Section:GDN 1N PaGe:19 Edition Date:190724 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 23/7/2019 15:52 cYanmaGentaYellowb
Wednesday 24 July 2019 The Guardian •National^19
Film review Exposé
of how data miners
tipped us into chaos
TV review
Rip-roaring
Wel sh noi r
justifi es new
prime slot
their connection with Cambridge
Analytica , the British data research
company that cunningly harvested
information from millions of
Facebook users and their friends
through an innocuous-seeming
“personality” questionnaire.
They put this gigantic database to
lucrative work with machine-tooled
marketing campaigns for Donald
Trump and the Brexiters; after the
company declared bankruptcy, its
document s may never come to light.
At the centre of the fi lm is
Brittany Kaiser, a former Cambridge
Analytica employee who blows
the whistle on her employers’
connections, including those with
the Bad Boys of Brexit, whose
éminence grise Arron Banks is now
trying to silence the Observer
journalist Carole Cadwalladr – as
well as this fi lm – with legal threats.We are aware of these issues only
because of the tough investigative
reporting by Cadwalladr , who asks if
we can ever again have a free and fair
election. She has had to face down
bullying and condescension.
The fi lm is also about the US
media academic David Carroll, who
began a legal campaign in the UK to
force Cambridge Analytica to reveal
their “data report” on him. I was
reminded of the historian Timothy
Garton Ash ’s eff orts to fi nd his East
Germany Stasi fi le. Garton Ash
succeeded but Carroll will probably
never see his digital dossier.
There is evidence pointing
to campaign fi nance laws being
broken. Yet perhaps the larger pointis that these were framed in the
quaint era of printed posters and ads
in newspapers. These laws are not fi t
for purpose. The data weaponisers
are laughing at them, and us.
Trump and Brexit won on a
knife edge. Cambridge Analytica’s
triumph was to identify the
wobblers, the undecideds, those
who could go either way : the
“persuadables”. This narrow band
of voter opinion in the centre is all-
important, like the “tipping point”
the New Yorker journalist Malcolm
Gladwell identifi ed as the key
moment in a viral phenomenon.
The data attackers could go all in,
using their underhand knowledge
to bombard these psycho-profi led
targets, to push these persuadables’
buttons and tip them over the edge
with Facebook ads that popped up
intimately on their smartphones,
miraculously confi rming their
prejudices, magnifying and warping
their worries.
The Great Hack repeatedly plays
a recording of Cambridge Analytica
execs giggling about their role in
the Brexit campaign, a role they
had wanted to deny: “Oops, we
won!” Oops indeed. What they
helped bring about was dishonesty,
cynicism and chaos.Released tomorrow in the UK and
on Netfl ixEve Myles is Faith Howells, a
solicitor who lives in a picturesque
Welsh village, which means a lot
of coastal driving, usually in slow
motion, while everyone thinks about
what’s going on. The fi rst series saw
Faith struggling when her husband,
Evan, vanished after leaving for
work one morning, setting off a
chain of terrible events. And then he
came back, the credits rolled, and
viewers were left to wonder where
the hell he’d been all series.
This opening episode splits its
time between the present day and
that night, when Evan returned to
explain what he’d been doing. Thosefrustrated by the open-endedness of
series 1 will fi nd great satisfaction in
how Faith gets the truth out of him.
She ushers him into a room, bottle
of wine in hand, and you’re unsure
whether she’s going to glug it or slug
him with it. She doesn’t use the wine
bottle but it doesn’t turn out well for
Evan, either.
Myles does a knockout job as
Faith, who spends much of her time
glowering in the rear view mirrorof her car. Her don’t-mess attitude- and the fact that she isn’t squeaky
clean herself – is the main driving
force behind the show. But it is also
very good at building intrigue and
laying bread crumbs, and it packs an
awful lot in to an hour.
Newcomers should be able to
jump in cold as there’s a scene that
recaps the fi rst series’ many dodgy
dealings, though it is near the end.
Given that Evan’s whereabouts
have been accounted for there needs
to be a new mystery for Faith to
get stuck into. As soon as that blue
trench appears it’s clear she means
business. Keeping Faith is about to
The Great Hack
Netfl ix
★★★★★Keeping Faith, series 2
BBC
★★★★☆Peter BradshawD
ata rights are human
rights,” is the
rallying cry of this
gripping, challenging
documentary by
Karim Amer and
Jehane Noujaim about the biggest
scandal of our time: the enormous
question mark over the legality of
the Brexit vote.
It is about the Trump campaign,
the Leave.EU campaign and
many other reckless electoral
adventures all over the world andgo full Broadchurch with a murder
case when a local farmer, Will
Vaughan, is found dead, having been
shot in the chest. His wife, Madlen’s,
fi ngerprints are all over the gun.
Naturally, Faith steps in to off er help,
even though she’s never actually
handled a murder case.
This is not drama with a
particularly light touch but that
doesn’t matter, given that it rips
along at an irresistible pace. In an age
of cinematic telly, or literary telly,
Keeping Faith is telly-telly – and it is
all the better for it.Keeping Faith, Tuesdays 9pm, BBCTrump and Brexit
won on a knife edge.
The triumph of
Cambridge Analytica
was to identify
the ‘ persuadables’▲ The US academic David Carroll will
probably never see the digital dossier
on him, despite launching a legal case
PHOTOGRAPH: NETFLIX▲ Eve Myles does a knockout job as
Faith Howells , with her don’t-mess
attitude. And now she’s got a murder
to get stuck into PHOTOGRAPH: BBCRebecca NicholsonF
irst things fi rst: the
yellow mac has not
gone for good, even if it
does seem to have been
usurped by a sharp blue
trench coat. That fans
have come to care about an item of
practical outerwear with the same
fervour as they might once have
coveted Sarah Lund ’s knits, says a lot
about Keeping Faith , which returns
for a second series riding high on the
crest of its word-of-mouth success.
Filmed and broadcast in Welsh
and English, the noirish thriller
proved so popular last year that
the BBC was forced to extend its
run on iPlayer, and it became the
most-watched “non-network” show
on the site. So here it is, inevitably
bumped to primetime BBC 1, where
fans might fi nally fi nd out what the
perplexing end of the fi rst series
meant, and newcomers might
discover what they’ve been missing.РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS