Summary:
The Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal was a major political scandal in early 2018 which revealed that Cambridge Analytica had harvested the personal data of millions of Facebook users without their consent and used it for political purposes. It has been described as a watershed moment in the public understanding of personal data and led to a massive fall in Facebook's stock price and called for tighter regulation of tech companies' use of data. Cambridge Analytica shut down operations in 2018 in the course of the scandal, although related firms still exist.
Allegations:
- In December 2015, Harries Davies, a journalist from The Guardian first reported on the illicit harvesting of personal data by Cambridge Analytica. He claimed that the company was working for the United States Senator Ted Cruz and using data harvested from millions of Facebook users without their consent.
- The scandal erupted in March 2018 with the emergence of a whistleblower, an ex-Cambridge Analytica employee Christopher Wylie leading The New York Times, The Guardian and The Observer to publish bombshell reports forcing Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify in front of the US Congress.
- The whistleblower Wylie alleged that the British political consultancy Cambridge Analytica improperly accessed users' information to build profiles on American voters that were later used to help elect US President Donald Trump in 2016.
- The data was collected through an app called 'thisisyourdigitallife' built by Cambridge University academic Aleksandr Kogan in collaboration with Cambridge Analytica. Hundreds of thousands of users were paid a small fee to take a personality test and they consented to have their data collected. It was later found out that the app had also harvested the information of participants' friends, leading to the illegal accumulation of data from millions of Americans.
- In March 2019, Kogan filed a defamation suit against Facebook arguing against Facebook's repeated attempts to pin the blame on him. “Alex did not lie, Alex was not a fraud, Alex did not deceive them, this was not a scam,”said Kogan’s lawyer. He further added, “Facebook knew exactly what this app was doing, or should have known. Facebook desperately needed a scapegoat, and Alex was their scapegoat.”
Defence:
- “This was a major breach of trust. I’m really sorry this happened. We have a basic responsibility to protect people’s data,” Zuckerberg said breaking a silence of five days after the scandal erupted in 2018. Other Facebook officials initially argued against calling it a "data breach", arguing that those who took the personality quiz had consented to give away their information.
- Zuckerberg said that the 2013 personality quiz app created by Kogan, was installed by 3,00,000 people was able to retrieve Facebook information. It wasn't until 2015 that Zuckerberg was made aware this information had been shared to Cambridge Analytica which was subsequently asked to remove all the data. It was later discovered by the media that the data had not been deleted.
- Zuckerberg pledged to make changes and reforms in Facebook policy to prevent similar breaches. In April 2018, the company implemented the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation in all areas of operation, not just the EU.
- The Facebook CEO also said that Facebook was committed to stopping interference in the US November 2018 midterm election and elections in India and Brazil.
- In a statement, a spokesperson for Facebook said Kogan’s case was a “a frivolous lawsuit from someone who recklessly violated our policies and put people’s data at risk."