Cambridge Analytica

Cambridge Analytica Ltd (CA), previously known as SCL USA, was a British political consulting firm that came to prominence through the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal. It was started in 2013, as a subsidiary of the private intelligence company and self-described "global election management agency" SCL Group by long-time SCL executives Nigel Oakes, Alexander Nix and Alexander Oakes, with Nix as CEO. The well-connected founders had contact with, among others, the Conservative Party, the British royal family and the British military. The firm maintained offices in London, New York City, and Washington, DC. The company closed operations in 2018 in the course of the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal, although firms related to both Cambridge Analytica and its parent firm SCL still exist.

History

Cambridge Analytica was established as a subsidiary of the private intelligence company SCL Group that was active in military and political arenas. The men who ran Cambridge Analytica and its parent SCL were described as having close ties to the Conservative Party, royalty and the British military. Cambridge Analytica (SCL USA) was incorporated in January 2013 with its registered office in Westferry Circus, London and just one staff member, its director and CEO Alexander James Ashburner Nix (also appointed in January 2015). Nix was also the director of nine similar companies sharing the same registered offices in London, including Firecrest technologies, Emerdata and six SCL Group companies including "SCL elections limited". Nigel Oakes, known as the former boyfriend of Lady Helen Windsor, had founded the predecessor SCL Group in the 1990s, and in 2005 Oakes established SCL Group together with his brother Alexander Oakes and Alexander Nix; SCL Group was the parent company of Cambridge Analytica. Conservative minister and MP Sir Geoffrey Pattie was the founding chairman of SCL; Lord Ivar Mountbatten also joined Oakes as a director of the company. As a result of the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal Nix was removed as CEO and replaced by Julian Wheatland before the company closed. Several of the company's executives were Old Etonians.

The company's owners included several of the Conservative Party's largest donors such as billionaire Vincent Tchenguiz, former British Conservative minister Jonathan Marland, Baron Marland and the family of American hedge fund manager Robert Mercer. The company combined misappropriation of digital assets, data mining, data brokerage, and data analysis with strategic communication during electoral processes. While its parent SCL had focused on influencing elections in developing countries since the 1990s, Cambridge Analytica focused more on the western world, including the United Kingdom and the United States; CEO Alexander Nix has said CA was involved in 44 U.S. political races in 2014. In 2015, CA performed data analysis services for Ted Cruz's presidential campaign. In 2016, CA worked for Donald Trump's presidential campaign as well as for Leave.EU (one of the organisations campaigning in the United Kingdom's referendum on European Union membership). CA's role in those campaigns has been controversial and is the subject of ongoing inquiries in both countries. Political scientists question CA's claims about the effectiveness of its methods of targeting voters.

Data scandal

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 had 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's Office (ICO) 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 ICO a warrant to search Cambridge Analytica's London offices. As a result, Nix was suspended as CEO, and replaced by Julian Wheatland.

The personal data of up to 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 SCL filed for insolvency proceedings and closed operations. Alexander Tayler, a former director for Cambridge Analytica, was appointed director of Emerdata on 28 March 2018. Rebekah Mercer, Jennifer Mercer, Alexander Nix and , who has links to American businessman Erik Prince, are in leadership positions at Emerdata. The Russo brothers are producing an upcoming film on Cambridge Analytica. In 2019 the Federal Trade Commission filed an administrative complaint against Cambridge Analytica for misuse of data.Cambridge Analytica, LLC, In the Matter of
, Federal Trade Commission In 2020, the British Information Commissioner's Office closed a three-year inquiry into the company, concluded that Cambridge Analytica was "not involved" in the 2016 Brexit referendum and found no additional evidence for Russia's alleged interference during the campaign. US sensitive polling and election data however were passed to Russian Intelligence via a Cambridge Analytica contractor Sam Patten and Konstantin Kilimnik who was indicted during the affair.

Publicly, parent company SCL Group called itself a "global election management agency", ''Politico'' reported it was known for involvement "in military disinformation campaigns to social media branding and voter targeting". SCL gained work on a large number of campaigns for the US and UK governments' War on Terror advancing their model of behavioral conflict during the 2000s. riant, Emma (2015) Propaganda and Counter-terrorism: Strategies for Global Change, Manchester: Manchester University Press./ref> SCL's involvement in the political world has been primarily in the developing world where it has been used by the military and politicians to study and manipulate public opinion and political will. ''Slate'' writer Sharon Weinberger compared one of SCL's hypothetical test scenarios to fomenting a coup.

