Cambridge analytica actually got a lot of their data from Facebook. They told them it was for academic purposes but they actually intended to use the data to influence election.
This from the Wiki:
Cambridge Analytica Ltd (
CA) was a British
political consulting firm that was involved in influencing hundreds of elections globally and that came to prominence through the
Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal. It was started in 2013
[6] as a subsidiary of the private intelligence company and self-described "global election management agency"
SCL Group by long-time SCL executives
Nigel Oakes,
Alexander Nix and
Alexander Oakes, with Nix as CEO.
[6] The company had close ties to the
Conservative Party (UK), the
British royal family and the
British military.
[7] The firm maintained offices in London, New York City, and Washington, DC.
[8] The company closed operations in 2018 in the course of the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal, although related firms still exist.
[9]
The company's owners included several of the Conservative Party's largest donors such as billionaire
Vincent Tchenguiz, former British Conservative minister
Jonathan Marland, Baron Marland[10] and the family of American hedge fund manager
Robert Mercer.
[11][12] The company combined
misappropriation of
digital assets,
data mining,
data brokerage, and
data analysiswith
strategic communication during electoral processes.
[13][14] While its parent SCL had focused on influencing elections in
developing countries since the 1990s, Cambridge focused more on the western world, including the United Kingdom and the United States; CEO
Alexander Nix has said CA was involved in 44 U.S. political races in 2014.
[15] In 2015, CA performed data analysis services for
Ted Cruz's presidential campaign.
[12] In 2016, CA worked for
Donald Trump's presidential campaign[16] as well as for
Leave.EU (one of the organisations campaigning in the United Kingdom's
referendum on European Union membership). CA's role in those campaigns has been controversial and is the subject of ongoing inquiries in both countries.
[17][18][19] Political scientists question CA's claims about the effectiveness of its methods of targeting voters.
[20][21]
In March 2018, multiple media outlets broke news of Cambridge Analytica's business practices.
The New York Times and
The Observer reported that the company had
acquired and used personal data about Facebook users from an external researcher who had told
Facebook he was collecting it for academic purposes.
[22] Shortly afterwards,
Channel 4 News aired undercover investigative videos showing Nix boasting about using prostitutes, bribery
sting operations, and
honey traps to discredit politicians on whom it conducted
opposition research, and saying that the company "ran all of (Donald Trump's) digital campaign". In response to the media reports, the
Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) of the UK pursued a
warrant to search the company's servers.
[23][24] Facebook banned Cambridge Analytica from advertising on its platform, saying that it had been deceived.
[25][26] On 23 March 2018, the
British High Court granted the ICO a warrant to search Cambridge Analytica's London offices.
[27] As a result, Nix was suspended as CEO, and replaced by
Julian Wheatland.
[28]
The personal data of up to 87 million
[29] Facebook users were acquired via the 270,000 Facebook users who used a Facebook app called "This Is Your Digital Life."
[30] By giving this third-party app permission to acquire their data, back in 2015, this also gave the app access to information on the user's friends network; this resulted in the data of about 87 million users, the majority of whom had not explicitly given Cambridge Analytica permission to access their data, being collected. The app developer breached Facebook's
terms of service by giving the data to Cambridge Analytica.
[31]
On 1 May 2018, Cambridge Analytica and its parent company filed for
insolvency proceedings and closed operations.
[32][33] Alexander Tayler, a former director for Cambridge Analytica, was appointed director of
Emerdata on 28 March 2018.
[34] Rebekah Mercer,
Jennifer Mercer,
Alexander Nix and
Johnson Chun Shun Ko [
zh], who has links to American businessman
Erik Prince, are in leadership positions at Emerdata.
[35][36] The
Russo brothers are producing
an upcoming film on Cambridge Analytica.
[37][38][11] In 2019 the
Federal Trade Commission filed an administrative complaint against Cambridge Analytica for misuse of data.
[39] In 2020, the British
Information Commissioner's Office closed a three-year inquiry into the company, concluded that Cambridge Analytica was "not involved" in the
2016 Brexit referendum and found no evidence for Russia's alleged interference during the campaign.
[40]
