Aleksandr Kogan — who spoke to “60 Minutes” in an interview airing Sunday — is the app developer at the heart of the Facebook privacy scandal. The social media giant announced last month that it was suspending the University of Cambridge professor for violating its policies in 2015.
Kogan served as a director of Global Science Research (GSR) where he exploited a Facebook loophole and harvested the data of 50 million users with his mobile app “thisisyourdigitallife.” Facebook said Kogan and Cambridge Analytica lied about deleting the data after they learned about the incident. Kogan gained access to the data in a legitimate way, Facebook said, but he violated its policies by passing it to third parties.
But Kogan told “60 Minutes” he didn’t think obtaining the data for a political consulting firm was against Facebook’s rules.
“The belief in Silicon Valley and certainly our belief … was that the general public must be aware that their data is being sold and shared and used to advertise to them,” Kogan said. “And nobody cares.”
In retrospect, Kogan said he believes his assumptions were misguided and therefore what he did in 2014 “was not right and was not wise.” But he insists it was business as usual at the time.
According to the Cambridge University’s website, Kogan received his undergraduate degree at the University of California, Berkeley and completed his Ph.D. at the University of Hong Kong. He was then a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto before joining Cambridge University as a lecturer in 2012.
In March, the university said it was aware of the privacy scandal surrounding Kogan who now works as a senior research associate with the university’s psychology department.
“The University of Cambridge takes matters of research integrity and data protection extremely seriously,” it said. “We have to date found no evidence to contradict Dr Kogan’s previous assurances; nevertheless, we have written to Facebook to request all relevant evidence in their possession.”
“60 Minutes” will air its full report and more of the interview with Kogan on Sunday, April 22, at 7 p.m. ET.
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