Cambridge Analytica staff set up new firm | Hacker News Reader

Cambridge Analytica staff set up new firm

bbc.co.uk

118 pointsedward19 comments

This can't be a surprise. A lot of firms in the professional services sector have no real assets, just the knowledge and relationships held by their staff. Bankruptcy doesn't transfer such things to creditors, and legal rulings stick with the old entity.

This is an example of leaks in the corporation="legal person" abstraction, the "intangible assets" abstraction.. or it's twin, IP. Some "stuff" is not like other "stuff".

Cambridge Analytica -> Auspex

Blackwater -> Xe Services

Operating in Africa, no less.

Xe Services -> Academi

I think their value comes from the collected data of Facebook profiles. If they just copy the data and their trained models, they essentially just use the IP that brought them into that mess in the first place.

All the knowledge doesn't help them, they'll need to use their models which they've developed at CA. Otherwise they can know a lot about machine learning and statistical methods, but don't have the data to train their models. I think it will be revealed that they just use the same data. Which is borderline illegal, IMO.

> they'll need to use their models which they've developed at CA

This is what drove me to quit FB many years ago. They kept resetting my privacy prefs, which most considered a minor annoyance. "Just change it back, big deal."

The thing is that this citizen profiling data lives on until you die. Most people don't change their basic beliefs and interests very often. A bad actor only needs one opportunity to profile you for life.

Their psychographic model was hugely overblown. A couple of Facebook likes do not mean they suddenly know the path to change your mind with some ads. They were just a political dirty tricks operative.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/19/cambridge-an...

In the article you've linked, the whistleblower says: "the company itself was founded on using Facebook data" (watch at minute 09:00).

Their models might not be the most accurate, but they are a big part of their success. + all those dirty tricks they've pulled off.

Not especially borderline. That they were involved with the prior company doesn't make it any less illegal to take its intellectual property.

I didn't want to say this for legal reasons.

My personal opinion is that there will be a high probability that they use data which they've obtained illegally.

What did people think they were going to do just give up and go work on a construction site or maybe work at McDonald's

This is why people need to be punished, not just companies.

Another one? They already started emerdata.

> The company was set up by Ahmed Al-Khatib, a former director of Emerdata

If only LinkedIn allowed us to give these people negative endorsements ...

Nothing stops you from creating a quick website with details, screenshots, and good SEO to show up in Google.

Yeah, but Google allows one to issue a request for removal of a URL.

(Also, I'm not sure this would be the best way to deal with people like this, and I guess it would need more thought.)

If you own the URL. Others can only submit removal requests if the content no longer exists.

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