Data as a Travelling Asset

Data without Borders: International networks of influence

The emergence of data-intensive elections has occurred in lock-step with a class of well-regarded political consultants, such as Jeremy Bird, founder of the campaign consultancy 270 Strategies or Lynton Crosby, one of the founders of the political consultancy Crosby Textor, frequently crossing borders and applying their digital expertise from one country to another. These individuals made names for themselves and their companies, often working in numerous countries with the promise of unlocking the power of big data for electoral success.

Many of these digital campaign consultants and firms, usually based in the U.S., are hired by political parties across the world. They will carry out their own research simultaneously with the aims of improving their own technologies, datasets and strategies. The firms benefit from their presence in international elections not only through high-paying contracts from campaigns, but also from their profit-driven research, which aims to answer specific questions about which techniques generate the most interest. The firms might only be interested in if their campaign will get more votes, or even just if they will get paid by the political party regardless of outcome, but don’t have to be concerned whether they have caused more conflict or whether information has only reached certain groups and not others. The companies and their high-profile consultants, such as Harris Media, rarely stay in the country where they’ve worked and tested their techniques after the elections and might not have to experience or at least be able to protect themselves from any political conflict that result from the elections on which they worked.

In Practice

Kenya: In 2017, amidst high levels of unrest and voter suppression, two American firms worked behind the scenes of the Kenyan general elections. John Aristotle Phillips, the founder and CEO of Aristotle Inc., was arrested and deported from Kenya while his firm worked for the presidential opposition campaign of Raila Odinga. In 2017 it was reported that Phillips had worked in Afghanistan, Ukraine, Venezuela, Yemen and other countries, consulting on elections. .

Hear for Yourself

"It's just that in Africa it's really not clear that people are lobbying. We don't have enough transparency laws to simply indicate that this draft legislation is funded by this tech company, because this is their interest in Africa."

Listen to a clip of lawyer Linda Bonyo describes the impact of international technologies on Kenyan elections and laws:

Listen to the entire interview and read the transcript on the interview with Linda Bonyo and Catherine Muya page or via PeerTube

Data changing hands

A lot of data on voters is collected by governmental bodies such as for census data, for the sake of providing welfare, for supporting policy decisions or for national security. Incumbent political leaders and parties can exploit their exclusive access to this data. They also have the power to enact policies that can lead to further data being collected by government bodies – which in turn they can access and use in their favour. Regarding this phenomena in Canada, Anna Lennox Esselment wrote:

Hear for yourself:

"For creating that register, they started first building a National Population Register, which was almost a parallel exercise to the census. But in this case, there was no protection for personal data. So the government would know each and every individual, each and every family, what they do, how much they earn, what their religion is, what their caste is..."

Investigative journalist, Kumar Sambhav speaks with us about the Aadhaar system found across India, the lack of protections for citizen data and the political implications about who owns this data. Hear a clip below:

Listen to the entire interview and find a complete transcript on the Interview with Kumar Sambhav interview page or listen on PeerTube.

In Practice

Malaysia: In 2018, Malasyia based journalist Boo Su-Lyn and Tactical Tech found that the incumbent Barisan Nasional (BN) party apparently exploited its access to the state’s welfare data. BN had access to the list of cash aid recipients, the national poverty database and a record of patients in public hospitals. Representatives from the BN party visited the homes of welfare recipients reminding them to vote for the party – ostensibly to ensure their benefits weren’t at risk of being stopped.

Georgia: Before the 2020 Parliamentary elections in Georgia, the NGO Transparency International published a report documenting 24 instances in which the incumbent Georgia Dream party misused administrative resources and promoted campaigns among voters online in order to boost their chance of staying in power. Observers reported that the “blurring of the line between the ruling party and the state reduced public confidence in some aspects of the process.”

Data in the Wrong Hands

When individuals share information with one organisation, it doesn’t imply that they want that data to be shared with any other organisation, or to be used for any other purposes. Nevertheless, personal data changes hands for a variety of reasons, including those with severe consequences. For example, during or after a conflict, who controls the data that was previously collected about citizens and residents poses an important question. Datasets held by political parties who conducted campaigning may also contain highly developed profiles of individuals with key sensitive features of their identity such as LGBTQ+, religious group, or economic status. Though these datasets contain highly sensitive information, in many instances they can be only loosely protected and the information can be accidentally leaked, easily accessed by actors with bad intent or there might be no contingency plan in place for the data in case of a national emergency or peaceful transfer of power. Ultimately, the importance, meaning and impact of this data is altered the moment it changes hands.

Ukrainian researcher Tetyana Bohdanova brought this up in an interview with Tactical Tech:

Read the transcript and listen to the audio of this interview here or listen on our YouTube channel here.

Revolving Door between Tech and Politics

As power and influence transitions from offline to online, the revolving doors between seats of political power and private tech companies are quickly spinning. Campaigns’ heavy reliance on digital technologies puts big tech companies in a position to establish strong connections with political parties. In 2016, political scientists Daniel Kreiss and Shannon McGregor documented that representatives from Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Twitter were regularly hiring people from electoral backgrounds, and vice versa, to share knowledge and skills, maintain relationships and ultimately produce profit. These established political connections then become an important avenue for big tech to influence in lobbying or otherwise in relation to regulation of their businesses.

The revolving door between tech firms and politics also operates at a more granular level with individuals transitioning jobs between the private sector, public affairs and then back again. Though robust public policy does require that the people shaping laws have an intimate understanding of the technologies across the landscape, the risk remains that they may overlook the public’s needs and interest in favour of personal and business relationships established from years, if not decades, on the job. Furthermore, they may bring with them techniques and insights that are appropriate for one sector, and apply them inappropriately in another – such as for-profit and productivity approaches that are detrimental to long-term public discussions on politics, or political insights that are sensitive and shouldn’t impact the advertising of non-political services.

In Practice:

Jon Leibowitz: Jon Leibowitz is counsel at Davis Polk and a former Chairman of the FTC in the Obama administration. During his time at the FTC, Leibowitz oversaw significant revisions of horizontal merger guidelines and permitted some of the most high-profile Big Tech mergers in recent history, such as Google's acquisition of DoubleClick and Facebook's acquisition of Instagram. He has gone between government and the private sector for over twenty years.

Nick Clegg: Former Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Nick Clegg. Clegg joined Facebook – now Meta – in 2018 as VP of global affairs and communications though was promoted in 2022 to president of global affairs within the senior management team. According to Politico, Clegg’s involvement helped shape the company’s coronavirus response, in particular working with dozens of governments around the world to figure out what role the social network played in the pandemic, taking a more active role in society and politics. In an interview about representing Meta, Clegg mentioned it was occasionally “bizarre” as he described a 2019 Paris meeting with heads of state: “Theresa May used to work for me.”

See for Yourself:

The Revolving Door Project watches, researches and reports on executive branch appointees to ensure all appointees "use their office to serve the broad public interest, rather than to entrench corporate power or seek personal advancement". Explore the project here: The Revolving Door Project