Cambridge Analytica, the data analytics firm that worked with Donald Trump’s election team and the winning Brexit campaign, harvested millions of Facebook profiles of U.S. 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. (The Guardian)
Facebook late on Friday said the firm violated company policies related to collecting user data. According to a blog post written by Paul Grewal, a top Facebook attorney, Cambridge Analytica and its parent company, Strategy Communication Laboratories, improperly acquired and retained data from a third-party researcher. (Adweek)
The breach allowed the company—which had secured a $15 million investment from Robert Mercer, the wealthy Republican donor, and wooed his political adviser, Stephen K. Bannon—to exploit the private social media activity of a huge swath of the American electorate, developing techniques that underpinned its work on President Trump’s campaign in 2016. (NYT)
American and British lawmakers demanded on Sunday that Facebook explain how Cambridge Analytica was able to harvest the private information without the social network’s alerting users. The backlash forced Facebook to once again defend the way it protects user data. (NYT)
A British lawmaker, conservative legislator Damian Collins, accused Facebook on Sunday of misleading officials by downplaying the risk of users’ data being shared without their consent. Collins also accused Alexander Nix, the head of Cambridge Analytica, of lying. In Washington, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota, said on Twitter that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg “needs to testify before Senate Judiciary.” (Time)
Facebook on Friday suspended accounts for Strategic Communication Laboratories. The suspension was issued because Cambridge Analytica received Facebook data from hundreds of thousands of users in a way that violated Facebook’s guidelines, the company said Friday in a blog post. (Recode)