In the 2010s, personal data belonging to millions of Facebook users was collected by British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica for political advertising without informed consent.
The data was collected through an app called "This Is Your Digital Life", developed by data scientist Aleksandr Kogan and his company Global Science Research in 2013. The app consisted of a series of questions to build psychological profiles on users, and collected the personal data of the users' Facebook friends via Facebook's Open Graph platform. The app harvested the data of up to 87 million Facebook profiles. Cambridge Analytica used the data to analytically assist the 2016 presidential campaigns of Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. Cambridge Analytica was also widely accused of interfering with the Brexit referendum, although the official investigation recognised that the company was not involved "beyond some initial enquiries" and that "no significant breaches" took place.
In interviews with The Guardian and The New York Times, information about the data misuse was disclosed in March 2018 by Christopher Wylie, a former Cambridge Analytica employee. In response, Facebook apologized for their role in the data harvesting and their CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified on April 10th 2018 in front of Congress. In July 2019, it was announced that Facebook was to be fined $5 billion by the Federal Trade Commission due to its privacy violations. In October 2019, Facebook agreed to pay a £500,000 fine to the UK Information Commissioner's Office for exposing the data of its users to a "serious risk of harm". In May 2018, Cambridge Analytica filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.
Other advertising agencies have been implementing various forms of psychological targeting for years and Facebook had patented a similar technology in 2012. Nevertheless, Cambridge Analytica's methods and their high-profile clients—including the Trump presidential campaign and the UK's Leave.EU campaign—brought the problems of psychological targeting that scholars have been warning against to public awareness. The scandal sparked an increased public interest in privacy and social media's influence on politics. The online movement #DeleteFacebook trended on Twitter.
Overview Aleksandr Kogan, a data scientist at the University of Cambridge, was hired by Cambridge Analytica, an offshoot of SCL Group, to develop an app called "This Is Your Digital Life" (sometimes stylized as "thisisyourdigitallife"). Cambridge Analytica then arranged an informed consent process for research in which several hundred thousand Facebook users would agree to complete a survey for payment that was only for academic use. However, Facebook allowed this app not only to collect personal information from survey respondents but also from respondents' Facebook friends. In this way, Cambridge Analytica acquired data from millions of Facebook users.
The collection of personal data by Cambridge Analytica was first reported in December 2015 by Harry Davies, a journalist for The Guardian. He reported that Cambridge Analytica was working for United States Senator Ted Cruz using data harvested from millions of people's Facebook accounts without their consent. Further reports followed in November 2016 by McKenzie Funk for the New York Times Sunday Review, December 2016 by Hannes Grassegger and Mikael Krogerus for the Swiss publication Das Magazin (later translated and published by Vice), in February 2017 by Carole Cadwalladr for The Guardian (starting in February 2017), and in March 2017 by Mattathias Schwartz for The Intercept. According to PolitiFact, in his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump paid Cambridge Analytica in September, October, and November for data on Americans and their political preferences.
Information on the data breach came to a head in March 2018 with the emergence of a whistleblower, an ex-Cambridge Analytica employee Christopher Wylie. He had been an anonymous source for an article in 2017 in The Observer by Cadwalladr, headlined "The Great British Brexit Robbery". Cadwalladr worked with Wylie for a year to coax him to come forward as a whistleblower. She later brought in Channel 4 News in the UK and The New York Times due to legal threats against The Guardian and The Observer by Cambridge Analytica. Kogan's name change to Aleksandr Spectre, which resulted in the ominous "Dr. Spectre", added to the intrigue and popular appeal of the story.
The Guardian and The New York Times published articles simultaneously on March 17, 2018. More than $100 billion was knocked off Facebook's market capitalization in days and politicians in the US and UK demanded answers from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The negative public response to the media coverage eventually led to him agreeing to testify in front of the United States Congress. Meghan McCain drew an equivalence between the use of data by Cambridge Analytica and Barack Obama's 2012 presidential campaign;"Former Facebook staffer, Obama campaign boss reveal concerns about Facebook data ". News.com.au. March 21, 2018. PolitiFact, however, alleged that this data was not used in an unethical way, since Obama's campaign used this data to "have their supporters contact their most persuadable friends" rather than using this data for highly targeted digital ads on websites such as Facebook.
