Democrats call on Cambridge Analytica head to testify again before Congress
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https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/18/democrats-call-on-cambridge-analytica-head-to-testify-again-before-congress
US congressional investigators want the head of data firm Cambridge Analytica to testify again before their committee, under subpoena if
necessary, after a whistleblower claimed the company exploited Facebook and received millions of people’s profiles that were taken without authorisation.
Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, called for the company to be “thoroughly investigated” and said Facebook must answer questions about how it came to provide private user information to an academic with links to Russia. Democrats have also called for the Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, to testify before the Senate judiciary committee about what the social media company knew about the misuse of its data.
“This raises serious questions about the level of detail that Cambridge Analytica knew about users, whether it acquired that information illegally and whether it sought to abuse that information in support of President Trump’s political campaign in the United States or Brexit in the United Kingdom,” he told the Guardian. “The company has repeatedly touted its ability to influence voters through ‘psychographic’ targeting and has claimed it was the fundamental reason that Donald Trump won the 2016 election. Indeed, it may be that through Cambridge Analytica, the Trump campaign made use of illegitimately acquired data on millions of Americans in order to help sway the election.”
The congressman called for Alexander Nix, the chief executive of Cambridge Analytica, to return “if necessary under subpoena”, noting that he had only spoken to the committee via video link on a day when members were interrupted by votes. “The committee would also greatly benefit by hearing from the whistleblower named in today’s report, Christopher Wylie, and we plan to reach out to him in the coming days,” Schiff said.
The month after his firm was hired by the Trump campaign, Nix emailed the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, for help tracking down emails Hillary Clinton supposedly had deleted from her private server, the Daily Beast and the Wall Street Journal reported last year. Nix has denied any involvement in Russian election interference.
The data breach was one of the biggest in Facebook’s history and renewed scrutiny of the social network’s influence on the 2016 election. Schiff said: “Facebook must also answer important questions about why it provided private user information to an academic, how they have informed users in advance of these kinds of data transfers and whether it can demonstrate that this data has indeed been destroyed.
“They must also answer questions about how they have notified users about this breach of their personal data. Facebook’s decision to suspend their relationship with Nix and the professor is the right one, but they must explain the long delay in doing so and how they will ensure the protection of users from malicious access to their personal
information.”
Steve Bannon and Robert Mercer also need to be immediately subpoenaed and compelled to testify under penalty of contempt, given their critical roles in this.
The same thing is happening in the UK, he is gonna be called back before parliament to explain why, according to recent reports, he lied last time. And yeah people can be jailed for 'contempt of parliament' so he could be in the shit if they decide to pursue that
Jesus there's like 4 Cambridge Analytica threads in the space of an evening here, this feels like they really fucked up.
It's was only a matter of time, information warfare at its finest.
I hope these people get imprisoned and everything is taken from them, because they are actively causing disorder and indirectly destroying peoples lives,
Not only that, but this is directly related to Trump and co. I imagine this is gonna be a huge deal in the Mueller probe.
When I was at Uni, I had a friend who was really into the conspiracies, you know, "Facebook builds a profile of you and targets you with ads", "Governments are buying your details to micromanage propaganda and win elections", "Russia is meddling in our elections; we need to act now" and I brushed it off as lunacy derived from the dark web
And here we stand, all of those things now true.
Now more than ever, western society hangs on a knife edge; will it let CamAnal get away with trying to manipulate society into accepting white nationalism and thus reinforce that is the government who rules the people rather than the people who rule the government, or will they and those who benefited from their predatory actions be held to account and feel the full effect of the law?
