Brittany Kaiser - Targeted: The Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower’s Inside Story of How Big Data, Trump, and Facebook Broke Democracy and How It Can Happen Again

Theres nothing like a car ride with federal agents to make you question your life choices. That was exactly where I found myself the morning of July 18, 2018, winding through the streets of Washington, DC, heading toward an interview with Special Counsel Robert Muellers investigators.

My trip that morning consisted of riding in two cars, actuallythe first took me to a coffee shop that the Department of Justice had randomly selected. This had been the drivers instructions when I initially slid into the backseat: they had chosen a place unexpectedly, without planning it out or telling anyone beforehand. Then, once we were on our way, he was to radio in our destination. At the coffee shop, the second driver was waiting. Like the first driver, he was wearing a dark suit and dark glasses, but there was a second man with him as well. From the second caroutfitted like the first with tinted windowsI watched as the citys gleaming monuments, bright and sudden and very white, flashed by us like camera bulbs.

When I was settled in the backseat between my two attorneys, it was hard not to consider just how Id ended up here, on my way to talk to federal prosecutors about my role with the now-infamous political communications firm, Cambridge Analytica. How a situation that Id entered with the best of intentions for me and my family had ended up so horribly and irrevocably twisted. How in the process of wanting to learn how to use data for good, and while helping my parents through a difficult financial moment, Id ended up compromising my political and personal values. How a mixture of navet and ambition had landed me squarely and disturbingly on the wrong side of history.

A little more than three and a half years earlier, Id joined Cambridge Analyticas parent company, the SCL Groupspecifically, their humanitarian division, SCL Socialworking on projects under the companys CEO, a man named Alexander Nix. In the years since that leap of faith, nothing had gone as Id envisioned it. As a lifelong Democrat and devoted activist who had worked for years in support of progressive causes, I had started my work with Cambridge Analytica under the pretense that I would be separate from the companys Republican client base and outreach. It didnt take long, though, to find myself gradually pulled away from my principles by the difficulty of securing funding for humanitarian projects and the allure of success on the other side. At Cambridge Analytica there was the promise of real money for the first time in my career, and a way to buy into the vision that I was helping to build a revolutionary political communications company from the ground up.

In the process, I had been exposed to the vast sweep of Cambridges efforts, both to acquire data on as many U.S. citizens as possible and to leverage that data to influence Americans voting behavior. Id also come to see how Facebooks negligent privacy policies and the federal governments total lack of oversight about personal data had enabled all of Cambridges efforts. But, most of all, I understood how Cambridge had taken advantage of all these forces to help elect Donald Trump.

As the car drove, my lawyers and I sat quietly, each of us preparing for what was to come. We all knew I would share any part of my story in full; the question now was what everyone else wanted to know. Mostly people seemed to want answers, both professional and personal, about how this could happen. There was a variety of reasons why Id allowed my values to become so warpedfrom my familys financial situation to the fallacy that Hillary would win regardless of my efforts or those of the company I worked for. But each of those was only part of the story. Perhaps the truest reason of all was the fact that somewhere along the way Id lost my compass, and then myself. Id entered this job believing I was a professional who knew how cynical and messy the business of politics was, only to learn time and again how nave Id been.

And now, it was on me to make it right.

The car drifted smoothly through the streets of the capital and I began to sense that we were closing in on our destination. I had been warned by the special counsels team not to be afraid or surprised if, upon arriving at the secure building where I was to be questioned, throngs of press awaited me. The location, it was said, was no longer secure. Reporters had caught on that the site was being used for the interviewing of witnesses.

A reporter, the driver said, was hiding behind a mailbox. He recognized her from CNN. He had seen her loitering around the building for eight hours at a time. In heels, he said. What they wouldnt do! He exclaimed.

As we neared the place and turned a corner into a garage in the back, the driver told me to turn my face away from the windows, even though they were tinted. In preparation for my conversation with the special counsel, I had been told to clear my day. Completely. I had been told that no one knew how long I would testify or for how long I would then be cross-examined. However long it would be, I was ready. After all, my presence there had been my own doing.

A year earlier, Id made the decision to come forward, to shine a light in the dark places that I had come to know and to become a whistleblower. I did this because, as Id come face-to-face with the realities of what Cambridge Analytica had done, I saw all too clearly just how misguided Id been. I did this because it was the only way to try to make up for what Id been a part of. But, for more than any other reason, I did this because telling my story to anyone who would listen was the only way we could learn, and hopefully prepare for, what comes next. That was my mission nowto raise the alarm about how Cambridge Analytica had operated and about the dangers that Big Data posed, so that next time voters on both sides would understand the full stakes of the data wars that our democracy is up against.

The driver took us deeper and deeper into the garage, circling, circling farther down.

Why so deep? I wondered. But of course, I already knew: Privacy is a hard thing to come by these days.