US Politics Mega-thread - Page 10090

On March 20 2018 01:40 GreenHorizons wrote:


Why do you think a serial bomber who's killed people and injured others on the loose isn't getting more media attention. There's no reason to believe there isn't another bomb that's going to explode today or tomorrow, or near one of your friends/families house tomorrow?

If there was a serial bomber in NYC do you think it would get the same level of attention as this? I'm wondering why or why not? I mean what's to say NYC isn't his next target?

On March 20 2018 01:53 brian wrote:


i think for all the same reasons we have yet to start discussing it here. nationally, it has been touched on fairly briefly. there’s really nothing to discuss(with regards to a literal back and forth. not that we don’t need to know it,) other than to put the news out there (which is also exactly why it’s a bad story for a forum in particular.)

there is every reason to expect there WILL be another bomb going off near my friends and family and it’s something i am worried about constantly.

and again, all this on the non-discussion without anything on the actual bombings hopefully brought you around to why it’s not conducive to discussion in its own right.

for example, did you hear about the long island serial killer? if you had, a quick search here on the forums says nobody talked about it. he too remains at-large.

On March 20 2018 02:00 TheTenthDoc wrote:
At least from a societal standpoint it's probably better not to hear about things like this. It's not like there's anything an individual can do to deal with it, especially if the bomber is escalating and changing techniques as Sunday's bombings indicate, and media attention might only make him escalate faster.

Not that modern media are generally preoccupied with what's best for society, but still.

On March 20 2018 02:01 GreenHorizons wrote:


I'd love to talk about the connection between the long island serial killer not being a well known figure worthy of discussion here and why I think the coverage of this serial bomber matter.

While I think it's tangential (the long island serial killer themselves) at the moment, I think that the social value of the victims has a LOT to do with the types of coverage we see. That's why I'm skeptical a bombing in Greenwich wouldn't be leading every program let alone three in less than 2 weeks.

WASHINGTON — Facebook on Sunday faced a backlash about how it protects user data, as American and British lawmakers demanded that it explain how a political data firm with links to President Trump’s 2016 campaign was able to harvest private information from more than 50 million Facebook profiles without the social network’s alerting users.

Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, a Democratic member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, went so far as to press for Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, to appear before the panel to explain what the social network knew about the misuse of its data “to target political advertising and manipulate voters.”

The calls for greater scrutiny followed reports on Saturday in The New York Times and The Observer of London that Cambridge Analytica, a political data firm founded by Stephen K. Bannon and Robert Mercer, the wealthy Republican donor, had used the Facebook data to develop methods that it claimed could identify the personalities of individual American voters and influence their behavior. The firm’s so-called psychographic modeling underpinned its work for the Trump campaign in 2016, though many have questioned the effectiveness of its techniques.

But Facebook did not inform users whose data had been harvested. The lack of disclosure could violate laws in Britain and in many American states.

Damian Collins, a Conservative lawmaker in Britain who is leading a parliamentary inquiry into fake news and Russian meddling in the country’s referendum to leave the European Union, said this weekend that he, too, would call on Mr. Zuckerberg or another top executive to testify. The social network sent executives who handle policy matters to answer questions at an earlier hearing in February.

“It is not acceptable that they have previously sent witnesses who seek to avoid answering difficult questions by claiming not to know the answers,” Mr. Collins said in a statement. “This also creates a false reassurance that Facebook’s stated policies are always robust and effectively policed.”

The fallout from the reports added to questions Facebook was already confronting over the use of its platform by those seeking to spread Russian propaganda and fake news. The social media giant has grappled with the criticism over the issue for much of the past year, and struggled to keep public opinion on its side.

Over the weekend, Facebook was on the defensive. Top executives took to Twitter to argue that the company’s protections had not been breached, and that Facebook was thus not at fault.

“This was unequivocally not a data breach,” tweeted Andrew Bosworth, a Facebook executive. “No systems were infiltrated, no passwords or information were stolen or hacked.”

The data was obtained in 2014, when Cambridge Analytica, through an outside researcher, paid users small sums to take a personality quiz and download an app, which would scrape some private information from their profiles and from those of their friends — activity that Facebook permitted at the time. The approach was based on a technique pioneered at Cambridge University by data scientists who claimed it could reveal more about a person than even their parents or romantic partners knew.

The researcher hired by Cambridge Analytica, Alexandr Kogan, told Facebook and his app’s users that he was collecting information for academic purposes, not for a political data firm owned by a wealthy conservative. Facebook did nothing to verify how the information was being used.

Mr. Bosworth argued on Twitter that a violation had been committed only by Cambridge Analytica and Mr. Kogan, whose app “did not follow the data agreements.”

