Data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica is accused of harvesting millions of Facebook profiles of U.S voters and whether it was used to influence the outcome of the US 2016 presidential election and the UK Brexit vote
Data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica is accused of harvesting millions of Facebook profiles of U.S voters and whether it was used to influence the outcome of the US 2016 presidential election and the UK Brexit vote. Cambridge Analytica is data analytics firm owned by the hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer which was part of Donald Trump's presidential campaign and the UK Brexit vote campaign.According to the The Guardian “The data analytics firm that worked with Donald Trump’s election team and the winning Brexit campaign harvested millions of Facebook profiles of US voters, in one of the tech giant’s biggest ever data breaches, and used them to build a powerful software program to predict and influence choices at the ballot box.”Dr. Aleksandr Kogan, a senior research associate at the University of Cambridge, created a Facebook app called thisisyourdigitallife which featured a personality quiz.The app was created under his company Global Science Research (GSR) with the collaboration of Cambridge Analytica which paid for people to take it.Users should have a facebook account and should be US voter to be eligible for the personality quiz. Hundreds of thousands of users have taken the personality quiz agreeing to have their data collected for academic use.The app collects and records data of every user who takes the quiz, and it also gathers the data of their Facebook friends as well.“The results were paired with each quiz-taker’s Facebook data to seek out patterns and build an algorithm to predict results for other Facebook users. Their friends’ profiles provided a testing ground for the formula and, more crucially, a resource that would make the algorithm politically valuable.”Kogan had a deal with Cambridge Analytica to share this information. But according to a whistleblower, Christopher Wylie who previously worked for Cambridge Analytica they did not have permission to collect or use data for commercial purposes. The permission given by Facebook was specifically restricted to academic uses.“The scale of the data collection Cambridge Analytica paid for was so large it triggered an automatic shutdown of the app’s ability to harvest profiles. But Kogan told a colleague he “spoke with an engineer” to get the restriction lifted and, within a day or two, work resumed.”“Within months, Kogan and Cambridge Analytica had a database of millions of US voters that had its own algorithm to scan them, identifying likely political persuasions and personality traits. They could then decide who to target and craft their messages that was likely to appeal to them for those individuals – a political approach known as “micro-targeting” said in the post published The Guardian.British Information Commissioner’s Office and Electoral Commission are investigating the incident which violates the British data protection laws, that ban sale or use of personal data without consent.Facebook has suspended Cambridge Analytica and Kogan from their platform regarding this incident, and they also deny a data breach.Facebook said in a statement that permission was granted to Kogan access the information for the academic purpose. However, by sharing it with Cambridge Analytica and allowing it to be used for commercial purposes, he broke the terms of the license.Facebook found out the issue in 2015, and the app was removed, and data were destroyed.Kogan also denied the issue and said that everything he did was legal. For more details, you can watch the exclusive interview of Chris Wylie, former Research Director at Cambridge Analytica given to Channel 4 News below : [embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb6-xz-geH4[/embedyt]