He wants your data — and that's a threat to democracy

It’s sobering to see what fighting for free speech and democracy can really mean. In Belarus, people are risking their lives in peaceful protests for a fair election, while President Lukashenko brandishes an assault rifle. In Russia,  Alexei Navalny, the opposition leader and fierce critic of Vladimir Putin, was poisoned so severely that he fell into a coma and was taken to Germany for treatment. In Hong Kong, 74-year-old Jimmy Lai owner of newspaper the Apple Daily was arrested by Chinese Officials on allegations of foreign collusion and labelled a “genuine traitor”.

In Turkey, Erdogan has used coronavirus powers to arrest hundreds of social media posters with whom he disagrees. In Hungary, Index, which was one of the flagship outlets of independent reporting and critical of the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban, has set its independence barometer to “in danger”, to signal what it calls external attempts to sway its content. Too popular and powerful to be simply shut down, a pro-Orban supporter just bought it. In July, Index’s editor-in-chief was fired. Two days later 70 staff walked out in protest. Hungary’s six largest opposition parties have agreed not to stand against each other at the next election. More important than them winning is their desire to get Hungary’s free speech and democracy back by getting Orban out.

These people are risking their lives and fighting for free speech and democracy. At the other end of the spectrum, free speech is being hijacked to peddle fake political news for profit. Mark Zuckerberg frequently uses free speech as a flag of convenience to keep the revenue coming in, including from political advertising. Zuckerberg recently said “Our policy is that we do not fact-check politicians’ speech. And the reason for that is that we believe that in a democracy it is important that people can see for themselves what politicians are saying”. This is the same Zuckerberg who via Cambridge Analytica allowed the personal data from 87 million Facebook profiles to be harvested for political campaigning purposes in the US elections.

The social media revolution was meant to empower free speech and democracy. It led to things like the Arab Spring. That same free speech has now been pirated by the politics of fake news. In the 2019 UK election, First Draft, a project “to fight mis- and disinformation online,” found that 88 per cent of ads posted by the Conservatives in their campaign contained misleading content. Over 500 ads included claims that the Conservatives would create jobs for 50,000 more nurses. More than 5,000 ads claimed that the party would build 40 new hospitals. Both claims have been labelled as misleading by the fact checker. We should also remember how the Tories rebranded the Conservative party Twitter account as “FactcheckUK” during a televised election debate between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn.

The modern political campaigner now weighs up and discovers what makes you angry and then pokes at it with a sharp stick. Manipulated stories are amplified via friendly media. Funded think tanks add faux authority. Facts that don’t fit are airbrushed out. Then this content goes out into social media to nudge people to do something, or to capture their data for later use. The days of political campaigning being confined to elections are long gone. Joseph Goebbels, the chief propaganda minister for the Nazi Party once said, “Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the Government can play”. Now imagine what Goebbels would have done if Facebook had existed and he had the keys to your data.

The Independent revealed recently that the Conservatives had been running an under-the-radar online advertising campaign targeting Labour MPs in marginal seats over immigration. Adverts that began running on the 1^st July were shown to Facebook users in 19 marginal constituencies. Voters in seats like Bedford, which Labour held by just 145 votes at the last election were told “Your MP just voted against ending free movement”. The truth was that yes, Labour had decided to vote against the government’s immigration bill at the start of the month — but it actually opposed the bill over visa restrictions on care workers. Those who responded to the anti-immigration bait were stored away to be used in a future election campaign.

The top 100 fake news stories on Facebook were viewed over 150 million times in the US in 2019. Among two of the top 10 fake news stories were: “Joe Biden calls Trump supporters ‘Dregs of Society'”; and “Democrats vote to enhance Med Care for Illegals now, vote down Vets waiting 10 years for same service”. Is that really what political campaigning has become?

The Bannon Playbook is the script that has helped fuel the rise of populist politics and campaigning all over the world. Bannon’s “Deep State” enemy in the US finds its counterpart in Cummings’s “Blob” in the UK. For the negative campaigning against Jeremy Corbyn in the UK elections, check the playbook against Hilary Clinton. The Bannon Playbook is the new version of George Orwell’s Animal Farm — but it’s Animal Farm 2.0. Cummings wasn’t the first one (or the only one) to leverage fear of immigration, nationalism and to attack the control and bureaucracy of the state.

Bannon laid the groundwork that Cummings is now building upon and his new edifice has two new features. It includes the passing of control and ownership of your data to be manipulated or sold for political benefit. News that the government is considering introducing an ID card scheme fits uneasily well with this picture. It runs alongside a power grab of control over institutions and access to information. Cummings is not only increasing his ability to manipulate the truth — but also removing anyone who might speak truth back to power.

The responsibility for government use of data is also being transferred from the Department for Digital Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) to the Cabinet Office (Dominic Cummings). We are entrusting the use of this data to someone who faked his own blog. Someone who had to be threatened with legal action before it was revealed that the NHS coronavirus contract for Faculty (an AI and data company that worked with Dominic Cummings on Vote Leave) could train AI models on the data, and profit from the deal. Cummings associate and founder of Palantir, Peter Thiel, was also handed data linked to coronavirus without any due diligence. Thiel is a billionaire Trump supporter and someone who once famously wrote: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible”.

My barometer for free speech and democracy went red when I heard about the abolition of Public Health England and the creation of a new agency under Dame Dido Harding. The fact that it is being done before we have even had an inquiry into the handling of coronavirus is astounding.

Britain was ranked 33rd in the 2019 World Press Freedom Index. This makes it one of the worst-ranked western European countries on the list. If you want to live in a political democracy at the top of the list the answer is simple — move to Scandinavia. Scandinavian countries top the list for press freedom. They also top the list of countries where the people themselves are most resistant to fake news.

In Scandinavian countries freedom of expression is written into their constitutions. The Swedish constitution can’t be changed by any one government. Two separate votes are needed after two separate elections, or a referendum and an election are needed. Protecting freedom of speech also aligns with transparency and openness in the releasing of government decision making, data and information. The UK’s selective reporting of track and trace data, the cronyism and lack of due diligence on the handing out of coronavirus contracts, or the delaying of the “Russia Report” would be unimaginable in Scandinavia.

If we can’t make Facebook or Dominic Cummings more accountable, we can do what Finland does and give our people the guidance they need to spot fake news. Finland teaches its people critical thinking, starting in primary schools. It extends out from the Prime Minister’s office, which has trained thousands of civil servants, journalists, teachers and librarians over the past three years. People learn the skills and abilities for themselves to spot misinformation, or more innocent mistakes; disinformation, or lies and hoaxes that are spread deliberately to deceive; and malinformation, or gossip, which maybe correct but is intended to harm. Finland is now rated by Media Literacy Index for 2019 by the Open Society Institute as the most resistant nation of 35 European countries to fake news.

If we allow ourselves to go ever deeper into our latest Animal Farm scenario, it doesn’t end well. Countries that continue down the path towards lower media literacy are shown to have higher corruption and lower levels of trust in society. We can choose an alternative route. Scandinavia shows there are real ways to empower people and in the process reboot the value of freedom of expression and our democracy. Now all we need to do is persuade Boris Johnson… or is it Dominic Cummings?