Hacker News Reader

Comment by zzzeek | Hacker News Reader

the issue would be if it were provided by a foreign entity without compensation so that it is essentially a campaign donation, or if a foreign entity is found to be in a strategic role for a US campaign, which violates US election law.

See http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/exclusive-cambridge-analytica... for a story today breaking on this.

View on HN

As I understand it, these aren't foreign apps gifted to a US campaign, this is software from a subcontractor of Cambridge Analytica?

Whether CA CEO Nix as a foreign national played a key strategic role is a different, perhaps thornier, issue.

There's a lot more about the kinds of legal trouble this software implies in the EU here: https://gizmodo.com/aggregateiq-created-cambridge-analyticas... this has a lot to do with Brexit.

Sure, but the thrust of this data release wasn't exactly "perhaps there was improper coordination of marketing funds between Brexit campaign groups".

Frankly, I'm just amazed at the amount of effort that continues to go into locating a smoking gun and a technical devious explanation for Trump/Brexit success beyond "a lot of people really are unhappy with the status quo".

HN is really fixated on the idea that the current political situation is somehow un-extraordinary. As has been pointed out, the hatred that Repbulicans had for all eight years of Obama cannot be overstated, yet nothing like what is happening now with apparent election interference by Russia was noted at all. Is there really that much of a massive left-wing conspiracy, that nobody questioned Obama's presidency beyond laughable "birther" claims yet is able to produce an enormous, Republican-led federal investigation into the current president based on nothing, yet despite this massive reach it somehow it allowed DT to be elected president in the first place? Here's a place where Occam's Razor might work. What is more likely - that DT is really a dishonest grifter who foolishly played into the hands of the Russian intelligence agents a bit too much, or that he is truly some kind of Ronald Reagan-esque figure and all 30-odd intelligence agencies pointing to Russia as an instigator are just making it up at the behest of DNC dark actors?

> HN is really fixated on the idea that the current political situation is somehow un-extraordinary.

I don't think that's true; I think there is a highly vocal set of people on HN fixated on selling that idea, but I don't think HN as a whole is.

I'm replying to one just above. Trump won because "a lot of people really are unhappy with the status quo". Really, that's it ? Despite the largest popular vote loss for an electoral college winner in history? All the things Mueller notes in his indictments at https://www.justice.gov/file/1035477/download, wouldn't matter; social media being gamed by a foreign adversary, targeted to exactly those regions for which the electoral college would need to be manipulated as documented in the indictment is provably completely irrelevant to the election results.

edit: just on this thread:

"As someone who didn't vote for Trump, and doesn't support him, that's one of the (many) things I find so disheartening about this entire process. Pretending that Trump is somehow a unique problem that needs to be solved rather just another corrupt politician is to whitewash the rest of the crooks running our government. It isn't an accident that Trump is being portrayed as a unique menace. The levers of power in our government (and their minions in media) are very careful to paint the picture of this being an aberration."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16681901 - e.g. this person is picking the conspiracy theory answer of occam's razor. That it really is a wild and massive left/right wing conspiracy to make all this happen, controlling both houses of congress, the justice department, and all media (including Fox who has to play the tricky hand of being against the investigations, yet is unable to produce a compelling reason why they should actually be ended), yet DT was elected in the first place.

"I'm not picking on or defending anyone, I'm just weary of the last years' worth of articles that keep claiming "smoking guns." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16681776

these come out immediately on every story about this.

Dude Obama's team was the first to spearhead true micro targeting. Their Voter Activation Network (VAN) was even bought by the Liberal Party of Canada, and forms the core of their Liberalist voter tracking software.

did they have foreign nationals advising their campaign? because using facebook APIs is not the issue. breaking federal election law is.

They all do. I have Canadian friends I know from all the parties working on campaigns. They're basically Americans, just looking for career opportunities. They are not foreign agents with a foreign agenda, and this is not the scandal you are making it out to be.

>the issue would be if it were provided by a foreign entity without compensation so that it is essentially a campaign donation

Have you ever tried to write off open source work as a donation? I don't think this works the way you want it to. Software isn't a donation. Software is speech. Phil Zimmerman proved that rather nicely when he printed PGP as a book.

U.S. federal election law is pretty clear on this. If a company that is normally paid for a service provides that service to a federal election campaign for free, it counts as material support of that campaign, at the value that that service would have cost at regular price.

> Have you ever tried to write off open source work as a donation? I don't think this works the way you want it to. Software isn't a donation.

If you typically charge for your software development time hourly, and you provide 10 hours of software development to a 501(c)3, you indeed can write that off as a donation. You will just need a receipt from the org to which you donated your time.

You can't write off typical open source work as a donation because you're not donating anything. Under most open source licenses you keep your IP, but provide a free license to anyone who downloads the code. Even if a nonprofit uses your code, you set the price to $0.00, so there's nothing to write off.

Having run a US political campaign, this isn't showing confidence that you understand the issue. You're blurring two, different definitions of donation: the IRS and FEC meanings. In the past, I've had to count website or technical work as an in-kind donation, especially if I would normally charge.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com