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Channel 4: Cambridge Analytica Execs Boast of Entrapping Politicians, Swaying Elections

HeadlineMar 20, 2018

A Channel 4 News investigation has revealed executives from the company Cambridge Analytica boasting about entrapping politicians and launching fake news campaigns in order to sway elections around the world.

The revelations come only days after it was revealed Cambridge Analytica harvested the data of more than 50 million Facebook users without their permission in efforts to sway voters to support President Donald Trump. Cambridge Analytica was founded by billionaire Robert Mercer and Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon of Breitbart News.

On Monday, Channel 4 News broadcast videos it secretly recorded of Cambridge Analytica executives talking about entrapping politicians by sending sex workers to seduce them or sending people posing as developers to propose a bribe. This is a clip of the Channel 4 News report, in which the reporter went undercover, posing as a potential client in order to reveal Cambridge Analytica’s tactics. The video features Cambridge Analytica head Alexander Nix and executive Mark Turnbull, but it begins with narration.

Narrator: “Prepared, it seems, to ruin their clients’ opponents through handouts and honey traps.”

Alexander Nix: “We’ll send some girls around to the candidate’s house.”

Narrator: “Through sex, secrets and spies.”

Mark Turnbull: “I know people who used to work for MI5, MI6.”

Narrator: “Old-style tactics wedded to the new.”

Mark Turnbull: “We just put information into the bloodstream of the internet and then—and then watch it grow.”

The Channel 4 News exposé comes as Facebook’s stock plummeted on Monday following the revelations about how Cambridge Analytica harvested its data in order to launch targeted political ads aimed at carrying out Robert Mercer’s far-right political agenda and helping President Trump win the 2016 election. The reports have spurred calls for increased regulation of Facebook.

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