast and black or white thinking.

When we are disunited and weak, when we are unable to govern ourselves and events spiral out of control, we will welcome the social order that the wealthy and powerful tyrants of our day want to impose. 

I know this sounds bleak and a little crazy, even to me, but we have entered into an age were the powerful elites who own or control the means of mass communications can modify and manipulate mass perceptions if we let them. 

We must hold fast to our love for humanity. We must trust in our shared values, heal our divisions, restore civility, take back control of our public discourse and re-balance public actions to better serve the greater good for all. Where we are estranged from friend and family over political or social issues, we must overcome our divisions so we can face the enemies that seek to divide us. 

Why Russia Hacked Voter Registration Databases - Micro-targeted Messaging

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

What if Presidential candidates could identify the exact swing districts, to the precinct, that they need to win state elections? Imagine how concentrated their campaigns efforts and resources would be, including the ad buys and how those ads are tailored to the voters in those districts.

Welcome to the modern political campaign. The ability to do exactly this grows greatly every election cycle. Highly detailed voting information has not only allowed candidates to geographically concentrate their resources, it has given unscrupulous party operatives a map to devise voter suppression strategies, vote tampering schemes and gerrymandered districts that give their party structural advantages.

This much is well known by the savvy readers here, even if it remains under appreciated by the many voter. Less well understood are the new information technology weapons that were employed in the last election.

Into the" big data" world of our modern political campaigns came a whole set of newly developed propaganda technologies that can exploit a campaigns massive knowledge base. Explaining how just one of these new, information technology weapons work, one called micro-targeting, we can see how the dots are connected in the Russia election scandal now unfolding.

Here is a step by step plan to use modern information technologies to micro-target individual voters in swing districts to manipulate their vote.

Step 1. CREATE BIO-PSYCHO-SOCIAL PROFILES ON POTENTIAL VOTERS: All the publicly shared Facebook and Twitter information voluntarily provided by individual users has unwittingly created the most massive database ever imagined. Marketing companies can use this database to target ads to those most likely to buy certain products. But in politics, companies like Cambridge Analytica can use this data to creates highly accurate bio-psycho-social profiles (BPS profile) on millions of American adults, and use that information to manipulate voting behavior. The ability to create these very accurate, highly predictive individual profiles using a meta-analysis techniques is well established. Researchers have estimated that just 150 "likes" on Facebook, along with self-reported biographical information, can produce a BPS profile for individuals that better predicts their behavior than what their own spouse could predict. These profiles can even predict which words or phrases will elicit specific emotional reactions in a person. Of this profiling data, Paul-Olivier Dehaye, a Swiss mathematician, said, "People just don't understand the power of this data and how it can be used against them."

For those who don't know, Cambridge Analytica is a election data analysis company founded by Robert Mercer, an American billionaire with some very radical ideas. The company was lead by Breitbart's Steve Bannon until he joined the Trump administration. Cambridge Analytica was contracted by the Trump campaign to utilize the company's extensive voter profiles to help get Donald Trump elected in 2016.

Information that Facebook or Twitter does not uniformly obtain is the current voter registration status of users or their voting history. This type of information is only kept in state or county voter registration databases spread throughout the country. For a political campaign to get this type of information they would need to hack into many state and county databases, and do it in a way that doesn't easily trace back to the campaign.

Step 2. HACK SPECIFIC VOTER REGISTRATION FILES: Micro-targeting voters is a huge undertaking requiring a massive amount of computing. It also requires connecting an individual's BPS profile with their current voter registration status and voting history. Micro-targeting voters cannot happen without this information. There is currently no national source for voter registration information, but one has been proposed by Donald Trump's Presidential Advisory Commission of Election Integrity.

Not having a national voter registration system is probably a good thing. A hack of a single database would be far more damaging, and is less likely to be detected. Hacking dozens or hundreds of smaller databases increases the odds of getting caught. Hacks of voter registration files should therefore be limited in number, and the hacks must therefore be targeted at just the right swing districts where micro-targeting has the best odds of changing voting behaviors. The people with the best idea of which voting districts to hack are those within the campaign. The same internal polling numbers used to direct ad buys are the same numbers needed to direct voter registration hacks.

One way to assure that hacking activity can't easily be traced back to a candidate's campaign is to covertly employ third parties to conduct the hacks and supply the stolen information to the data analysis companies. If micro-targeting of voters took place during the 2016 elections, as a growing body of evidence suggests, then there has to be a connection between the micro-targeting and the Russian hacks of voter registration files that took place in 22 states. Some information sharing between the campaign and third party hackers would be required to assure that the information to be obtained is useful.

It is still highly speculative, but not unreasonable, to investigate the connections between the Trump campaign and Russian hacking of the voter registration databases. It is also reasonable to investigate whether any of the stolen information ended up in the databases of companies such as Cambridge Analytica.

Step 3. IDENTIFY INDIVIDUALS IN SWING DISTRICT WHOS VOTING BEHAVIOR CAN BE INFLUENCED BY MICRO-TARGETED MESSAGING: Once a voter's registration information and voting history is matched up with his or her BPS profile, it is a relatively straight forward step to distinguish implacable voters from casual or inconsistent voters. BPS profile characteristic can be used to identify a voters political leanings and the issues they might care about. Another characteristic that micro-targeting requires is that the target must be engaged in social media.

Step 4. BOMBARD TARGETED VOTERS ON THEIR SOCIAL MEDIA WITH SPECIALLY DESIGNED MESSAGES: In the final phase of the operation the object is to create an alternative social media landscape for the targeted voter by bombarding them with fake news stories, tweet storms and biased commentary designed to alter their perceptions of the political environment. These messages are tailored to elicit specific emotional reactions in the subjects. The messages are delivered by a virtual army of trolls (Russia has internet troll farms) and automated bots using fake Facebook or Twitter accounts. If the targeted voter ever shared any doubts about Hillary Clinton on social media, for example, the content of their micro-targeted messages might be designed to amplify those doubts and raise new ones. The purpose is to lessen the likelihood of that voter voting for Hillary. If a person ever "liked" a story about building the border wall, targeted messages might contain outrageous immigration stories to heighten fear and loathing toward immigrants, and to strengthen the voters motivation to vote for Donald Trump. By BPS profiling and micro-targeting people, it is the targeted voters who get manipulated, not the voting machines or the voting process itself.


RESULTS: The psychological and emotional impact of targeted propaganda messaging on individual voters will motivate some to go to the polls and vote for a candidate when they might have otherwise stayed home. Or the messaging may dispirit some voters and cause them to stay home when they would have otherwise cast their ballot. Researchers tell us that people manipulated by these technologies generally don't realize they are being manipulated. Because of the massive computing power available to these election data companies, and the unprecedented social media databases, identifying and targeting voters susceptible to targeted propaganda messaging is capable of directing these attacks on many thousands of voters just before an election. Flipping whole election through this process may be possible. Did micro-targeting flip the 2016 Presidential election to Donald Trump's win? No one knows yet, in part because it is so difficult to prove.

It is my belief that the state voter registration hacks were not done to disenfranchise voters at the polls, but to supplement data needed in order to identify and to micro-target low malleable voters with propaganda messaging. I also suspect targeting information was provided to the Russian hackers who broke into the state voter registration files. I don't know if these are crimes. I certainly hope they are, and I hope the Justice Department Probe is pursuing this line of investigation.