Judge orders search of Cambridge Analytica site
Follows claims Facebook data may have been illegally acquired
A judge has issued a warrant for the offices of Cambridge Analytica to be searched.
Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham wants access to records and data in the hands of the Londonbased company amid claims that Facebook data may have been illegally acquired and used for political campaigns.
Both Cambridge Analytica and Facebook deny any wrongdoing.
The data watchdog’s investigation includes the acquisition and use of Facebook data by Cambridge Analytica, its parent company SCL and academic Dr Aleksandr Kogan, who developed the app used to gather data.
It stems from claims over the harvesting of personal data – and whether it was used during Donald Trump’ s US presidential campaign or the brexit referendum.
Cambridge Analytica’s chief executive Alexander Nix has been suspended while Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has been called on to give evidence to MPS.
After a hearing at London’s High Court yesterday, Judge Leonard said he would give the reasons for his decision on Tuesday.
The judge’s decision came after Cambridge Analytica offered to hand over evidence.
However, lawyers representing the Information Commis- sioner’s Office (ICO) said the firm’s offer was “a poor second best” and pursued the application for a warrant.
Ben Summers, for the ICO, said Dr Kogan’s firm Global Science Research (GSR) deployed the app on Facebook, which invited users to complete a survey between November 2013 and December 2014.
He added: “That application gathered not only their responses to that survey, designed to elicit certain information about their personalities or characters, but also recorded data from that user’s profile and gathered data from those users’ friends on Facebook.”
The ICO also wanted a warrant to access the firm’s offices and search its servers to check for data obtained from Facebook. Lawyers representing SCL have said the firm “does not have” the data, as it was deleted following a request from the social media giant.
However, the ICO does not believe this is the case and wants to inspect the servers.
Dr Kogan previously claimed in an interview that he was being made a “scapegoat”.
The request for a warrant follows the issue of a demand for access, on 7 March, to which there was no response by the deadline provided.
The hearing before Judge Leonard continues.