Skip to main content

The Cambridge Analytica files: the story so far

What are the allegations against Cambridge Analytica?
The data analytics firm used personal information harvested from more than 50 million Facebook profiles without permission to build a system that could target US voters with personalised political advertisements based on their psychological profile, according to Christopher Wylie, a former Cambridge Analytica contractor who helped build the algorithm. Employees of Cambridge Analytica, including the suspended CEO Alexander Nix, were also filmed boasting of using manufactured sex scandals, fake news and dirty tricks to swing elections around the world.

How is Facebook involved in the scandal?
The social media company has received a number of warnings about its data security policies in recent years and had known about the Cambridge Analytica data breach since 2015, but only suspended the firm and the Cambridge university researcher who harvested user data from Facebook earlier this month. A former Facebook manager has warned that hundreds of millions of users are likely to have had their private information used by private companies in the same way. On Sunday, Facebook ran adverts in several major UK and US newspapers apologising for the data breach, and said it was investigating other applications that had access to large amounts of user data.

What has been the reaction to the scandal?
Investigators from Britain’s data watchdog raided Cambridge Analytica’s London offices over Friday night, and the main consumer protection body in the US is reported to have opened an investigation into whether Facebook has violated privacy agreements. Billions of dollars have been wiped off Facebook’s stock market valuation this week as a growing #DeleteFacebook movement and regulatory fears have spooked investors.

What is the Brexit link?
During the Brexit referendum, a digital services firm linked to Cambridge Analytica received a £625,000 payment from a pro-Brexit campaign organisation which had been given the money by Vote Leave, potentially violating referendum spending rules. Shahmir Sanni, a pro-Brexit whistleblower, told the Observer newspaper that he had passed evidence supporting his claims to the police and the Electoral Commission.

Separately, around £3.4m was spent by different Brexit Leave campaigns with Canadian data firm AggregateIQ during the run up to the EU referendum, including £2.7m by the official Vote Leave campaign (40% of their total budget). Christopher Wylie says he played a role in setting up AIQ in 2013, around same time he worked for Cambridge Analytica. AIQ have say they have never entered into a contract with Cambridge Analytica and had no communications with them during the referendum campaign.

Why is the Electoral Commission involved?
British electoral law forbids co-ordination between different campaign groups, which must all comply with strict spending limits. If they plan tactics or co-ordinate together, the organisations must share a cap on spending.

Sanni has alleged that key figures in the Vote Leave campaign may have violated referendum spending rules and then attempted to destroy evidence. According to him, the £625,000 donation Vote Leave made to a pro-Brexit youth campaign group, who then spent the money on digital campaigning services with a Cambridge Analytica-linked firm, was not a genuine donation. Sanni also alleges that when the commission opened an investigation into Vote Leave last March, key Vote Leave figures tried to hide the possible co-ordination by removing themselves from the Google drive both campaign groups shared.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Understanding Prof. Yemi Osinbajo - Abraham Ogbodo

Abraham Ogbodo I am trying to understand Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, the Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Often, he speaks out of character. That is, he talks as if he is Vice President before he is a professor of law, even when I know that the latter comes first. The man wasn’t like this when he was the attorney general of Lagos State and a teacher at the Law Faculty of the University of Lagos. Then, his statements were measured and as a seasoned lawyer, based on facts. But today, Osinbajo is sounding like Adams Oshiomhole, a union leader, who by the grace of God, became governor of Edo State for eight years. The revelations about big thefts in the economy had come more from Adams than even Ibrahim Magu, chairman of the EFCC. It was Adams who said former petroleum minister; Mrs. Diezani Allison-Madueke alone stole 13 billion British pounds from the national treasury. That is like saying she stole in raw cash almost twice as much as the entire fortune of Alhaj...
1 comment
Read more

Much ado about the foreign reserves - Nonso Obikili

I have received a lot of questions about the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) foreign reserves recently. The CBN has of course been touting the reserves growing from a low of about $24bn to the approximately $42bn it is now. The questions typically centre around why we are keeping so much in reserve when the economy is struggling, and we have poor infrastructure? Why don’t we use the reserves to reduce the poverty that is rampant? The question typically betrays a little bit of misunderstanding over what the foreign reserves are and how the entire thing works. Hopefully, after reading this we will have a better understanding of what it is and what it can and can’t be used for. First, what is the “Foreign Reserves?” It is the amount of foreign exchange that the central bank has at its disposal at any point in time. Some of this is in cash and some in other liquid assets, that is assets that can quickly be turned to cash. Some of this is in US dollars but sometimes it’s in other c...
Post a Comment
Read more

Boko Haram’s campaign against education and enlightenment - By Landry Signe

Nelson Mandela once said, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” Boko Haram, the Islamist terrorist group originating from Nigeria is frightened by this enlightening power of education. Unsurprisingly, on Monday, February 19, the group, whose name often translates to “Western education is a sin,” stormed a girls’ school in the village of Dapchi in northern Nigeria to abduct students. Of the 907 schoolgirls who were in the school the day of the attack, more than 100 are still missing as of Sunday. Since it became violent about a decade ago, Boko Haram’s actions, through these and other types of bloody attacks, have resulted in horrifying consequences. Human Rights Watch estimates that Boko Haram has left at least 7 million in need of humanitarian assistance, 2.1 million displaced, and 20,000 civilians dead. Local leaders claim the number is significantly higher. Despite such causalities, it took Boko Haram’s massive kidnapping of 276 sch...
Post a Comment
Read more