© PAICO officers raid Cambridge Analytica in London.
The data analytics firm is currently under fire after it was claimed it may have illegally acquired personal Facebook data that could have been used to help Donald Trump get elected and Brexit pass. ICO's investigation includes the acquisition and use of Facebook data by CA, its parent company SCL and academic Dr Aleksandr Kogan, who developed the app used to gather data.
ICO officers had arrived at its building at around 8pm after Elizabeth Denham, the Information Commissioner, was granted a warrant an hour earlier after requesting access to records and data on Monday. Speaking to Channel 4 News, who broke the story after an undercover sting, Ms Denham said: 'We need to get in there. 'We need to take a look at the databases, we need to look at the servers and understand how data was processed or deleted by Cambridge Analytica.'
Investigators were looking at documents and taking photographs and eventually emerged at approximately 2.50am, with a van thought to be carrying evidence leaving from a back exit. The ICO added in a tweet the operation was 'just one part of a larger investigation into the use of personal data for political purposes and we will now need time to collect and consider the evidence'. Both Cambridge Analytica and Facebook have denied any wrongdoing. The data analytics firm's chief executive Alexander Nix was suspended and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has also come under pressure to [provide] evidence to MPs over the issue.
" Liam O Hare on the deep connections between Cambridge Analytica’s parent company Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL Group) and the Conservative Party and military establishment, ‘Board members include an array of Lords, Tory donors, ex-British army officers and defense contractors. This is scandal that cuts to the heart of the British establishment.’ [Link]
and the second installment
" Details are emerging about the worldwide activities of SCL Group and CA, touching almost every corner of the globe stretching from Brazil, to Nigeria, to Mexico and to India. But it has now emerged that in at least some of these these projects, CA coordinated with the UK MOD. [Link]