Cambridge Analytica cries foul

Marketing analytics firm says it had deleted Facebook users’ data.

London

Cambridge Analytica claimed on Tuesday that it was “no Bond villain” as it vehemently denied exploiting Facebook users’ data for the election campaign of US President Donald Trump.

The marketing analytics firm stressed it had deleted data about Facebook users obtained in breach of the social network’s terms of service.

The information had been gathered via a personality prediction app developed by academic Aleksandr Kogan’s research firm Global Science Research (GSR).

Cambridge Analytica insisted it did not use the data during Trump’s 2016 campaign and did not support the pro-Brexit side in Britain’s referendum on its European Union membership that same year.

Spokesperson Clarence Mitchell claimed the company had been portrayed like the enemy in a James Bond film.

Mitchell convened a press conference in London “to counter some of the unfounded allegations and, frankly, the torrent of ill-informed and inaccurate speculation”.

The company suspended its chief executive Alexander Nix on March 20 after recordings emerged of him boasting that the firm played an expansive role in the Trump campaign, doing all of its research, analytics as well as digital and TV campaigns.

In undercover filming captured by Channel 4 TV, Nix is also seen boasting about entrapping politicians and secretly operating in elections around the world through shadowy front companies.

Speaking of Nix, Mitchell said: “At worst he’s guilty of over-zealous salesmanship in an attempt to apparently win a contract. Staff that saw that were horrified and did not recognise the Cambridge Analytica they worked for.”

He said the data Cambridge Analytica acquired from GSR was for up to 30 million respondents in the US only, irrespective of how many GSR was able to get information on.

Kogan, who teaches at Cambridge University, told a British parliamentary committee on Tuesday that criticism of his work by Facebook showed the US social media giant was in “PR crisis mode”. –