Cambridge Analytica

Cambridge Analytica Ltd (CA) was a British political consulting firm which combined data mining, data brokerage, and data analysis with strategic communication during the electoral processes. It was started in 2013 as an offshoot of the SCL Group. The company was partly owned by the family of Robert Mercer, an American hedge-fund manager who supports many politically conservative causes. The firm maintained offices in London, New York City, and Washington, DC. CEO Alexander Nix has said CA was involved in 44 US political races in 2014. In 2015, it performed data analysis services for Ted Cruz's presidential campaign. In 2016, CA worked for Donald Trump's presidential campaign as well as the Leave.EU-campaign for the United Kingdom's referendum on European Union membership. CA's role in those campaigns has been controversial and is the subject of ongoing criminal investigations in both countries. Political scientists question CA's claims about the effectiveness of its methods of targeting voters.In March 2018, multiple media outlets broke news of Cambridge Analytica's business practices. The New York Times and The Observer reported that the company had acquired and used personal data about Facebook users from an external researcher who had told Facebook he was collecting it for academic purposes. Shortly afterwards, Channel 4 News aired undercover investigative videos showing Nix boasting about using prostitutes, bribery sting operations, and honey traps to discredit politicians on whom it conducted opposition research, and saying that the company "ran all of (Donald Trump's) digital campaign". In response to the media reports, the Information Commissioner of the UK pursued a warrant to search the company's servers. Facebook banned Cambridge Analytica from advertising on its platform, saying that it had been deceived. On 23 March 2018, the British High Court granted the Information Commissioner's Office a warrant to search Cambridge Analytica's London offices.The personal data of approximately 87 million Facebook users were acquired via the 270,000 Facebook users who used a Facebook app called "This Is Your Digital Life." By giving this third-party app permission to acquire their data, back in 2015, this also gave the app access to information on the user's friends network; this resulted in the data of about 87 million users, the majority of whom had not explicitly given Cambridge Analytica permission to access their data, being collected. The app developer breached Facebook's terms of service by giving the data to Cambridge Analytica.On 1 May 2018, Cambridge Analytica and its parent company filed for insolvency proceedings and closed operations. Alexander Taylor, a former director for Cambridge Analytica, was appointed director of Emerdata on 28 March 2018.