Cambridge Analytica: “We did it in Mexico”.
Via El País (full original article here):
“We did it in Mexico.”
The words one of the chief executives of Cambridge Analytica, the elections consulting firm at the center of a data manipulation plot to boost the candidacy of Donald Trump in the 2018 United States Presidential campaign, are beinning to cast light on the company’s presence in Latin America’s second-largest country. Although Nix — secretly recorded as part of an investigation by British channel Channel 4 — only mentions Mexico once, the statement and the recent revelations of the company’s stategies raises questions about its operations in Mexico, which is preparing to hold its own presidential elections in July. So far there are many more questions than answers.
Records of Cambridge Analytica in Mexico date back to last year, when the Bloomberg news agency uncoverd a company representative in Mexico offering services in this years national elections. One of the executives of the company argued at that time that Mexican citizens were “indecisive and unmotivated”, which opened up for the company a “great opportunity” to “convince people to vote”.
Bloomberg also reported that another representative of the company had begun a year earlier recruiting data analysts in Mexico, appearing on social networks as a member of a firm that would be “the mastermind behind the Mexican elections.” At the time, according to the US agency, it was reported that the executives of the agency in Mexico were in contact with politicians and people close to the PAN.
In Mexico, the performance of Cambridge Analytica has been marked by discretion and stealth, characteristics of which its key executives boasted in the Channel 4video. On its website, for example, offices are mentioned in New York, Washington, London, Brazil and Malaysia, but none in Mexico. It remains to be seen if the company also used in the Latin American country the methods that caused one of the biggest global scandals of illegal data use.
see also: “Foreign Intrigue… Cambridge Analytica in Mexico?” Mexfiles, 24 January 2018
The Mex Files 
One wonders whether the employment of Cambridge Analytica in Mexico might run afoul of laws banning foreigners from participating in Mexican politics.
By itself, there’s nothing wrong or immoral in using data analytics to help a campaign. Where the problem lies in where and how you get the data, along with the appropriate disclosures and permissions.
It would seem that people (at last!) are beginning to realize that they are the product,not the customer, of these “free” online services.
Saludos,
Kim G
Redding, CA
Where we feel quite vindicated these days for never having signed up for FaceBook.