Facebook’s chief security officer, Alex Stamos, issued a similar defense in a series of tweets that have since been deleted.

“The recent Cambridge Analytica stories by the NY Times and The Guardian are important and powerful, but it is incorrect to call this a ‘breach’ under any reasonable definition of the term,” Mr. Stamos tweeted.

The explanation did little, however, to stem the tide of anger as independent researchers pointed out that many others could have similarly misused Facebook data.

“Facebook’s platform must protect us from predatory behavior,” wrote a Twitter user named Evan Baily, “or we can’t and shouldn’t trust the platform.”

Jonathan Albright, research director at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, wrote that the lack oversight and transparency into what sort of data Facebook collected on its users meant that the company’s platform could continue to be exploited.

“Unethical people will always do bad things when we make it easy for them and there are few — if any — lasting repercussions,” Mr. Albright said.

Paul Grewal, a vice president and deputy general counsel at Facebook, said in a statement that the company was looking into whether the data in question still existed. “That is where our focus lies as we remain committed to vigorously enforcing our policies to protect people’s information,” he said.

This month, The Times viewed a set of raw data from the profiles Cambridge Analytica obtained. And a former employee of the data firm described having recently seen hundreds of gigabytes of unencrypted data files on Cambridge servers.

There were also questions from technology experts and others about Facebook’s reaction to the news reports by The Times and The Observer, especially its decision to suspend the account of Christopher Wylie, a data expert who oversaw Cambridge Analytica’s data harvesting — but also spoke out about it to the two news organizations.

On Friday, Facebook threatened to sue The Observer to stop it from publishing, the newspaper’s outgoing editor, John Mulholland, said on Twitter.

Then, late Friday evening, Facebook posted a statement that expressed alarm at the data leak. The company promised to take action and announced that it was suspending the accounts of Cambridge Analytica, Mr. Kogan and Mr. Wylie.

By then, Facebook had learned that Mr. Wylie, who left Cambridge Analytica in 2014, was a named source for the news reports.

In a statement on Sunday, Mr. Wylie described himself as “a curious and naïve 23-year-old,” when he first went to work for Cambridge Analytica.

“I feel a sense of regret every day when I see where they have helped take our world,” he added. “I need to make amends, and that’s why I’m coming forward.”

His lawyer, Tamsin Allen, said that last week Mr. Wylie offered to help Facebook recover the missing data.

Now, though, Facebook said on Sunday, Mr. Wylie is refusing to cooperate with the company until the suspension is lifted — a move the social network is not willing to make because of his role in the data harvesting.

In both Britain and the United States, lawmakers said that in the light of the new reports, they wanted fresh answers from both Facebook and Cambridge Analytica about how the data was obtained and what was done with it.

Mr. Collins, the British lawmaker, said he planned to call Alexander Nix, the chief executive of Cambridge Analytica, to return to Parliament and answer questions about testimony last month in which he claimed that the company never obtained or used Facebook data.

“It seems clear that he has deliberately misled the committee and Parliament,” Mr. Collins said.

In the United States, the attorney general of Massachusetts, Maura Healey, announced on Saturday that her office was opening an investigation. “Massachusetts residents deserve answers immediately from Facebook and Cambridge Analytica,” she said in a Twitter post that linked to the Times article.

Also on Saturday, the two top Congressional Democrats leading inquiries into Russian interference in the 2016 election — Senator Mark Warner of Virginia and Representative Adam Schiff of California — called for investigations of the Facebook data leak.

“This raises serious questions about the level of detail that Cambridge Analytica knew about users,” said Mr. Schiff, who is the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee.

On March 20 2018 02:28 TheLordofAwesome wrote:
Trump adds a new lawyer to his legal team!

https://twitter.com/amyfiscus/status/975778798200336385

On March 20 2018 02:14 brian wrote:


then i’m here to listen. greenwich and long island are basically interchangeable as far as a locale goes for victims, though the victims of the long island killer were generally prostitutes, so i’m sure this doesn’t really prove the point you’re making here. (or rather disprove it, hopefully you catch my drift here.)

i won’t say that the fact that the victims of the bombings until now being black is a non-issue, but i’m not ready to say that’s the sole reason it’s not being discussed. you still have yet to add anything to the bombing discussion itself. an enumerating of the facts is a conversation ender, not a starter. and this is a forum. that wraps this question for me, personally.

as far as journalism is concerned, here i’m ready to get into whether race/perceived importance of the victim matters. though i don’t know if i’m starting from the same position you are, i did see reporting on both my local TV and on the internet, though of course i can only back up one of those claims myself. but i think i can leave it to you to find the stories published on the 12th/13th from CNN and WaPo(these are just the two sources i read most often. judge me as needed.) i am ready to leave behind my own anecdote as anything of relevance though, i’m ready to believe i’m the one lucky audience member here.