Among the investors in Cambridge Analytica were some of the Conservative Party's largest donors such as billionaire Vincent Tchenguiz, former Conservative minister Jonathan Marland, Baron Marland, Roger Gabb, the family of American hedge fund manager Robert Mercer, and Steve Bannon. A minimum of 15 million dollars has been invested into the company by Mercer, according to ''The New York Times''. Bannon's stake in the company was estimated at 1 to 5 million dollars, but he divested his holdings in April 2017 as required by his role as White House Chief Strategist. In March 2018, Jennifer Mercer and Rebekah Mercer became directors of Emerdata limited.
In March 2018 it became public by Christopher Wylie, that Cambridge Analytica's first activities were founded on a data set, which its parent company SCL bought 2014 from a company named Global Science Research founded by Aleksandr Kogan and his team present across the world who worked as a psychologist at Cambridge. Dr Emma Briant, an academic at University of Essex had researched the firm and the parent company SCL interviewing employees as part of her research on political propaganda and her 2015 book 'Propaganda and Counter-Terrorism.' During the revelations she published evidence through the British Parliament's Fake News Inquiry indicating that Cambridge Analytica did work for the UK's LeaveEU Brexit campaign during the 2016 EU Referendum which they denied. The Information Commissioner's Office in February 2019 decided to audit the campaign, and its funder Arron Banks company Eldon Insurance for unlawful marketing involving repurposing of data. In November 2020 the Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham MP wrote that she "found no further evidence to change erearlier view that SCL/CA were not involved in the EU referendum campaign in the U.K." Denham also said she found no evidence of Russian involvement in the referendum. During Boris Johnson's tenure as foreign secretary, the Foreign Office sought advice from Cambridge Analytica and Boris Johnson had a meeting with Alexander Nix in 2016.

Aftermath

Following the downfall of Cambridge Analytica, a number of companies have been established by executives who had also been involved with Cambridge Analytica. In July 2018, several former Cambridge Analytica staff launched Auspex International, a company intended to influence politics and society in Africa and the Middle East; another company called Emerdata also had substantial overlap with Cambridge Analytica. According to the Associated Press, Data Propria, a data analysis firm launched May 2018, is run by former officials at Cambridge Analytica.

A firm called Emic, set up by staff from the original SCL defence contractor were revealed in 2020 by Emma Briant to be continuing to work for governments.

In December 2022, Reuters reported that Facebook owner Meta Platforms agreed to pay $725 million to settle a class-action lawsuit that had been initiated by its release of personal data to Cambridge Analytica in 2018.

Methods

CA's data analysis methods were based on those originally patented by Facebook. While Facebook did not publicly disclose the accuracy of this method, it was studied by Michal Kosinski. In 2008, Michal Kosinski had joined the Psychometrics Centre of Cambridge University where he then developed with his colleagues a profiling system using general online data, Facebook-likes, and smartphone data. He showed that with a limited number of "likes", people can be analysed better than friends or relatives can do and that individual psychological targeting is a powerful tool to influence people. Psychological targeting describes the practice of extracting people's psychological profiles from their digital footprints (e.g., their Facebook Likes, Tweets or credit card records) in order to influence their attitudes, emotions or behaviors through psychologically informed interventions at scale. It is defined by two interrelated components: (1) psychological profiling refers to the automated assessment of psychological traits and states from digital footprints, and (2) psychologically informed interventions describe the attempt to influence people's attitudes, emotions or behaviors by speaking to their fundamental psychological motivations. Research in fields such as psychology, marketing and health communication has shown that interventions aimed at influencing and changing human behavior are most effective when they are tailored to individuals’ psychological states and traits.

A large amount of data can be extracted from the record of the trace of almost every step we take online — a digital footprint of human behavior. Whether it is our Facebook profile, Tweets, Google searches or GPS sensor, our digital footprints create extensive records of our personal habits and preferences. CA would collect data on voters using sources such as demographics, consumer behaviour, Internet activity, and other public and private sources. According to ''The Guardian'', CA used psychological data derived from millions of Facebook users, largely without users' permission or knowledge. Another source of information was the "Cruz Crew" mobile app that tracked physical movements and contacts and according to the Associated Press, invaded personal data more than previous presidential campaign apps.

