Category Archives: Cambridge Analytica

Revealed: the US adviser who tried to swing Nigeria’s 2015 election

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Sam Patten, an American consultant later mired in controversy, exploited emails obtained by Tal Hanan’s team

In late December 2014, a team from Cambridge Analytica flew to Madrid for meetings with a handful of old and new contacts. A member of the former Libyan royal family referred to as “His Royal Highness” was there. So, too, was the son of a US billionaire, a Nigerian businessman and a private Israeli intelligence operative.

For Alexander Nix, the Etonian chief executive of Cambridge Analytica, and his new employee Brittany Kaiser, who networked like most other people breathed, there may have been nothing unusual about such a gathering.

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Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data breach lawsuit ends in 11th hour settlement

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Dramatic move shows Mark Zuckerberg ‘desperate to avoid being questioned over cover-up’, says Observer journalist who exposed scandal

Facebook has dramatically agreed to settle a lawsuit seeking damages for allowing Cambridge Analytica access to the private data of tens of millions of users, four years after the Observer exposed the scandal that mired the tech giant in repeated controversy.

A court filing reveals that Meta, Facebook’s parent company, has in principle settled for an undisclosed sum a long-running lawsuit that claimed Facebook illegally shared user data with the UK analysis firm.

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Facebook agrees to settle Cambridge Analytica data privacy lawsuit

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The four-year-old case alleged that the company had violated consumer privacy laws by sharing users’ personal data with third parties

Meta’s Facebook has in-principle agreed to settle a lawsuit in the San Francisco federal court seeking damages for letting third parties, including Cambridge Analytica, access the private data of users, a court filing showed.

The financial terms were not disclosed in the filing on Friday that asked the judge to put the class action suit on hold for 60 days until the lawyers for both plaintiffs and Facebook finalize a written settlement.

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Facebook ‘overpaid in data settlement to avoid naming Zuckerberg’

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Lawsuit alleges settlement in Cambridge Analytica case driven by desire to protect founder

Facebook paid $4.9bn more than necessary to the US Federal Trade Commission in a settlement over the Cambridge Analytica scandal in order to protect Mark Zuckerberg, a lawsuit has claimed.

The lawsuit alleges that the size of the $5bn settlement was driven by a desire to protect Facebook’s founder and chief executive from being named in the FTC complaint.

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Fresh Cambridge Analytica leak ‘shows global manipulation is out of control’

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Company’s work in 68 countries laid bare with release of more than 100,000 documents

An explosive leak of tens of thousands of documents from the defunct data firm Cambridge Analytica is set to expose the inner workings of the company that collapsed after the Observer revealed it had misappropriated 87 million Facebook profiles.

More than 100,000 documents relating to work in 68 countries that will lay bare the global infrastructure of an operation used to manipulate voters on “an industrial scale” is set to be released over the next months.

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Hillary Clinton: Zuckerberg should pay price for damage to democracy

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Former presidential candidate criticises Facebook’s decision to let politicians lie in adverts

Mark Zuckerberg “should pay a price” for what he is doing to democracy, Hillary Clinton has said, as she expressed doubts about whether free and fair elections were even possible in the wake of Facebook’s decision to not factcheck political advertising.

Speaking in New York at a screening of The Great Hack, a Netflix documentary about the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate cited the threat to upcoming elections in both the US and UK as she made the damning remarks about Facebook’s decision to allow politicians to lie in adverts posted to its platform.

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Document reveals how Facebook downplayed early Cambridge Analytica concerns

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Internal correspondence provides new insight into how Facebook staff reacted to concerns about use of user data by political campaign consultants

Internal Facebook correspondence from September 2015, released as part of a US government lawsuit on Friday, reveals new details about Facebook’s early knowledge of potentially improper data collection by Cambridge Analytica.

The existence of the internal discussion was first reported by the Guardian in March 2019. That report marked Facebook’s first acknowledgement that some of its employees were aware of concerns about improper data practices by Cambridge Analytica four months before the Guardian’s 11 December 2015 article exposed them.

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Facebook denies giving contradictory evidence to parliament

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Committee chairman suggested staff knew Cambridge Analytica had misused data before Guardian revelation

Facebook executives did not give contradictory evidence to a parliamentary committee investigating the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the firm has claimed, insisting that it learned of the misuse of data only when the Guardian reported it in December 2015.

The company was responding to Damian Collins, the chairman of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee, who had sought clarification on points made by two Facebook executives before the committee.

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Johnson ally Lynton Crosby could be called to give evidence to MPs

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Disinformation committee wants CTF Partners chief to detail its propaganda activities

Sir Lynton Crosby could be called to give evidence to a House of Commons select committee on disinformation after the Guardian revealed how his lobbying company, CTF Partners, was involved in running a propaganda network on Facebook on behalf of foreign states and major corporate clients.

MPs told the Guardian they would seek to summon representatives of CTF to discuss their role in running a disinformation network that reached tens of millions of people. It comes as trade groups seek to distance themselves from CTF and its activities.

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Facebook to pay $5bn fine as regulator settles Cambridge Analytica complaint

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Penalty by US government reflects scale of breach, first reported by the Observer

Facebook will pay a record $5bn (£4bn) penalty in the US for “deceiving” users about their ability to keep personal information private, after a year-long investigation into the Cambridge Analytica data breach.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the US consumer regulator, also announced a lawsuit against Cambridge Analytica and proposed settlements with the data analysis firm’s former chief executive Alexander Nix and its app developer Aleksandr Kogan.

