No, Putin does not appear to have been involved with Cambridge Analytica. Yet.
What is Cambridge Analytica?
Cambridge Analytica is a data analysis firm that did work for Steve Bannon on behalf of the Trump campaign. You may remember Steve Bannon of Breitbart fame as the former chief of the Trump campaign and star of the educational high school film ‘What Happens When You Drink Too Much‘.
What did they do?
Harvested data from 50 million Facebook users to help identify factors that would influence their votes in the 2016 election. Are you an uneducated white male? Cambridge Analytica could target you with pro-Trump pieces about jobs! Are you an educated African-American woman? Cambridge Analytica would know to help send you articles about how Hillary once used the term ‘super predators’ in regards to young black men!
Cambridge Analytica’s goal was to make sure Republican voters got to the polls, Democrats didn’t, and to sway middle-of-the-road voters towards Trump based on their likely views. By knowing who you are, where you are, and what you like, they could create algorithms to target you based on your likely views. Minnesotan or Wisconsin voter? Jobs! Midwest? Farms! Urban white? Immigration is scary!
And they were very good at what they did.
But that in and of itself doesn’t seem illegal. After all, none of us really read EULAs or Privacy Agreements. We just click ‘Agree’ so that we can start liking things on Facebook. The age of privacy is long gone.
But what Cambridge Analytica did is illegal. The information Cambridge Analytica gathered was not meant to be used in the manner it was, though Facebook’s excuses feel flimsy at best.
Furthermore, they likely violated US election laws by having foreign workers employed on a US campaign.
As these stories evolve and develop it is likely to get much, much worse.
The Rushin Perspective 
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