The company claimed to use "data enhancement and audience segmentation techniques" providing "psychographic analysis" for a "deeper knowledge of the target audience". The company used the Big Five model of personality Using what it called "behavioral microtargeting" the company indicated that it could predict "needs" of subjects and how these needs may change over time. Services then could be individually targeted for the benefit of its clients from the political arena, governments and companies, providing "a better and more actionable view of their key audiences." According to Sasha Issenberg, CA indicated that it could tell things about an individual he might not even know about himself.

CA derived much of its personality data on online surveys which it conducted on an ongoing basis. For each political client, the firm would narrow voter segments from 32 different personality styles it attributed to every adult in the United States. The personality data would inform the tone of the language used in ad messages or voter contact scripts, while additional data was used to determine voters' stances on particular issues.

The data would get updated with monthly surveys, asking about political preferences and how people get the information they use to make decisions. It also covered consumer topics about different brands and preferred products, building up an image of how someone shops as much as how they vote.

''Channel 4 News'' investigation

''Channel 4 News'', a news programme broadcast by the British public service Channel 4, conducted a four-month investigation into Cambridge Analytica starting in November 2017. An undercover reporter posed as a potential customer for Cambridge Analytica, hoping to help Sri Lankan candidates get elected. Video footage from this operation was published on 19 March 2018. From the footage, Cambridge Analytica executives say they worked on over 200 elections across the world. Alexander Nix was recorded in this investigation, talking "unguardedly about the company's practices". Nix said that his company uses honey traps, bribery stings, and prostitutes, for opposition research. For example, Nix offered to discredit political opponents in Sri Lanka with suggestive videos using "beautiful Ukrainian girls" and offers of bribes, even if the opponents did not accept the offers. He also said he uses "Israeli companies" to entrap political opponents with bribes and sex, the Wall Street Journal confirmed that it was referring to Psy-Group. Zamel signed a memorandum of understanding for Psy-Group with Cambridge Analytica on 14 December 2016.

Cambridge Analytica said that the video footage was "edited and scripted to grossly misrepresent" the recorded conversations and company's business practices. Nix said that he had "entertained a series of ludicrous hypothetical scenarios", but insisted his company does not engage in entrapment or bribery.

In the third part of the series, Nix also said that Cambridge Analytica "ran all the digital campaign" for Trump. Nix stated they used communications that would be self-destructive, leaving no incriminating evidence. After the news segment was broadcast, the board of Cambridge Analytica suspended Nix as chief executive officer, and Julian Wheatland became the new CEO. The company also released a statement that the allegations did not represent the ethics of the company, and an independent entity would investigate Nix's statements.

The investigation also raised questions regarding campaign finance law. During the 2016 election, the company was employed both by Trump's campaign and Robert Mercer's Make America Number 1 Super PAC which supported Trump. While PACs are not limited in the amount of funds they can spend on behalf of a candidate, they are not allowed to coordinate strategy with the campaigns they are supporting. Nix's statements in the recorded video describe how the Trump campaign itself could "take the high road" and "stay clean", while the negative attacks were handled by the firm and the Super PAC, in a way which makes it "unattributable, untrackable". These statements potentially suggested unlawful coordination between Trump's campaign and the PAC, although Cambridge Analytica has denied this.

Assessment of impact

Some political scientists have been skeptical of claims made by Cambridge Analytica about the effectiveness of its microtargeting of voters. They believe that access to digital data doesn't provide significantly more information than from public voter databases, and the digital data has limited value over time as the preferences of voters change. While studies have shown that personality does impact political preferences, some political scientists still believe that it is hard to infer political values from personality traits. On the other hand, a paper by Stanford professor Michal Kosinski and colleagues confirms that it can have a significant impact with a sample base of 3.5 million users

Research discussed by Brendan Nyhan of Dartmouth College showed that it is extremely hard to alter voters' preferences because many likely voters are already committed partisans; as a result, it is easier to simply mobilize partisan voters. Tufts University political scientist Eitan Hersh, who has published on microtargeting in campaigns, has expressed strong skepticism about Cambridge Analytica's methods and their purported effectiveness, saying, "Every claim about psychographics etc made by or about ambridge Analyticais BS."