Data characteristics
Numbers Wired, The New York Times, and The Observer reported that the data-set had included information on 50 million Facebook users. While Cambridge Analytica claimed it had only collected 30 million Facebook user profiles, Facebook later confirmed that it actually had data on potentially over 87 million users, with 70.6 million of those people from the United States. Facebook estimated that California was the most affected U.S. state, with 6.7 million impacted users, followed by Texas, with 5.6 million, and Florida, with 4.3 million. Data was collected on at least 30 million users while only 270,000 people downloaded the app.
Information In April 2018, Facebook sent a message to those users believed to be affected, saying the information likely included one's "public profile, page likes, birthday and current city". Some of the app's users gave the app permission to access their News Feed, timeline, and messages. The data was detailed enough for Cambridge Analytica to create psychographic profiles of the subjects of the data. The data also included the locations of each person. For a given political campaign, each profile's information suggested what type of advertisement would be most effective to persuade a particular person in a particular location for some political event.
Data use Ted Cruz campaign
In 2016, American senator Ted Cruz hired Cambridge Analytica to aid his presidential campaign. The Federal Election Commission reported that Cruz paid the company $5.8 million in services. Although Cambridge Analytica was not well known at the time, this is when it started to create individual psychographic profiles. This data was then used to create tailored advertisements for each person to sway them into voting for Cruz.
Donald Trump campaign
Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign used the harvested data to build psychographic profiles, determining users' personality traits based on their Facebook activity. The campaign team used this information as a micro-targeting technique, displaying customized messages about Trump to different US voters on various digital platforms. Ads were segmented into different categories, mainly based on whether individuals were Trump supporters or potential swing votes. As described by Cambridge Analytica's CEO, the key was to identify those who might be enticed to vote for their client or be discouraged to vote for their opponent. Supporters of Trump received triumphant visuals of him, as well as information regarding polling stations. Swing voters were instead often shown images of Trump's more notable supporters and negative graphics or ideas about his opponent, Hillary Clinton. For example, the collected data was specifically used by "Make America Number 1 Super PAC" to attack Clinton through constructed advertisements that accused Clinton of corruption as a way of propping up Trump as a better candidate for the presidency.
Interfering in the elections in Trinidad and Tobago
In the Caribbean country of Trinidad and Tobago, the majority of the population is subdivided into two groups, those of South Asian and African origin. The South Asian population constitute the largest ethnic group in the country (approximately 35.4 %), mainly descendants of indentured workers from South Asia (mostly India), brought in to replace freed African slaves who refused to continue working on the sugar plantations. Through cultural preservation, many residents of Indian descent continue to maintain the traditions of their ancestral homeland. On the other hand, the African population constitute the second largest ethnic group in the country, with approximately 34.2 % of the population identifying themselves as of African descent.
In 2010, Cambridge Analytica designed a campaign called Do So, aimed at trying to increase abstention among young people of African descent. This campaign, presented as if it were something that arose spontaneously on social media, was developed as a resistance movement against traditional politics, encouraging young people not to vote as a form of protest, so that, by reducing their electoral participation, it favored the United National Congress (UNC), the party representing the Indian population. The Do So campaign had a significant impact on reducing voter turnout among young people of African descent, which contributed to the UNC's electoral victory in 2010.
Russia The UK Parliament's Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee reported that the Information Commissioner's Office investigated the extent to which data was shared between Aleksandr Kogan's company, Global Science Research (GSR), and Russian systems. Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham testified in March 2018 that investigators discovered IP addresses and a server linked to Kogan in Russia and associated countries; she confirmed this evidence was referred to the National Crime Agency. Deputy Information Commissioner James Dipple-Johnston testified that IP addresses originating from Russia were connected to an earlier application at the Cambridge University Psychometrics Centre, noting that these addresses were linked to a Tor entry point and alleged past cyber attacks. Cambridge Analytica could not access the Psychometrics Centre's data, so they hired Centre insider Kogan to build a "clone" of the Centre's technology through his private GSR side-business.
Also in 2018, Parliament questioned SCL Group (Cambridge Analytica's parent company) director Alexander Nix in a hearing about Cambridge Analytica's connections with Russian oil company Lukoil. Nix stated he had no connections to the two companies despite concerns that the oil company was interested in how the company's data was used to target American voters. Cambridge Analytica had become a point of focus in politics since its involvement in Trump's campaign at this point. Democratic officials made it a point of emphasis for improved investigation over concerns of Russian ties with Cambridge Analytica. It was later confirmed by Christopher Wylie that Lukoil was interested in the company's data regarding political targeting.