Season four of the Netflix drama saw Frank Underwood pitted against Republican presidential nominee Will Conway.
Like Underwood, Conway is a calculated schemer, who has used his military history, adorable family and boyish good looks to charm his way to the top.
During the two mens’ first meeting, we learn that Conway has links to a fictional search engine named Pollyhop and access to all of its user data.
The search history and other information harnessed by Pollyhop allows Conway to target his campaign to individuals based on their likes and dislikes.
This effectively allows him to present himself to each voter as their ideal candidate.
While this might sound farfetched, in real life politicians can use data to target voters.
In 2015, it was reported that Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz’s campaign was using psychological data harvested from Facebook.
A UK-based company called Cambridge Analytica analysed users’ likes to match individuals’ traits with existing voter data.
For example, it could work out whether a person owned a gun or not. None of this is illegal.
A spokesman for the company told The Tab: “Pollyhop comes down to digital voter targeting, which we do a lot of for political campaigns.
“The short explanation is that data analytics can help candidates determine who their persuadable audience is and then use digital targeting tools to ensure that those susceptible voters see things on their computer, mobile or tablet screens that compel them to vote for that candidate.”
After Cruz was defeated in the Republican primaries, the firm began working with Donald Trump.
Frank Luntz, a respected Republican pollster, has said: “There are no longer any experts except Cambridge Analytica. They were Trump’s digital team who figured out how to win.”
In retaliation to Conway’s scheme, Frank begins snooping on US voters, under the guise of protecting national security.
He is given a classified warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court which authorises the NSA to listen in to phone calls and mine internet data.
While this is technically possible in real-life, it would be highly illegal.
Privacy specialist Julian Sanchez has said that “it’s not inconceivable” that an NSA director would let the president launch a bogus spy programme.
But NSA spokesperson Vanee Vines told Vocativ: “Data on U.S. voters for an election? Absolutely illegal and unbelievable.”
House of Cards season 5 is released on Netflix on Tuesday May 30.
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