Facebook Suspends Cambridge Analytica for Failing to Delete User Data
March 17, 2018 by admin
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Facebook
Inc.
said it suspended Cambridge Analytica, a data firm that helped President
Donald Trump
with the 2016 election, after learning that it misled the social-media giant and violated its policy for handling user data.
Facebook said late Friday it been given information that Cambridge Analytica, along with two individuals who don’t work there, improperly kept Facebook user data for years despite telling the social network that it had destroyed those records. Facebook didn’t say how Cambridge Analytica used that data or if it gave the data to the Trump campaign.
Cambridge Analytica didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment late Friday.
Facebook, which didn’t elaborate on the source of its information, said it is suspending Cambridge Analytica, its parent Strategic Communication Laboratories, and the two individuals from buying ads or administering clients’ pages while it investigates the reports.
The move once again spotlights Facebook’s role during the 2016 presidential election and its shortcomings in policing manipulation and misuse of its platform.
Cambridge Analytica was a top vendor to Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign and has come under scrutiny in special counsel
Robert Mueller’s
investigation into whether Trump associates colluded with Russia’s efforts to interfere in the U.S. election. Mr. Trump has denied any collusion by his campaign with the Russians, and Moscow has denied meddling in the election.
Facebook said it had learned in 2015 that
Aleksandr Kogan,
a psychology professor at the University of Cambridge, broke its data policies when he shared user data gleaned from his personality-prediction app, “thisisyourdigitallife,” to third parties including Cambridge Analytica and
Christopher Wylie,
who runs a company called of Eunoia Technologies Inc.
About 270,000 people downloaded the app, giving Mr. Kogan access to information such as the cities they lived in, the content they had liked, or information about their friends, Facebook Deputy General Counsel Paul Grewal wrote in a blog post.
Mr. Kogan’s data gathering was permitted at the time, but he violated Facebook policy by sharing the data he compiled with outsiders. Facebook in 2015 removed his app and demanded that he and those he shared the data with certify that the data was destroyed, the company said.
Mr. Kogan didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment late Friday. Mr. Wylie couldn’t immediately be located.
A Facebook spokesman said the parties, including Cambridge Analytica, entered legal agreements on the deletion, but Facebook couldn’t independently verify that it was scrubbed. The company has since changed its data policies so developers can’t easily gather as much data about Facebook users, it said.
Facebook said it learned several days ago that not all the data was deleted.
“We are moving aggressively to determine the accuracy of these claims,” Mr. Grewal wrote Friday. “If true, this is another unacceptable violation of trust and the commitments they made.”
Facebook said it has previously taken similar action against other advertisers and developers, although a spokesman declined to describe any examples.
The Trump campaign paid Cambridge Analytica close to $9 million for data, polling and research services, according to Federal Election Commission records and a person familiar with additional payments that weren’t publicly disclosed.
Mr. Mueller in the fall asked Cambridge Analytica to turn over the emails of any of its employees who worked on the Trump campaign, in a sign that the special counsel is probing the campaign’s data operation, The Wall Street Journal reported in December.
Cambridge Analytica Chief Executive
Alexander Nix
has said he contacted WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange through his speaker’s bureau during the 2016 campaign to offer help organizing the
Hillary Clinton
-related emails the website planned to publish. WikiLeaks last year published a trove of Clinton-related emails that U.S. intelligence agencies later determined had been stolen by Russian intelligence and given to the website. Mr. Assange said he rejected Mr. Nix’s outreach.
Since the 2016 election, Cambridge Analytica largely has departed the American political consulting world. FEC records show it doesn’t have any U.S. political clients, as the data firm has grappled with staff upheaval and complaints from clients that it fell short in delivering services it promised. The firm has defended its work, saying political cycles mean its level of business fluctuates.
—Rebecca Ballhaus contributed to this article.
Write to Deepa Seetharaman at Deepa.Seetharaman@wsj.com
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Trump After Dark: The HR Department edition
March 17, 2018 by admin
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Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
Soon. Not quite yet. Eventually?
The prolonged goodbye of President Donald Trump’s national security adviser H.R. McMaster has a familiar pattern to it: Rumors swirl, potential replacements are floated and then — no immediate action from President Trump. Perhaps even a White House denial.
Story Continued Below
Getting “Tillersoned,” as POLITICO’s Eliana Johnson and Matthew Nussbaum report.
“Like now-former secretary of state Rex Tillerson, whom the president dismissed earlier this week, McMaster has never clicked with the president, who prizes personal chemistry and likes to shoot the breeze. And as with the secretary of state, the president decided months ago amid disagreements over his Afghanistan strategy that McMaster wouldn’t be a permanent fixture in his administration.”
But, as the week wound down into the weekend McMaster was still there.
Programming note: Trump After Dark is taking a spring break. We’ll see you back here March 26.
Elsewhere in President Trump’s orbit:
NRA INVESTIGATED: The FEC is looking into allegations that Russians funneled donations to the National Rifle Association.
A NADER PROBLEM: George Nader a witness in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation pleaded guilty to child pornography charges in 1991.
STORM CHASING: President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, filed to move a lawsuit by porn star Stormy Daniels to federal court a move that could make arbitration easier.
BAD ANALYTICA: Facebook has suspended Cambridge Analytica — a data analysis and communications firm best known for its work for President Donald Trump’s campaign — over concerns that it and other parties improperly obtained and stored users’ personal information.
There you have it. You’re caught up on the Trump administration. Happy Friday.