FB data mined for Brexit campaign, says whistle-blower
The computer expert who sparked a global debate over electronic privacy said today that the official campaign backing Britain’s exit from the European Union had access to data that was inappropriately collected from millions of Facebook users.
Christopher Wylie previously alleged political consultancy Cambridge Analytica used data harvested from more than 50 million Facebook users to help US President Donald Trump’s 2016 poll campaign. Wylie worked on Cambridge Analytica’s “information operations” in 2014 and 2015.
Wylie on Tuesday told the media committee of the British parliament that he “absolutely” believed Canadian consultant AggregateIQ drew on Cambridge Analytica’s databases for its work on the official Vote Leave campaign. The data could have been used to microtarget voters in the closely fought referendum in which 51.9 per cent of voters ultimately backed Brexit.
“I think it is incredibly reasonable to say that AIQ played a very significant role in Leave winning,” he said.
Because of the links between the two companies, Vote Leave got the “the next best thing” to Cambridge Analytica when it hired AggregateIQ, “a company that can do virtually everything that (Cambridge Analytica) can do but with a different billing name,” Wylie said.
The testimony comes a day after Wylie and two other former insiders presented 50 pages of documents that they said proved Vote Leave violated election finance rules during the referendum campaign.
They allege that Vote Leave circumvented spending limits by donating £625,000 ($888,000) to the pro-Brexit student group BeLeave, then sending the money directly to AggregateIQ.
AggregateIQ’s role in US election
Wylie also said that AggregateIQ worked on software called Ripon which was used to identify Republican voters ahead of the 2016 US presidential election.
AggregateIQ did not immediately respond to request for comment on the remarks by Wylie.