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Tuesday, March 27, 2018

I'll sue Cambridge Analytica, Facebook for 'devilish propaganda' - Raila

Opposition leader Raila Odinga will sue British data mining firm Cambridge Analytica for using his name to fuel "devilish" propaganda.

Raila, who spoke to Channel 4 News on Monday, said he will also sue Facebook for coordinating the propaganda during the campaign season.

"You see stories such as 'Who is Raila Odinga' and 'The real Raila Odinga'... the Raila in those adverts was very evil, the devil incarnate..." he said.

He continued: "Kenya is leading the content in terms of use of social media and they have found the right environment here for this kind of propaganda.

"I am disappointed that Facebook agreed to cooperate in this clandestine enterprise. We are contemplating legal action against Facebook."

More on this: Cambridge Analytica confirms involvement in Kenyan elections

Also read: Cambridge Analytica's Kenya election role 'must be investigated' - Nasa

Raila, who is Nasa and ODM leader, said they will take the action through a company that isn't in Kenya as they have lawyers both locally and internally.

"We will certaily take legal action against Cambridge Analytica. The introduction of this system being brought by Cambridge is bad for electoral democracy in the content."

Raila explained that the National Super Alliance had a "very difficult" time during the 2017 campaign season.

"We did campaign under difficult conditions ... consultants at Aristotle Global countries were arrested and deported from Kenya without reason," he said.

The Opposition boss further noted that Kenya is vulnerable and that fake news by Cambridge Analytica is a danger universally so it must be dealt with.

Raila said Kenya was probably one of the first guinea pigs in the propaganda experiment in 2013.

"We were new and did not know how to deal with it. Then they came back in 2016 and this time they had perfected the art of manipulating data. We were introduced to negative campaigns," he said.

"If it [data manipulation] is allowed to succeed there will be no point of having elections. People will be like robots that vote according to how they are manipulated. That is not the meaning of democracy," he said.

The data mining firm confirmed that it was behind the TNA and Jubilee presidential election campaigns in 2013 and 2017.

In a undercover film broadcast on Channel 4 News in the UK, Managing Director Mark Turnbull confirmed the company worked for Uhuru Kenyatta.

“We have rebranded the party twice, we have written their manifesto, done two rounds of 50,000 surveys, huge amounts of analysis, research, messaging," he said in a secretly recorded meeting in a London hotel. "Then we’d write all the speeches and we’d stage the whole thing so just about every element of his campaign." 

Cambridge Analytica is credited with helping DonaldTrump to win the US presidential election last November and with helping the Leave side to win in the Brexit referendum in the UK last June.

More on scandal: Claims about Cambridge Analytica’s role in Africa should be taken with a pinch of salt

Read more: Whistleblower questions Brexit result, says campaigners broke election law

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