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Rising Powers Initiative - Sigur Center for Asian Studies
Policy Alert #162 - April 11, 2018
Rising Powers Unnerved by Cambridge Analytica Scandal
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On March 17, 2018, the
New York Times
and
Observer
broke the news on Cambridge Analytica's use of an estimated 85 million Facebook users' personal information that was "scraped" without authorization in its public relations services--specifically in its dealings with political campaigns. Although the lion's share of impacted users were American, according to initial Facebook's estimates,
over 560,000 Indian and 443,000 Brazilian users' data was leaked
. The scandal has prompted new debates on individuals' rights to privacy as well as their governments' roles in protecting them from violations. In this week's Policy Alert, we survey this ongoing dialogue within the Rising Powers.
INDIA
- In an editorial, the business-focused Economic Times called upon the Indian Election Commission to "mandate all political advertisements online to disclose the identity of those paying for political ads, alongside the ad itself. And the expenditure on ads must count as part of a party's poll expenditure."
- The liberal Hindustan Times demanded regulations to protect personal information: "For India, the big message from all this is the pressing need for a comprehensive and contemporary data-protection and privacy law. Data is the new oil, but the emergent digital business can do without robber barons."
- The pro-government Daily Pioneer argued that "machines are truly taking over democracy." Although the Pioneer admitted that politicians and their campaign managers in India "have always had access to" any information that might be useful, the impact was mitigated by the reliance on "manual" human labor to be useful. In another article, the Pioneer took aim at Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerburg, who has been personally criticized for his company's initial silence to the breaking of the scandal: "Facebook needs to be regulated, not just in India but across the [sic] world and maybe just maybe, Facebook's board needs to find a better person to run the company."
- The centrist Times of India also had plenty to say about the scandal. The paper echoed calls for increased regulation of tech platforms, "The time has come for India to take more control of its digital infrastructure and ensure Indian tech companies have a level playing field, rather than leave it to monopoly foreign platforms. This might mean paying for some services, or relying on open-source models. It will definitely require regulators to step up, and ask technology companies to be more transparent about their code, their privacy practices as well as where they pay their taxes." The Times used the topicality of fake news to criticize Science and Technology Minister Harsh Vardhan for "falling into the fake news trap" regarding his comments that the "Vedas might contain a theory superior to Albert Einstein's famous equation E=mc2": "Vardhan, as science and technology minister, should himself be educating people about fake online information." The Times lambasted the PIB's "misguided war on 'fake news'," arguing that "Eliminating fake news entirely is a utopian project, and attempts to establish utopias in real life result in totalitarian dystopias."
CHINA
JAPAN
BRAZIL
- The online portal Uo lreported that Cambridge Analytica executive staff admitted that the firm established a branch in Brazil in 2017 and was planning to begin operations in 2018 with the intention of working as part this year's country elections in October. However, after the release of the scandal, the Brazilian consulting firm that was associated to Cambridge Analytica stated that they ended up their partnership.
- The O Globo newspaper emphasized the scale of the leak for Brazil's 443,000 impacted users and the allegations that the firm used this illegally obtained data in the 2016 US presidential election. O Globo cited a statement by a Facebook spokesperson that all impacted users are expected to be notified regarding the issue.
- An editorial in Epoca magazine pointed to the international turbulence involving Facebook and Cambridge Analytica and concluded that the role of digital media and user data in political campaigns is a trend that will remain and will undoubtedly change the traditional means by which politicians strategize in electoral races.
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