as far as it only being a story today because the most recent victims are white(though you haven’t plainly said this yet, i am putting words in your mouth for now. acknowledged,) this is a claim you’d have the burden of proof on. this has not been my experience. i’m coincidentally on the wrong side of this experience for that argument. i had heard of the previous victims from WaPo, and didn’t know there had been more until your post.

as far as the extent of the investigation and search is concerned, yes, there should be a sizable manhunt going on. absolutely. though in this case i’m not sure this is related to the news coverage, as i think you’ve listed exactly why that was a bigger story at the time. if/when the Texas suspect has been identified (and if (s)he is actively on the run, i expect we’ll see a similar furor.

On March 20 2018 02:30 GreenHorizons wrote:



I think race plays a factor, but I think their economic value is a larger determinate of the coverage than race.

I think if 4 multi millionaires or 16-20 in the case of long island had been bombed or murdered and the suspect was still at large there would be a dramatically different reaction.

If they were billionaires there's no question it would be the only thing on the news all day every day.

I think that goes for Oprah as well as T Boone Pickens

The co-director of a company that harvested data from tens of millions of Facebook users before selling it to the controversial data analytics firms Cambridge Analytica is currently working for the tech giant as an in-house psychologist.

Joseph Chancellor was one of two founding directors of Global Science Research (GSR), the company that harvested Facebook data using a personality app under the guise of academic research and later shared the data with Cambridge Analytica.

He was hired to work at Facebook as a quantitative social psychologist around November 2015, roughly two months after leaving GSR, which had by then acquired data on millions of Facebook users.

Chancellor is still working as a researcher at Facebook’s Menlo Park headquarters in California, where psychologists frequently conduct research and experiments using the company’s vast trove of data on more than 2 billion users.

It is not known how much Chancellor knew of the operation to harvest the data of more than 50 million Facebook users and pass their information on to the company that went on to run data analytics for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

Chancellor was a director of GSR along with Aleksandr Kogan, a more senior Cambridge University psychologist who is said to have devised the scheme to harvest Facebook data from people who used a personality app that was ostensibly acquiring data for academic research.

On Friday, Facebook announced it had suspended both Kogan and Cambridge Analytica from using the platform, pending an investigation.

Facebook said in a statement Kogan “gained access to this information in a legitimate way and through the proper channels” but “did not subsequently abide by our rules” because he passed the information on to third parties. Kogan maintains that he did nothing illegal and had a “close working relationship” with Facebook.

Facebook appears to have taken no action against Chancellor – Kogan’s business partner at the time their company acquired the data, using an app called thisisyourdigitallife.

Cambridge Analytica – a company owned by the hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, and headed at the time by Trump’s key adviser Steve Bannon – used the data to build sophisticated psychological profiles of US voters.

Facebook’s deputy general counsel has described the data harvesting scheme as “a scam” and “a fraud”. He singled out Kogan, an assistant professor at Cambridge University, as having “lied to us and violated our platform policies” by passing the data on to Cambridge Analytica.

Facebook’s public statements have omitted any reference to GSR, the company Kogan incorporated in May 2014 with Chancellor, who at the time was a postdoctoral research assistant.

The Guardian asked Facebook several questions about its recruitment of Chancellor and any action it had taken in light of the data harvesting scam conducted by GSR. Facebook initially promised to respond to a set of questions by Sunday, but then said it had nothing to say on the matter. Chancellor did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

The psychologist, who is 38, is understood to have been a junior partner to Kogan, who oversaw GSR’s business dealings and then elicited the help of several of his students. One source with some knowledge of Chancellor’s role at the company described him as “just the data guy”.

However, both Kogan and Chancellor were listed as directors of GSR when it was founded and provided a “service address” in Harley Street, London.

The property – 29 Harley Street – reportedly operates as “as a large, ornate and prestigiously located postbox and answerphone” for some 2,159 companies that are registered from the address but locate their operations elsewhere. Though potentially secretive, there is nothing unlawful about this process.

In the months that followed the creation of GSR, the company worked in collaboration with Cambridge Analytica to pay hundreds of thousands of users to take the test as part of an agreement in which they agreed for their data to be collected for academic use.

However, the app also collected the information of the test-takers’ Facebook friends, leading to the accumulation of a data pool tens of millions strong. That data sold to Cambridge Analytica as part of a commercial agreement. Facebook’s “platform policy” allowed only collection of friends’ data to improve user experience in the app and barred it being sold on or used for advertising.

Chancellor resigned his directorship of GSR in September 2015, according to company records. He joined Facebook around November 2015, according to his LinkedIn profile.

