Cass Sunstein, a former White House adviser in the Obama administration (and husband of Samantha Power), is warning Democrats "not to overreact" to the news about Cambridge Analytica's supposed spying on Americans via Facebook and Facebook's effort to clamp down on usage of the data from the people who buy it from them.  In a column in Bloomberg, Sunstein writes:

The horrendous actions by Cambridge Analytica, a voter profiling company, and Aleksander Kogan, a Russian-American researcher, raise serious questions about privacy, social media, democracy and fraud.

Amidst the justified furor, one temptation should be firmly resisted: for public and private institutions to lock their data down, blocking researchers and developers from providing the many benefits that it promises – for health, safety, and democracy itself.

He adds:

But let's not overreact.  Authorized use of that data can do a great deal of good.

He cites other apps that spy on Americans that can improve health care and income inequality, as well as observe congressional behavior as arguments to not shut all of the data-mining down. These are red flags all by themselves, since we all know how Democrats use health care data and what their solutions are to income inequality. But never mind that.

Obviously, as a far-left Democrat operative in the Obama inner circle, Sunstein's argument to not overreact, plus his involvement in Facebook as an adviser, which he discloses at the bottom of his piece, suggests strongly that Democrats have a stake in the spying on voters, too.  As they see Cambridge Analytica get sanctioned over all the hypocritical outcry, they know that their ox is up to get gored.  And they are feeling flop sweat, given their long history of manipulating social media data.  What's known is described very well in this Investor's Business Daily editorial that we linked here.

If you are not paying, you are not the customer, as the saying goes.  Since nobody pays for Facebook, we know they make their money other ways, and data-mining, which is especially practiced by the left, is a big way.  You can't explain some of their victories in recent elections without suspecting they have an expert operation going on.

Sunstein in particular is worth looking at.  Back in his Obama days, he led an operation called "Nudge" as a means of lightly coercing consumers to buy the kind of products the central planners wanted them to buy, viewing buyers as sheep.

Here is the Investor's Business Daily editorial I wrote about Sunstein's brainchild a few years back:

Government: In a bid to make Americans do "what's good for them," Obama administration social engineers have come up with a "Nudge" program to manipulate public choices.  This won't end well.

According to a report by Fox News, the federal government is hiring a "behavioral insights team" to study ways to subtly influence citizen behavior through "choice architecture."

The idea is the brainchild of former White House adviser Cass Sunstein and led by a 26-year-old White House aide who's recruiting like-minded academics.

On paper, the intentions might sound good to some.  The claim is that by mastering the nudge, government can get the public to stop eating fatty food, lose weight, quit smoking and, who knows, maybe save the whales.

But it's bound to go bad fast, in at least three directions.

So as Sunstein suddenly calls on Democrats not to overreact to Facebook's clampdown, which is the result of their hysteria, it's worth noting that his game has always been about manipulating voters himself.  Obviously, he wants as much space to do it as possible.  No wonder he wants Democrats to restrain themselves on their fury at Facebook.  His rice bowl seems to be threatened.

Rice bowl.  Credit: Guilhem Velut via Flickr under Creative Commons 2.0 Generic.