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nit, > Facebook is facing a slew of lawsuits and regulatory inquiries over privacy issues, including a U.S. Federal Trade Commission investigation into disclos

• awalton 8y ago
  > Cambridge Analytica is not defunct, but rather changed its name to Emerdata. Not technically correct, but basically the truth. Cambridge Analytica declared bankrupcy in May of last year and the creators of that company created Emerdata and rehired many previous employees of Cambridge Analytica. Their HQ is even in the same exact building. They're just playing the shell game, really. "Oh no, we're not the bad guys, we are just mostly made up of those old bad guys and do exactly the same thing in exactly the same way with the exact same location as those old guys... But, as you can clearly see, we have different bank account numbers and a different company name, so we're not the same thing at all."
  • snarf21 8y ago
    Just like Accenture did.... not a new playbook but memory fails.
    • ams6110 8y ago
      If you're thinking of Enron, Andersen Consulting and Arthur Andersen were even before then pretty much separate entities and in some cases were competitors. Andersen Consulting formally completed the separation from Arthur Andersen and became Accenture in 2000, a year or so before Arthur Andersen collapsed in the Enron scandal. Disclosure: Worked for Andersen Consulting early in my career.
  • NeedMoreTea 8y ago
    The trouble is, it works. Depressingly well. Every story out there is about Cambridge Analytica, only a tiny proportion have been written recently enough to mention the phoenix. Yet they often won't, or give entirely the wrong impression like TFA here (defunct - oh that's a relief it's all over then). The number of old pieces that have had an update is so low as to be effectively none. So we have to wait for the next scandal.
    • awalton 8y ago
      > The trouble is, it works. Depressingly well. It does... if countries allow it. There was either some fear that this was happening or deliberate intent to keeping this from happening with the case of North Korea's sanctions - my memory's a bit fuzzy since the class I took where this came up some many years ago. E.g. Some unethical people would setup a black exports shipping company to ship stuff to North Korea, and then when they got caught, they'd declare bankruptcy, liquidate hardware to some shell or holding company, shut that company down, create a new legal entity, rebuy all of the same equipment from the holding company, and restart the same old behavior. While the courts waste their time chasing defunct companies, the bad actors get to continue their bad behavior. This is just a new version of that game that's even easier since there are far fewer physical assets that need to be shelved or hidden (perhaps even none if the servers are all in someone's cloud). Countries have largely stopped this kind of sanction-avoidance behavior by arresting the people in charge, ceasing assets to prevent them from being relabeled under the new company, and freezing accounts to prevent recapitalization under these kinds of shell corporations, in addition to requiring strict compliance around interactions with these sanctions countries and business entities. tl;dr: the CA folks should be sitting in prison right now, and Facebook and Google should be sanctioned and require strict supervision in the way it shares data with its customers, to prevent this kind of microtargeted-electioneering-as-a-service. Laws like the GDPR won't actually stop anyone from collecting onerous data, since it basically only requires people to consent to it, and as we've seen with EULAs, people are willing to click through anything if it gives them the end result of using an application. The time for a law like that would have been literally 15-20 years ago, before companies like Facebook could tell you what someone's likely eaten for lunch or Target could tell when someone's gotten pregnant by their purchase histories. Unlikely we're going to be unringing that particular bell now...
  • etxm 8y ago
    > Well, actually...
• East-Link 8y ago
  >Cambridge Analytica is not defunct, but rather changed its name to Emerdata. It's too bad Reuters didn't get that part correct. That's not true, I used to work there. Everyone was laid off in July or so. I haven't heard of anyone joining Emerdata, and I do see those guys now and again. I know where all the technical people work. Emerdata was created before the media shitstorm to absorb all the pointless corporate entities that had been created within the SCL group over the years and were now mostly idle. A few of the people from Cambridge Analytica (or rather SCL elections) started a new political consultancy under the name Auspex International. So focus your conspiracies there if you must, noting: - They're pretty open about it being an operating business and having employees from CA - Very few of the higher-ups from SCL are involved, just one guy from the board I think. (He's a 20-something guy and wasn't even on the board til 2018. Bad timing!) - They haven't taken on any technical staff from CA; although they did try to early on, no one had any trouble finding a job that would be less of a headache. Please notice that you have engaged in lazy misinformation-spreading and you're participating a conspiracy theory. It's attractive to think that you're hot on the tail of a shadowy illuminati-esque group, but that's not the case. It was just an ad tech company with a few political clients and some snake oil regarding psychographics.
  • politician 8y ago
    > Please notice that you have engaged in lazy misinformation-spreading and you're participating a conspiracy theory. It's attractive to think that you're hot on the tail of a shadowy illuminati-esque group, but that's not the case. It was just an ad tech company with a few political clients and some snake oil regarding psychographics. To attack me as you have is both completely unnecessary and undermines your position. Indeed, it might even deepen folks' convictions that it is in the public's best interest that CA is well and truly shut down, and its employees closely scrutinized. However, as someone who felt the need to create an account specifically to make this statement, I suppose that you either don't understand HN norms of respectful conduct or don't particularly care. Yes, a basic search on "Cambridge Analytica Emerdata" yields reports that paint a conflicting story of whether the operation is indeed dead. Given their deeds and your statements, good riddance.
  • amorroxic 8y ago
• cobbzilla 8y ago
  Funny, I went looking for that quote and the word ‘defunct’ seems to have been removed. Maybe TheReg reads HN.