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Wednesday, March 28, 2018

How Cambridge Analytica procured Facebook data

Data drives all that we do”. That is how Cambridge Analytica, the analytics and marketing firm that worked for the Trump presidential campaign in 2016, describes itself on its website. Ironically, it is this very data that has brought the UK-based firm to the centre of controversy. The company allegedly used data harvested from about 50 million Facebook users to target US voters ahead of the presidential race. Details of Cambridge’s acquisition and use of Facebook data have been reported in several detailed accounts by the media, setting off a furious debate about the ethical implications of the firm’s so-called psychographic modelling techniques.
Specifically, Cambridge Analytica is accused of buying profile data of millions of Americans’ from researcher Aleksandr Kogan. Kogan, a psychology professor at the University of Cambridge collected user data from Facebook by telling them that he was collecting it strictly for academic purposes


Cambridge Analytica was set up in 2013 as an offshoot of parent company called Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL Group), which offers similar services around the world. According to its website, SCL has influenced elections in Italy, Latvia, Ukraine, Albania, Romania, South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Mauritius, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Taiwan, Colombia, Antigua, St. Vincent & the Grenadines, St. Kitts & Nevis, and Trinidad & Tobago. According to reports in the Guardian, Cambridge Analytica’s founder and currently suspended CEO, Alexander Nix said it had been set up “to address the vacuum in the US Republican political market” that became evident when Mitt Romney was defeated in the 2012 presidential election.
The company is part of the SCL Group that provides data, analytics and strategy to governments and military organizations worldwide. Nix, the 42-year-old Eton-educated protagonist joined SCL in 2003 after studying at Manchester University and working in corporate finance

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