What Happens in The Great Hack?
The complete story of The Great Hack, from the first scene to the last, in 403 words (about 2 minutes). Spoilers throughout.
Spoilers ahead
When Cambridge Analytica’s former CEO Alexander Nix was exposed on Channel 4 as claiming to have 5,000 data points on every American voter, Professor David Carroll took notice. He undertook a legal journey to try to reclaim his data with the help of lawyer Ravi Naik of ITN Solicitors, an expert on data privacy in the United Kingdom. Because Cambridge Analytica processed user data via SCL in Britain, Carroll’s complaints fell under British jurisdiction. On July 4, 2017, Carroll filed a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office of the UK. As a result, SCL was fined £15,000 for a lack of compliance with the ICO. Also, as a result, Facebook paid £500,000 for a “lack of transparency and security issues relating to the harvesting of data constituting” in the related scandal.
During the proceedings, SCL filed for bankruptcy. The ICO concluded that Cambridge Analytica’s operations had violated UK privacy laws, stating: “Had SCLE still existed in its original form, our intention would have been to issue the company with a substantial fine for severe breaches of principle one of the DPA1998 for unfairly processing people’s data for political purposes including purposes connected with the 2016 U.S. Presidential campaigns.”
While David Carroll’s journey unfolds, the investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr continues her work into the influence of Cambridge Analytica. This work leads her to a whistle-blower, Christopher Wylie, who explains how microtargeting, combined with mass-harvesting of data, was used to influence elections. Cadwalladr’s exclusive interviews with Wylie in The Observer reveal how psychographic profiling tactics were carried out with user data scraped from Facebook with the help of Cambridge University researcher Aleksandr Kogan. These allegations take the Cambridge Analytica scandal public and lead Wylie to testifying in the UK Parliament and mentioning the name of a former director at Cambridge Analytica, Brittany Kaiser. A polarizing yet essential part of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Wylie penned a tell-all called Mindf*ck in 2019.
The filmmakers track down Brittany Kaiser in Thailand, where she considers becoming a whistle-blower and making information about Cambridge Analytica public, or dodging press inquiries and questions. With the help of British-born social entrepreneur, writer, and organizer Paul Hilder, she decides to go back to Washington DC, to come clean. With the help of specific documents from her personal Cambridge Analytica archives, Kaiser explains the effective micro-targeting of unsuspecting individuals, particularly those she calls “persuadables”, by Cambridge Analytica in the 2016 United States elections.
