May warns firms over data claims
THERESA May told Facebook and Cambridge Analytica to fully comply with investigations into “very concerning” claims about the harvesting of personal data.
Mrs May supported Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham’s probe, saying “people need to have confidence in how their personal data is being used”.
The Prime Minister’s comments came after an academic who developed the app to collect data on millions of Facebook users for CA claimed he has been made a “scapegoat” in the row.
Mrs May was challenged in the Commons over the Tory party’s links to CA’s parent company SCL Group.
The SNP’s Westminster leader Ian Blackford said the firm “has been run by a chairman of Oxford Conservative Association, its founding chairman was a former Tory MP, a director appears to have donated £700,000 to the Tory Party and a former Tory Party treasurer is a shareholder”.
The Prime Minister said that “as far as I am aware” there were no current Government contracts with CA or SCL.
She said the CA allegations are “clearly very concerning”, adding: “I would expect Facebook, Cambridge Analytica and all organisations involved to comply fully with the investigation that is taking place.”
The backlash against Facebook over its handling of personal data has seen calls for users to delete their profiles and wiped billions of dollars off the social media giant’s market value.
Cambridge University psychologist Aleksandr Kogan, who developed the app used to gather data, insisted he believed what he was doing was “perfectly legal and within the terms of service” of the social network but admitted he regretted not asking more questions about the work.
He claimed CA approached him to do the work, which resulted in the details of around 30 million Americans being collected, but he did not know how that information was used by the data firm.
Dr Kogan developed a personality survey called This Is Your Digital Life.
Crucially, as well as harvesting details of the people who completed the survey it could also access their friends’ information, depending on privacy settings on Facebook. CA has denied using the Facebook data in its work on Donald Trump’s US presidential campaign.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was called on to explain the company’s data protection procedures to MPs in person.
Damian Collins, chairman of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, wrote to Mr Zuckerberg on Tuesday requesting that the firm explains the “catastrophic” failure.
CA chief executive Alexander Nix was suspended after recordings emerged of him making a series of controversial claims, including boasts that CA had a pivotal role in the election of Donald Trump.
The CA board said that Mr Nix had been suspended “with immediate effect, pending a full, independent investigation”.