A P2P mobile app developed by a Ukrainian military veteran and funded by American hedge fund magnate and close associate of Cambridge Analytica backer, Robert Mercer, has been rebranded and repurposed to serve as a contact tracing tool in the “fight” against the COVID-19 pandemic and public safety emergencies, such as hurricanes and other natural disasters.…

The New York Times has painted a 5,300-word picture of an out-of-control Facebook’s desperate and incompetent damage control measures in the wake of multiple scandals. Based on interviews with over 50 current and former company executives, lawmakers, government officials, lobbyists and congressional staff members – most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity – the Times illustrates how Facebook resorted to mercenary…

After reporting earlier this month that the Securities and Exchange Commission had joined the federal investigation into Facebook over its failure to disclose Cambridge Analytica’s misues of user data, the Wall Street Journal revealed on Thursday exactly what the agency is investigating. In keeping with its mission to police securities markets, the SEC is looking into whether Facebook’s failure…

The backlash against high-tech’s privacy-invading business model is growing—but one hard-hit Silicon Valley institution, Facebook, announced a potentially far-reaching reform late on Wednesday. Over a 24-hour period, it appears that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg went from endorsing, “in spirit,” soon-to-take-effect European Union privacy rules, to committing that Facebook will implement the EU rules across its global…

It was a bit over four years ago that journalist Glenn Greenwald reported that British ‘intelligence,’ GCHQ, had developed a program to spread politically targeted disinformation over the internet. The revelation came from a presentation made to the ‘Five Eyes alliance,’ which includes the NSA and was released by Edward Snowden. In the context of Federal and commercial data collection,…

The Gulf War Did Not Take Place. This audacious claim was made by the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard in March 1991, only two months after NATO forces had rained explosives on Iraq, shedding the blood of more than a hundred thousand people. To understand Cambridge Analytica and its parent firm, Strategic Communication Laboratories, we need…

MENLO PARK, CALIFORNIA — Facebook continues to face an unprecedented crisis of plunging share prices, investor lawsuits, calls for government investigations, and a consumer boycott following the revelation that a massive trove of user information was taken without authorization by right-wing political operatives who engaged in a campaign of “psychographic targeting” against U.S. voters. The…