In 2017, CA claimed that it has psychological profiles of 220 million US citizens based on 5,000 separate data sets. In March 2017, ''The New York Times'' reported that CA had exaggerated its capabilities: "Cambridge executives now concede that the company never used psychographics in the Trump campaign." Trump aides have also disputed CA's role in the campaign, describing it as "modest" and noting that none of the company's efforts involved psychographics.

According to an aide and consultant for Ted Cruz's presidential campaign, their campaign stopped using CA after its psychographic models failed to identify likely Cruz supporters. The Cruz campaign ceased access to all of Cambridge's data after the South Carolina Republican primary on 20 February 2016 when Cruz came in third after Trump and Rubio.

Privacy issues and investigations

The use of personal data collected without knowledge or permission to establish sophisticated models of user's personalities raises ethical and privacy issues. CA operated out of the United States; its operations would be illegal in Europe with its stricter privacy laws. While Cruz was outspoken about protecting personal information from the government, his database of CA has been described as "political-voter surveillance".

Regarding CA's use of Facebook users, a speaker for CA indicated that these users gave permission when signing up with the provider, while Facebook declared that "misleading people or misusing information" is in violation of Facebook's policies. In 2015, Facebook indicated that it was investigating the matter. In March 2018, Facebook announced that it had suspended the accounts of Strategic Communication Laboratories for failing to delete data on Facebook users that had been improperly collected.

Alexander Nix suggested that data collection and microtargeting benefits the voters – because they receive messages about issues they care about. However, digital rights protection groups raised concerns that private information is collected, stored, and shared while individuals are "left in the dark about t and have no control.

Significant backlash against Facebook came to light in March 2018, resulting in controversy as well as a $37 billion drop in the market capitalization of Facebook, as of 20 March. Due to the scandal of enabling monetization of Facebook personal data, one assessment was that only 41% of Facebook users trust the company. On 26 March, the US Federal Trade Commission announced it is "conducting an open investigation of Facebook Inc's privacy practices following the disclosure that 50 million users' data got into the hands of political consultancy Cambridge Analytica." In March 2019 Facebook acknowledged it had concerns about “improper data-gathering practices” by CA, months before the previously reported onset-of-alert at December 2015. In December 2019 the Federal Trade Commission also filed a complaint against Cambridge Analytica for its practices, while filing settlements with CEO Alexander Nix and app developer Aleksandr Kogan.

In 2020 the BBC reported that the group Facebook You Owe Us had filed a lawsuit against Facebook for failing to protect users' personal data in the Cambridge Analytica breach, involving the misuse of information from almost one million users in England and Wales.

Elections

Australia

In Australia, Cambridge Analytica set up an office. Allan Lorraine, a friend of Alexander Tayler who was a former director for Cambridge Analytica and later appointed director of Emerdata, set up SCL (the parent company of Cambridge Analytica) in Australia. Representatives of Cambridge Analytica had a private dinner with Dan Tehan when he was then the minister responsible for cyber security, and Liberal party executives. The business name "Cambridge Analytica" was registered in Australia to the Lorraine Family Trust in June 2015. SCL Group, promoted Mr Lorraine online as its head of Australian operations. Alexander Nix spoke at an Australian data-driven advertising conference run by the Association for Data-driven Marketing and Advertising and met with Liberal Party officials. Cambridge Analytica was scoping both political as well as commercial work in Australia. Cambridge Analytica's managing director of political operations said in a video recorded by Channel 4 that "We’ve done it in Mexico, we’ve done it in Malaysia, we’re now moving into Brazil, Australia, China."

More than 310,000 Australian Facebook users were among the millions globally who may have had their information improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica, to be sold and used for political profiling.

India

Cambridge Analytica functioned in India through a company called Strategic Communication Laboratories Private Limited, a venture of its parent company based in London, the SCL Group, and Ovleno India. Christopher Wylie, the CA whistleblower, tweeted documents that suggested that SCL India had been involved in at least six state elections in 2003-2012, including the 2010 state elections in Bihar, as well as the 2009 national election. He also suggested that CA's role in Indian elections was neocolonial in nature. Both leading national parties, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Indian National Congress (INC) denied contracting SCL India for any elections, and each accused the other party of having hired the firm. An INC spokesperson admitted that it was possible that party leaders might have merely met with the firm—yet, the SCL website listed their 2009 Bihar election campaign in its display of past projects. A clip from a BBC
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