The Information Commission this week completed its long-running and comprehensive three-year investigation into reports that Cambridge Analytica and SCL Elections Ltd swung the results of the 2016 Brexit Referendum. The report makes tough reading for all those who peddled this conspiracy theory and those who pushed it so energetically in the media to explain and excuse how their side lost the EU referendum as well as who ultimately sought to undermine the democratic vote, exactly what they were accusing others of doing.
The investigation had access to 42 computers, 31 servers, 700 TB of data holding over 300,000 documents plus other material held in paper form, or from the Cloud.
The Office of the Information Commissioner concluded that there was no evidence that Cambridge Analytica or SCL were involved in the EU Referendum campaign in the UK and also confirmed that they failed to identify any significant breaches of privacy, electronic marketing regulations, and data protection legislation that met the threshold for formal regulatory action.
With regard to Russian involvement, the Commissioner was equally unequivocal stating that “We did not find any additional evidence of Russian involvement in our analysis material.”
It will be interesting to see if the BBC and others who repeated the conspiracy theorists’ (or sore losers’) claims so enthusiastically will now report with matching vigor their debunking.
With the advent of social media and the internet, it has never been truer that ”a lie can be half-way round the world before the truth has got its boots on.”
The truth, however hard for the “Remainer elite” to come to terms with, is that a majority of the UK electorate wanted to leave the European Union. Given the chance, they simply voted for it. That’s democracy in action.
In a highly interconnected world, it is clear that the United States does not have a monopoly on Fake News. The problem is that, with the Presidential Election in November, the public does not have three years to come to the conclusion of who is spouting it.
READ MORE FROM ANDREW BRIDGEN MP
MP Andrew Bridgen: The Case For Rishi Sunak
I supported former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak’s leadership bid this summer, and he ultimately lost at the members’ ballot to Liz Truss. The rest, as they say, is now history. Following Truss’s resignation this week, Rishi Sunak has another opportunity to be elected leader of the Conservative Party. Liz Truss’s brief time as…
MP Andrew Bridgen: Joe Biden joins the pile-on of beleaguered PM Liz Truss, but his crystal ball only works in reverse
Unfortunately, Joe Biden’s crystal ball only works to allow him to see the past as he joins the pile-on of beleaguered PM Liz Truss. Some of us did predict the outcome of her mini-budget in advance, but I don’t recall Joe Biden being one of them. There is a saying in politics that if you…
MP Andrew Bridgen: Now is not the time for another round of public infighting between the Conservatives. We have to put our country first
Currently, the new Prime Minister, Liz Truss, faces the biggest challenges of any UK Prime Minister in recent history. Newly elected by the Conservative Party Membership after an overlong, damaging, bruising, and divisive leadership campaign, Liz has not had the best of starts. Her mini-budget landed badly, despite the vast majority of its individual proposals,…