A NY professor filed a legal claim against a data company that worked for President Donald Trump’s campaign in a British court Friday in a case that could shed light on how millions of American voters were targeted online in the run-up to the 2016 election.
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This is the question on many people’s mind after reports emerged that a firm hired by Jubilee Party mined Facebook data to shape Donald Trump’s election as U.S. president.
Christopher Wylie, a former employee of Cambridge Analytica and the whistleblower behind the story, told The Guardian the personal information and resulting psychological and political profiles of Facebook users could be used to better target them with political ads.
A Cambridge Analytica representative told CNN “we had not knowingly breached any of Facebook’s terms of service”, and stated the company had a signed statement confirming the data in question had been deleted.
“Cambridge Analytica was supposed to be the arsenal of weapons to fight that culture war”, Wylie says in an article appearing in the New York Times on the growing controversy.
Cambridge Analytica has rejected all the allegations that were put to it by The Guardian/Observer. Not only did Cambridge Analytica – now under investigation from Special Counsel Robert Mueller – receive millions of dollars in funding from Bannon’s patron, Robert Mercer, but Trump’s former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn also advised the firm.
According to Bloomberg, Steve Bannon served as vice-president and secretary of Cambridge Analytica from June 2014 to August 2016. The social network said an app billed as a research tool for psychologists had originally collected the information, which included data on users’ identities, friends and liked content.
Facebook says it is investigating.
It denied wrongdoing in a statement.
Cambridge Analytica was hired in summer 2016 as part of the Trump campaign’s three-pronged data operation.
Cambridge Analytica is still probably best known for its political work during the 2016 US presidential campaign.
When people filled out the personality test, they gave permission for the app to collect their Facebook data “for academic use”. The presidential campaign of Sen.
But the extent to which the Trump campaign relied on the firm’s work and whether its services helped Trump win aren’t exactly clear.
The United Kingdom’s Information Commission also announced on Saturday they are conducting an investigation of Cambridge Analytica, which also had clients in the country.
Britain’s data protection regulator also said this weekend that it was carrying out the potential illegal acquisition and use of Facebook data.
Both the pro-Brexit and Trump campaigns sought to cultivate fear of immigrants and others as political strategies. Kogan and Wylie have been suspended from Facebook along with SCL and Cambridge Analytica. Shortly thereafter, prominent Trump supporter and American businessman Robert Mercer invested $15 million in the firm.
Kogan was not immediately available for comment.
The new rules may not be in place for the 2018 midterm elections and won’t cover all political ads, including ads Russian operatives used to meddle in the 2016 presidential contest. British officials are also investigating the firm in connection with the June 2016 European Union referendum.
Cambridge Analytica was founded in 2013.
SCL later said that position never materialized. The reason for the requested documentation was in light of the investigation into the collusion between the campaign and the Russian interference. Cambridge Analytica founder Alexander Nix even contacted Julian Assange about accessing emails stolen from the Hillary Clinton campaign. But his campaign wasn’t the only one.
But it did not amount to data breach, according to Facebook. The newspaper reported Mueller asked the firm to hand over internal records.
Facebook reportedly first learned of Kogan’s misuse of its data two years ago, but didn’t disclose that fact to the public. Facebook learned about Kogan’s activities in 2015 and removed app.
All assured that they had erased it and they continued using the site.
Conservative legislator Damian Collins said he would ask Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg or another executive to appear before his committee, which is investigating disinformation and “fake news”.
It called the alleged data retention an “unacceptable violation of trust”.
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The University said that it had received assurances that there was not a conflict between Kogan’s academic role and his work for Cambridge Analytica. That timing roughly lines up with Kogan’s research.