The following month, the Guardian published the first story detailing how Kogan and Chancellor’s company had unethically sourced data that was then passed to Cambridge Analytica, which at the time was working for the presidential campaign of Ted Cruz.

Facebook appears to have taken no action against Chancellor at that stage. His role at Facebook was mentioned in a story by the Intercept 12 months ago. At that time, Facebook said in a statement: “The work that he did previously has no bearing on the work that he does at Facebook.”

Chancellor, who was conducting postdoctoral research at Cambridge University when GSR was set up, is understood to have been one of several students who Kogan involved in his project.

Since joining Facebook, some of Chancellor’s academic research has been published in peer-reviewed journals. However, the precise nature of his work for Facebook is unclear. The company employs many in-house social scientists to conduct research on the psychology of its users.

In 2014, Facebook was revealed to have conducted a vast experiment on users, without their consent, which entailed tweaking the amount of positive and negative content appearing on their feeds to see if the tech giant could manipulate some kind of “emotional contagion”.

Last year, leaked documents revealed how Facebook had told advertisers they had the capacity to monitor posts in real time and identify when teenage users were feeling “insecure”, “worthless” and “need a confidence boost”.

That kind of finite information is invaluable to advertisers – whether selling products or political candidates – as it helps them more effectively tailor and target their message to individual users on the platform.

Facebook’s ability to create granular profiles of its users has been at the very core of its business model, transforming the social media platform into one of the most profitable companies on the planet.

On March 20 2018 02:37 brian wrote:


well i’d like to start with an apology for my race assumption, though it leaves me confused why today would be the first day we hear about the austin bombers. as far as i know the two victims from yesterday were not wealthy.

and i won’t argue against that at all. celebrity draws views, i don’t think that’s particularly awful. people widely can relate more quickly to someone they ‘know’ on tv, which translates into ratings quickly.

if you want to argue that ratings shouldn’t be a driving force in news coverage i’m so on board, but i think ideology and practicality are at odds in this debate.

On March 20 2018 02:58 GreenHorizons wrote:


I added a random billionaire name because I don't think it's about celebrity. They could be one of the billionaires no one has heard of and would have gotten exponentially more attention as the first and only victim than the first three incidents victims combined.

I don't think race was the determining factor as to why we didn't hear about the first ones here and many people outside of Texas had heard very little about any potential developing patterns, but it is a part of why it's going to get a lot more attention now. It's more about being able to see yourself or people you care about as potential victims, plus the access you have. If Joe Scarborough was hit with a tine piece of shrapnel from a single bomb in NYC that killed no one, he'd be calling for every possible resource all day every day to find the person responsible after 1 bomb, with 1000 different reasons/ideas about why it happened. It wouldn't take 4, a new trigger, and some white victims for people to get serious about the potential this is a terrorist. Needless to say he's intentionally terrifying people, but 'terrorist' only applies if he proclaims specific political views. For instance the Planned Parenthood terrorist that shouted "no more baby parts" while killing people isn't considered a terrorist by many.

I also think the reaction from media and society to a serial bomber on the loose is interesting and worthy of discussion generally for the reasons mentioned and others even if you still disagree. Plus this is still a community. I care if you guys or someone you care about gets blown up by some asshole they aren't catching 3 weeks and 4 bombs later, even if I disagree with you constantly.

Those families could have bought national coverage if they were influential people with lots of resources regardless of their newsworthiness, I think that's a big deal and matters to our conceptions of justice.

On March 20 2018 03:05 brian wrote:

i would contend it is celebrity over wealth, but i don’t know if that’s a big enough difference to warrant the tangent, and that i think everything else you’re saying is more important, and i agree whole heartedly.

unfortunately this goes back to the last part of my last post in that ideology and practicality can’t be reconciled for me and i’m not clever enough to add anything myself.

On March 20 2018 02:59 iamthedave wrote:
So this Austin bomber... when does the big T word get used? Or is that reserved exclusively for people with a fondness for turbans?

On March 20 2018 02:01 CatharsisUT wrote:
As a Texan who went to school in Austin (see username...) I've followed the story very closely. Two reasons I wouldn't have thought to post it here. First, it seemed to stop after the first three attacks. Second, there wasn't much to talk about in terms of US politics. Initial reports were that they might be racially motivated, but could also have been personal attacks on people in a community. Yesterday's bomb using a trip-wire seems less targeted but who knows. Hard to have much discussion on this board (as opposed to the UT sports board I'm on where there is 6 pages of discussion, as there are posters who live in the neighborhood).

On March 20 2018 03:23 Danglars wrote:

There’s just too little known about the story to make it a story. If you’re in Texas, maybe this affects people you know or your family. If it’s the nation at large, there’s not much beyond disgust at the action the the desire that the perpetrator is caught.