What's true - and not quite true - about NC, Thom Tillis and stolen Facebook data

A Facebook data breach. Stolen info from a Russia-linked researcher. And Thom Tillis, U.S. senator from North Carolina.

Has the dark and somewhat creepy world of stolen data and pyschographic voter profiling touched N.C. politics?

A New York Times report Sunday revealed that Tillis and the N.C. Republican Party paid $345,000 years ago to Cambridge Analytica, a data firm now accused of buying stolen private information of more than 50 million Facebook users in 2014. Cambridge Analytica may have used that data, which came from a Russian researcher, to build profiles of prospective voters and target specific campaign messages to them for Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.

Two years earlier, in 2014, the company helped Tillis narrowly defeat Democrat Kay Hagan for the U.S. Senate.

Did Tillis and the NCGOP do something wrong?

N.C. Democrats are suggesting there's at least a possibility. "There are too many unanswered questions, too much we don't know yet," said Wayne Goodwin, chairman of the N.C. Democratic Party.

Tillis isn't helping matters. He declined Monday to answer questions from reporters about Cambridge Analytica.

Let's sort through this.

Invasive as it may seem, companies and campaigns have legally and ethically used statistical models and algorithms to profile voters and target messages long before Donald Trump and Thom Tillis won their 2016 and 2014 races. It's also no secret that Cambridge Analytica saw itself on the cutting edge of psychographic profiling. A 2015 Bloomberg profile described how in the Tillis race, the company developed a continually updating model that helped identify an issue — Hagan's shortcomings on ISIS — that would resonate with a "sizable cluster" of N.C. voters.

The company made no secret of its work in North Carolina, boasting about it on its web site.

The problem for Cambridge Analytica is that it apparently has obtained at least some data illegally. There's no indication, however, that Tillis knew the company used stolen Facebook information in profiling voters. In fact, it's unlikely the company would expose itself by telling a client that sort of thing — especially when that client is running for U.S. Senate.

Also, given that Cambridge Analytica didn't purchase the data trove until 2014 — well into the U.S. Senate race — it's questionable that the data was even used to help Tillis.

Tillis released a statement Tuesday afternoon saying that his "expectation is that all services provided to my campaign are lawful," McClatchy's Brian Murphy reports. Still, Tillis would be well-served to be more transparent about the work Cambridge Analytica did. So would the NCGOP, which could start by clarifying why it said Cambridge Analytica performed "direct mail" work in 2014 when records show the party paid the company "microtargeting consulting fees."

What we're left with, most likely, is politics. Democrats are happy to add Tillis and the NCGOP to sentences that include Facebook, personal data and Russians. You can be sure that if the roles were reversed, Republicans would gleefully do the same. North Carolinians, in this case, should wait for more evidence before joining in.

This story was originally published March 20, 2018 at 11:25 AM with the headline "What's true - and not quite true - about NC, Thom Tillis and stolen Facebook data."