The key to the Trump-Russia scandal? Follow the data

[jpak]

http://www.philly.com/philly/columnists/will_bunch/the-key-to-the-trump-russia-scandal-follow-the-data-20170713.html

They were just three words — not even uttered in real life but in a Hollywood movie — that nevertheless came to define American politics over the last 40-plus years. “Follow the money.” That’s what the fictional portrayal of the whistleblower “Deep Throat” told Bob Woodward in the 1976 movie version of “All the President’s Men” was the key to tracing the real roots of the Watergate scandal — follow the flow of illegal campaign money into Richard Nixon’s 1972 campaign…who it came from and where it was going. It turned out, of course, that the money from favor-seeking millionaires paid for illegal bugging, break-ins and other dirty tricks, and Nixon became the first and only president to resign in disgrace (so far). Despite that, the role of money in propelling political power in America grew only stronger.

Now it’s 2017 and things have changed. Money is still important, and more dark money flows into our politics than ever before. But that’s because money helps campaigns buy the real source of political power: Knowledge. And in the computer era, knowledge means data: Where to find your voters, how to reach them, what to tell them that will guarantee they turn out to vote for your candidate … or how to make the other side stay home.

If there was a Deep Throat in the Trump-Russia scandal, this is what he’d be telling today’s Woodwards and Bernsteins:

Follow the data.

With all the drama over this week’s bombshell disclosures of Donald Trump Jr.’s emails and a previously unknown Trump Tower meeting between top campaign officials and a woman who’d been pitched to them as “a Russian government lawyer,” there was another investigative report that arguably could have equal or greater significance in the ongoing probes of wrongdoing in the 2016 campaign. It said probers are now taking a much closer look at possible cooperation between Russia — which had an operation to churn out “fake news” about Hillary Clinton during the fall campaign — and the Trump campaign’s data operation.

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[Wellstone ruled]

1. Every piece of data has a finger print.

Once it is loose,it can tracked any where any time.