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Brexit funder Arron Banks threatens Netflix over Great Hack documentary

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Legal threat comes as campaigners warn UK government that courts are being used to intimidate journalists

Letter: press freedom campaigners call for action on ‘vexatious lawsuits’

Related: The Great Hack: the film that goes behind the scenes of the Facebook data scandal

The businessman Arron Banks and the unofficial Brexit campaign Leave.EU have issued a legal threat against streaming giant Netflix in relation to The Great Hack, a new documentary about the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the abuse of personal data.

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Facebook to be fined $5bn for Cambridge Analytica privacy violations – reports

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The $5bn fine would be the largest ever levied by the Federal Trade Commission against a technology company

The Federal Trade Commission has reportedly voted to approve fining Facebook roughly $5bn to settle an investigation into the company’s privacy violations that was launched following the Cambridge Analytica revelations.

The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, both citing anonymous sources familiar with the matter, reported Friday afternoon that the settlement was approved by a 3-2 vote that broke along party lines, with Republicans in favor and Democrats opposed. The justice department is expected make a final approval of the fine.

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Facebook usage has collapsed since scandals, data shows

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Company’s own upbeat figures thrown into doubt by business analytics firm Mixpanel

Facebook usage has plummeted over the last year, even as the company continues to insist that its use has stayed stable or even grown in the same period, according to data seen by the Guardian.

Since April 2018, the first full month after the news of the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke in the Observer, actions on Facebook such as likes, shares and posts have dropped by almost 20%, according to the business analytics firm Mixpanel.

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Facebook emails seem to show Zuckerberg knew of privacy issues, report claims

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Firm has uncovered emails that appear to show chief executive’s connection to potentially problematic practices, WSJ reports

Facebook has uncovered emails that appear to show Mark Zuckerberg’s connection to potentially damaging privacy practices at the company, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

The emails were uncovered as part of a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigation that began after the Guardian reported that the personal data of 50 million Facebook users had been improperly harvested by Cambridge Analytica, a data firm that worked on Donald Trump’s election team and the winning Brexit campaign.

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Google share price plunges, wiping $70bn off its market value

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Biggest fall since October 2012 follows worse-than-expected quarterly results

Google’s share price has had its biggest fall in nearly seven years, wiping $70bn (£54bn) off its market value, after disappointing sales figures sparked investor fears that advertisers have been shifting their business to digital rivals such as Facebook and Amazon.

Shares in Alphabet, the parent company of Google and YouTube, fell at one point by more than 8% on Tuesday, the biggest fall since October 2012, after the company produced first quarter results on Monday that were worse than expected.

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Should democracies leave voters to their handheld devices? | Paul Chadwick

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The European parliament has identified the dangers of social media misuse ahead of its polls next month

It feels urgent, with elections approaching in several democracies, to focus on lessons from 2016, when the Brexit referendum and the US presidential election were both marred in ways still coming to light. Among several valuable reports, a recent study for the European parliament’s Panel for the Future of Science and Technology usefully encapsulates the challenges without unremitting alarmism and pessimism. It is clear-eyed about both the benefits and dangers to democracies of technologies that are in the handheld devices of most voters.

Against a backdrop of increasing polarisation, “new digital technologies have taken centre stage in political processes – both as a source of information and a campaigning platform”, says the study, Polarisation and the use of technology in political campaigns and communication. “Such new and relatively unregulated platforms create new opportunities for nefarious actors to deliberately push false content and distort information flows for political gain.” But artificial intelligence will also offer new opportunities for better accountability and transparency.

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The Cambridge Analytica scandal changed the world – but it didn’t change Facebook

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A year after devastating revelations of data misuse, Mark Zuckerberg still hasn’t fulfilled his promises to reform

It can be hard to remember from down here, beneath the avalanche of words and promises and apologies and blogposts and manifestos that Facebook has unleashed upon us over the course of the past year, but when the Cambridge Analytica story broke one year ago, Mark Zuckerberg’s initial response was a long and deafening silence.

It took five full days for the founder and CEO of Facebook – the man with total control over the world’s largest communications platform – to emerge from his Menlo Park cloisters and address the public. When he finally did, he did so with gusto, taking a new set of talking points (“We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can’t then we don’t deserve to serve you”) on a seemingly unending roadshow, from his own Facebook page to the mainstream press to Congress and on to an oddly earnest discussion series he’s planning to subject us to at irregular intervals for the rest of 2019.

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Cambridge Analytica a year on: ‘a lesson in institutional failure’

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One year after she broke the scandal, Carole Cadwalladr talks to whistleblower Christopher Wylie about the fallout for big tech, and the fight to hold the culprits to account

It’s a measure of how much has changed in a year that, last month the UK, parliament published an official report that called Facebook “digital gangsters” and said that Britain’s electoral laws no longer worked. It was a report that drew on hours of testimony from Cambridge Analytica directors, Facebook executives and dozens of expert witnesses: 73 in total, of whom MPs had asked 4,350 questions. And its conclusion? That Silicon Valley’s tech platforms were out of control, none more so than Facebook, which it said had treated parliament with “contempt”.

And it’s a measure of how much hasn’t changed that this was a news story for just two hours on a Monday morning before the next Westminster drama – the launch of the Independent Group – knocked it off the headline slots.

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