Cambridge blues
LONDON/WASHINGTON Officers from Britain’s information regulator have raided the London offices of data firm Cambridge Analytica, after being granted a warrant as part of an investigation into alleged misuse of personal information.
A High Court judge granted the warrant yesterday. Soon afterwards, 18 people, some in Information Commissioner’s Office jackets, entered the company’s central London offices.
The information commissioner is investigating whether the firm improperly used data from some 50 million Facebook users to target voters with ads and political messages.
Cambridge Analytica, best known for working on US President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, is at the centre of an international storm over privacy and political manipulation. Authorities in the US and Britain are investigating whether it and Facebook broke the law in their use of personal information.
A super political action committee (PAC) created by Trump’s new national security adviser, John Bolton, was one of the earliest US clients of embattled data company Cambridge Analytica, which targeted voters to help boost Bolton’s national security agenda, records show.
The John Bolton Super PAC, led by the former diplomat and foreign policy hardliner, paid Cambridge Analytica more than US$1.1 million in the 2014 and 2016 election cycles for research, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings.
Part of the work the firm performed for Bolton’s super PAC was psychographic voter targeting, which it claimed could profile voters based on certain characteristics. The company’s analysis was based in part on data about tens of millions of Americans gleaned from Facebook and other sources, according to documents and former Cambridge Analytica employees.
The Facebook data had been obtained by a researcher for academic purposes and was improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica, Facebook officials said last week.
The US Federal Trade Commission has opened an investigation into whether the sharing of the Facebook data violated a 2011 consent decree that governs the company’s privacy practices.
Bolton’s group was considered a ‘‘Tier 1’’ client of Cambridge Analytica and its affiliate SCL Elections, which meant the company was using psychographic modelling for the group, former employee Chris Wylie said.
‘‘They used the psychographic stuff, and the Facebook data was a part of that,’’ said another former Cambridge Analytica employee, who requested anonymity.
Garrett Marquis, a spokesperson for Bolton, said the group did not know of any wrongdoing by Cambridge Analytica.
‘‘With respect to any allegations of impropriety, the John Bolton Super PAC was completely unaware of anything Cambridge Analytica did until recent press reports,’’ he said, adding that the super PAC has not worked with the data science firm since 2016.
Bolton is allied with the wealthy Mercer family, which set up Cambridge Analytica as a US spinoff of British company SCL in partnership with conservative strategist Stephen Bannon, later a top Trump adviser.
Hedge fund executive Robert Mercer, who financed the data science firm with at least US$10m, has been the largest donor to Bolton’s super PAC, giving US$5m since the 2014 cycle, according to FEC records.
Bolton’s super PAC first hired Cambridge Analytica and SCL Elections in mid-2014 to provide microtargeting and boost the super PAC’s advocacy on national security issues, according to a copy of the signed contract Wylie provided to The Washington Post.
In the contract, each party agreed that ‘‘it holds all necessary permits, licenses and consents to conduct its operations ... in accordance with all applicable laws and regulations’’.
In notes from a July 2014 meeting to discuss the project, SCL officials noted that they were able to ‘‘harvest substantial and useful information on people from Facebook, with permission’’.
The company suggested directing potential supporters to a Facebook app to collect personality profiles. It said it would merge that information with consumer and voter history data to identify and target voters.
At the time, the firm was working with Cambridge University psychologist Aleksandr Kogan, who had created an online personality quiz that collected Facebook profiles for an academic study. Facebook has said Kogan violated its terms of service by sharing information he gathered with a for-profit company.
Cambridge Analytica and SCL Elections laid out three goals for Bolton’s group: to help it elect Republican Senate candidates in Arkansas, North Carolina and New Hampshire; to raise the issue of national security; and to boost Bolton’s profile, according to a memo obtained by the Post from the second former Cambridge Analytica employee. AP
To meet those goals, the firms were contracted to work with the super PAC’s staff ‘‘to craft and deploy a communications programme in the target states’’, according to the contract. The super PAC ‘‘made use of significant input from SCL on messaging and target audiences, with positive results’’, the memo read.
By October 2014, Cambridge Analytica provided talking points for Bolton and his staff about how to tout the super PAC’s research without mentioning the firm, an email obtained by the Post shows.
After the elections, Bolton’s super PAC touted the voter targeting efforts it employed in 2014, calling them ‘‘the future of political advertising’’.
‘‘Using online ad networks like Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter, Collective, Direct TV, Dish Network, the John Bolton SuperPAC pioneered new technology that delivers personality-based advertising to individual voters across digital platforms,’’ according to a memo obtained by the Post.
India’s government yesterday sent a notice to Cambridge Analytica asking whether it had misused data to profile Indians and influence the country’s elections. Washington Post, AP