Cambridge Analytica Scandal: The TT Connection

WHO STOLE THE COOKIE FROM THE COOKIE JAR...

Cambridge Analytica Scandal:
The TT Connection
                                         “No.1 stole the cookie from the cookie jar
                                          Who Me? Not me?
                                          Couldn’t be. Then Who?”
Childhood games and rhymes provide us with an innocence and mellowness that reality can never do.
A rush of statements over the Easter weekend, when the Christian world celebrated resurrection, took on a tinge of déjà vu, calling to mind the old Who Stole the Cookie hand-clapping game.
Though it began earlier, things got intense once the learned AG read a statement in Parliament expressing the concerns of the Government over “revelations” made by a whistleblowing initial designer of the Cambridge Analytica-Strategic Communication Laboratories-AggregateIQ (CA-SCL-AIQ) data mining capability of this web of companies.
According to whistle-blower Christopher Wylie (AIQ), the Canadian part of the CA web, worked on a project in T&T for a former Minister of National Security, the Ministry and Government and one political party, which involved attempting to harvest the data of this country’s population.
Documents released by him to the Canadian Government also allege that SCL-AIQ worked with another political party in 2010 and 2013 under contracts one of which involved a $200,000US payment to SCL or AIQ or CA.
On Monday 26 March (even before the AG’s announcement of an investigation to ‘protect citizens Constitutional right to private life) the UNC Leader mounted her party Forum platform to declare that “neither the party nor the previous administration had any dealings, engagements or contracts with Cambridge Analytica before 2010, post 2010, before 2015 or post 2015.”.
Who We, Not We…Couldn’t be …Then Who? The game was on (with much hand clapping to booth.
Well, Then Who? Became – Ask the COP.
Then the AG eagerly embraced the “fundamental right…to private life”, the same right he announced ‘did not exist’ when he piloted legislation that would allow the state to intercept the communications of citizens in the SSA Amendment Bill.
Championing this newly discovered right and alleging data mining allegedly breaching TT law, the AG announced Government’s investigation on 25 March.
Then, a whole posse of players joined the ‘Who Stole the Cookie’ game.
Like the proverbial series of dominoes, a flurry of media releases and conferences as well as official statements took us right into Easter celebrations.
One former National Security Minister declared – Not Me…Couldn’t be.
One former member-party of the PP coalition declared – Not We…Couldn’t be…and ‘requested’ the Integrity Commission to investigate the PP and a bunch of Ministries for alleged data mining, “violation of social media users’ privacy and ‘whether any public funds were used.
The Integrity Commission was also ‘requested’ to investigate if the alleged illegally obtained information was used by any political party.
Well, the Integrity Commission which does nothing about holders of public office who have failed to submit compulsory annual statements of their assets except to ‘name and shame’ by publishing a newspaper pull-out, is suddenly deemed to have powers to investigate political parties.
As my bajan cousins would say …Wuhloss! Powers you know they don’t have, you somehow want us to believe they do.
But, we digress.
Another former member party of the PP coalition which the whistleblower alleges SCL-AQ worked for in 2010 and 2013, not wanting to be left out of the game, declares – Not We...Couldn’t be…Then Who?
Not we and that transatlantic CA-SCL-AQ web. But, just in case is some ah we, they were on a ‘frolic of their own’.
A new feature injected into the Who Stole the Cookie game was the generous use of the new line – Distraction, Distraction!
So, on the one hand, we have a new love for the fundamental right of citizens to privacy and possible new roundtable alliances in its defense.
And, on the other we have the ‘it couldn’t be me/we’ and ‘distraction’ lyrical lines inserted into our old childhood game.
At the end of all the plausible denials, allegations abound and an investigation to protect our ‘fundamental privacy right’ and the misuse of private information for political purposes is underway by a Government formed by a party.
That party-in-power, which sends ‘foot-soldiers’ to our homes to find out if we voting for Dem every election; who seek to determine our private information as to whom we will cast our vote for, miraculously now wants us to believe that they are defending us against the use of private information for political purposes. Really?!
At the same time, the very Government has no problem with all kinds of transnational companies mining our data when we access their websites using ‘cookies’ (of all things) and other devices for commercial purposes.
Data mining to make profit is ok. Data mining for political purposes is bad.
This contradiction and other issues behind the Cambridge Analytica scandal, we, as part of the body politic in TT, we the citizens whose right to privacy is being abused daily by the international conglomerates, we must carefully study, analyse and get to the heart of what is the Real Issue.

Clyde Weatherhead
A Citizen Fighting for
Democratic Renewal
of our Society
April 3, 2018