| The Great Hack | |
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Production company | The Othrs |
| Distributed by | Netflix |
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Running time | 113 minutes |
| Country | United States |
The Great Hack is a 2019documentary film about theFacebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal, produced and directed byJehane Noujaim andKarim Amer, both previous documentaryAcademy Award nominees (The Square,Control Room,Startup.com).[1][2] The film's music was composed byEmmy-nominatedfilmcomposer Gil Talmi.The Great Hack premiered at the 2019Sundance Film Festival in the Documentary Premieres section and was released byNetflix on July 24, 2019.[3]
The documentary focuses on David Carroll ofParsons andThe New School,Brittany Kaiser (former business development director forCambridge Analytica), and British investigative journalistCarole Cadwalladr. Their stories interweave to expose the work of Cambridge Analytica in the politics of various countries, including the United Kingdom'sBrexit campaign and the2016 United States elections.
The SCL Group was a private research and strategic communications company interested in studying and influencing mass behavior. With alleged expertise inpsychological operations (psyops), the company worked in military and political operations around the world in the late 1990s, including electioneering in the developing world throughout the early 2000s. To do business involving US elections, the subsidiary Cambridge Analytica was formed in 2012.
In 2015, Cambridge Analytica, a UK-basedpolitical consulting firm, began working on behalf ofTed Cruz's presidential campaign to attempt to win the 2016 US Republican nomination. It used Facebook as a means for "political-voter surveillance" through the collection of user data points. Independent investigations into data mining, along with whistle-blower accounts of the firm's impact onBrexit, led to a scandal over the influence of social media in political elections.
In the film, the Cambridge Analytica scandal is examined through the eyes of several involved persons.[4]
Cambridge Analytica, the firm responsible for the scandal, was dedicated tobig data. The data collected was meant to be used as part of a sales strategy that involved creating massive campaigns that approached users in a personal manner. The results of this campaign ended up disrupting US and UK politics and led to claims of complicity of social media enterprises such as Facebook. The illicit harvesting ofpersonal data by Cambridge Analytica was first reported in December 2015 by Harry Davies, a journalist forThe Guardian. He reported that Cambridge Analytica was working for United States senatorTed Cruz and used data harvested from millions of people's Facebook accounts without their consent.[5]
Facebook refused to comment on the story other than to say it was investigating. Further reports followed in the Swiss publicationDas Magazin byHannes Grassegger andMikael Krogerus [de] (December 2016), (later translated and published byVice),Carole Cadwalladr inThe Guardian (starting in February 2017) and Mattathias Schwartz inThe Intercept (March 2017). Brittany Kaiser, former director of Business Development at Cambridge Analytica, revealed that everything published involving Cambridge Analytica in the Brexit campaign andTed Cruz's campaign was true. The scandal reached a point where evenMark Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder, had to testify officially in front of several committees of theUnited States Congress.[6]
When Cambridge Analytica's former CEOAlexander Nix was exposed onChannel 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.[7] 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 theInformation 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 theDPA1998 for unfairly processing people's data for political purposes including purposes connected with the 2016 U.S. Presidential campaigns."[8]
While David Carroll's journey unfolds, the investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr continues her work into the influence of Cambridge Analytica.[9] This work leads her to awhistle-blower,Christopher Wylie, who explains howmicrotargeting, combined with mass-harvesting of data, was used to influence elections. Cadwalladr's exclusive interviews with Wylie inThe Observer reveal how psychographic profiling tactics were carried out with user data scraped from Facebook with the help ofCambridge University researcherAleksandr Kogan.[10] 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 calledMindf*ck in 2019.[11]
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 organizerPaul 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.
The Great Hack holds an 85% rating onRotten Tomatoes, based on 54 reviews with an average rating of 7.1/10. Thereview aggregator's consensus reads: "The Great Hack offers an alarming glimpse of the way data is being weaponized for political gain—and what it might mean for future elections."[13]Peter Bradshaw writing inThe Guardian said the film concerned "the biggest scandal of our time: the gigantic question mark over the legality of theBrexit vote", and awarded it five stars.[14] Calling the film "a terrifying warning" and "the most important doc this year",Refinery 29 wrote: "The Great Hack makes clear just how deep that shady surveillance can – and does – go."[15]
It was nominated for anEmmy forOutstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special by theAcademy of Television Arts & Sciences, nominated for Best Documentary by theBritish Academy of Film and Television Arts, nominated for Best Writing by the International Documentary Association, and was shortlisted for theAcademy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film.[16][17][18][19] The film received an Outstanding Achievement in Graphic Design or Animation Award fromCinema Eye Honors.[20]
Zuckerberg got rougher treatment from the House of Representatives than he did from the Senate
