A prominent data firm that worked with President Trump’s campaign reportedly exploited Facebook data to harvest “millions” of profiles of U.S. voters without their permission. Christopher Wylie, a whistleblower who said he helped obtain the data, told Britain’s Observer that Cambridge Analytica’s entire operation was designed to “exploit” what they knew about people from their profiles and “target their inner demons.”
Carole Cadwalladr, who co-wrote the story, said Facebook knew the data firm had been harvesting the data for at least two years. She believes Facebook didn’t inform users because it wasn’t in their best interest.
“It’s amazing the lengths they have gone to not admit this took place and to acknowledge they failed people,” Cadwalladr said on CBSN Saturday.
In a statement Friday, Facebook acknowledged that it learned it had been “lied to” about Cambridge Analytica and an affiliate’s activities in 2015, more than two years before suspending the firm from its platform, but did not alert users at the time. Facebook insisted there was no breach of their system.
After speaking with the U.K. Information Commissioner’s Office, which promotes the protection of private information, Cadwalladr said it is clear “this is a data breach.”
“We are clear this is a data breach, and Facebook’s denials in the face of it — their claim that it’s not a data breach because nobody hacked into their system — well, failing to secure your own data, failing to see how it’s being used … that falls within the definition of a data breach. Accept it, Facebook. Own it.”
Cadwalladr said Facebook would have needed to inform 58 million people that the information was taken and “essentially, there’s no way of getting it back.”
“Once it’s taken, it’s out in the world, it can be copied, it can be stored elsewhere — we just don’t know what’s happened to that data,” Cadwalladr said Saturday. She said she was appalled that Facebook did “almost nothing” to delete or secure the data that was harvested.
“What we desperately need is for Facebook to finally open up and be as honest and transparent as it can be about the way that their platform was used and manipulated during the U.S. presidential elections, during Brexit in the U.K.,” Cadwalladr said.
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