Cambridge Analytica: The April 3, 2018, DarkCyber Analysis Is Now Available

DarkCyber for April 3, 2018, is now available. The new program can be viewed at www.arnoldit.com/wordpress and on Vimeo at https://vimeo.com/262710424 .
 
This week’s program focuses on the Facebook, GSR, Cambridge Analytica data controversy. The 12 minute video addresses the role of GSR and the Cambridge professor who developed a personality profile app. The DarkCyber program outlines how raw social data is converted into actionable, psychographic “triggers.” By connecting individuals, groups, and super-groups with “hot buttons” and contentious political issues, behaviors can be influenced, often in an almost undetectable way.

The DarkCyber research team has assembled information from open source coverage of Cambridge Analytica and has created a generalized “workflow” for the Facebook-type data set. The outputs of the workflow are “triggers” which can be converted into shaped messages which are intended to influence behaviors of individuals, groiups, and super-groups.

The program explains how psychographic analyses differ from the more well known demographic analyses of Facebook data. The link analysis or social graph approach is illustrated in such a way that anyone can grasp the potential of this data outputs. The program includes a recommendation for software which anyone with basic programming skills can use to generate “graphs” of relationships, centers of influence, and individuals who are likely to take cues from these centers of influence.

Stephen E Arnold, producer of Dark Cyber and author of CyberOSINT: Next Generation Information Access and the Dark Web Notebook, said: “The systems and methods apparently used by Cambridge Analytica and the specialist firms supporting the company, are not unique. What triggered attention was the exposure of not-well-understood methods of leveraging social graph data. Cambridge Analytica has become the unwilling poster child for the application of propaganda techniques to contentious and controversial issues. For many years, intelligence organizations in many countries have used data analytics but not publicly. With the Cambridge Analytica media coverage and the subsequent media coverage, the social media genie’s magic will be difficogrult to put back into its bottle.”

The DarkCyber Cambridge Analytica program  is the first of a series of longer-form analyses of specific topics related to the Dark  Web and lesser known Internet services.

About Stephen E Arnold

Stephen E Arnold is the author of “Dark Web Notebook” and “CyberOSINT.” He has been named as a technology adviser to the UK based Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Human Trafficking and Child Sex Abuse.” Mr. Arnold also lectures to law enforcement and intelligence professionals attending the Telestrategies ISS conferences in Prague, Washington, DC, and Panama City, Panama. In recent months, he has shared his research with law enforcement and intelligence professionals in the US and Europe. His most recent lectures focus on deanonymizing chat and digital currency transactions. One hour and full day programs are available via webinars and on-site presentations.

Contact Information

Stuart Schram

Chief Technical Officer, ArnoldIT

Stephen E Arnold

Contact via E-mail