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UK authorities raid Cambridge Analytica

Information Analyst

Penultimate Amazing
Information Analyst
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NB: Although there has been some discussion of Cambridge Analytica in the Trump thread, the company has also been implicated in Brexit campaigning, and thus spans both UK and US politics.

BBC News: Cambridge Analytica offices searched over data storage

"The London offices of Cambridge Analytica have been searched by enforcement officers from the UK's information commissioner.

The High Court granted the data watchdog a warrant amid claims the firm amassed information about millions of people without their consent, based on a 2014 quiz on Facebook.

The seven-hour search finished in the early hours of Saturday.

Both Cambridge Analytica and Facebook deny any wrongdoing.

A group of people, some wearing ICO enforcement jackets, entered the building housing Cambridge Analytica's London headquarters at 20:00 GMT on Friday - less than an hour after a High Court judge granted the warrant.

Several hours later members of the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) were seen leaving the offices and a van - thought to be carrying gathered evidence - was driven away from the rear of the building.

The ICO applied for the warrant to access the databases and servers of Cambridge Analytica.

The search is part of a wider investigation into political campaigning.

Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham has said she was looking at whether personal data was acquired in "an unauthorised way", whether there was sufficient consent to share the data, what was done to safeguard it and whether Facebook acted robustly when it found out about the loss of the data.

Cambridge Analytica's acting chief executive, Alexander Tayler, said the company has been in touch with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) since February 2017 and it remained committed to helping the investigation.

In a statement, he said checks in 2015 showed all the Facebook data had been deleted but the company was now undertaking an independent third-party audit to verify none remained.

Cambridge Analytica chief executive Alexander Nix was suspended on Tuesday after footage broadcast on Channel 4 appeared to show him suggesting tactics his company could use to discredit politicians online.

Claims over whether Cambridge Analytica used the personal data of millions of Facebook users to sway the outcome of the US 2016 presidential election and the UK Brexit referendum have also been raised."

Speaking as someone whose day job is exactly what my username says, it strikes me that the inherent problem is that CA was using data they shouldn't have access to within the context of UK law, and/or that they were using data in a way that is illegal in the UK, regardless of whether the application of it was within the UK or not. In essence, either they were doing something without checking whether it was legal or not; or they knew it was illegal, but did it anyway. A company such as CA cannot reasonably claim to be unaware of their obligations under the Data Protection Act, at a minimum.
 
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It would be really interesting to know how much data CA have managed to destroy in the last week, given the fact that this court order and raid has been trailed publicly for at least that long. Here's a regulator that certainly needs more powers.
 
MikeG said:
It would be really interesting to know how much data CA have managed to destroy in the last week, given the fact that this court order and raid has been trailed publicly for at least that long. Here's a regulator that certainly needs more powers.
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Indeed. I suspect the answer is 'lots'.

Fortunately for CA, the currency of dubious political and corporate actors these days is plausible deniability, and they'll have that in bucketloads.
 
As I understand it, collecting data without consent, passing on and using data for purposes for which it was not intended. Failing to delete data once it had been used as intended.
 
Worm said:
As I understand it, collecting data without consent, passing on and using data for purposes for which it was not intended. Failing to delete data once it had been used as intended.
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But the victim here would be Facebook, right? It was between those two that the data wouldn't be kept?
 
The 'victim' is the individuals(s) whom the personal data is about. Depending on exactly how that data has been collected and processed, Facebook and Cambridge could both be on the hook for how that was handled.
 
Worm said:
The 'victim' is the individuals(s) whom the personal data is about. Depending on exactly how that data has been collected and processed, Facebook and Cambridge could both be on the hook for how that was handled.
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But what law was violated? Was their TOS with Facebook violated? Or, was their TOS not violated but CA violated an agreement with Facebook that was intended to maintain Goodwill with Facebook users regardless of TOS?
 
Given that the Information Commissioner seems to be leading the investigation, I would assume they are in breach of Data Protection laws, which are already fairly tight, and are shortly to be tightened even more.
 
Worm said:
Given that the Information Commissioner seems to be leading the investigation, I would assume they are in breach of Data Protection laws, which are already fairly tight, and are shortly to be tightened even more.
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I assumed that also. But I was hoping for greater specificity. I understand that might not be available at this point.
 
We now know that the Trump slogan, "drain the swamp" wasn't his own creation.
Of the slogans used in the Brexit campaign, which one(s) may have come from Cambridge Analytica?
 
BobTheCoward said:
What statute would an undeclared role violate?
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Well, one example would be election spending without lending your official imprimatur to the electioneering material. An employer of mine, years ago, got in trouble in this way by handing out a leaflet urging their employees to vote a certain way in a UK general election. That was illegal.

There are also legal limits on the amount that can be spent. Getting an unofficial top-up to that spending limit from 'secret buddies' would be illegal I believe.
 
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GlennB said:
Well, one example would be election spending without lending your official imprimatur to the electioneering material. An employer of mine, years ago, got in trouble in this way by handing out a leaflet urging their employees to vote a certain way in a UK general election. That was illegal.

There are also legal limits on the amount that can be spent. Getting an unofficial top-up to that spending limit from 'secret buddies' would be illegal I believe.
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Okay, that makes sense. None of this would be a problem if we scrapped spending limits.
 
BobTheCoward said:
But what law was violated? Was their TOS with Facebook violated? Or, was their TOS not violated but CA violated an agreement with Facebook that was intended to maintain Goodwill with Facebook users regardless of TOS?
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Facebook TOS cannot circumvent UK law, if the data ended up within UK jurisdiction.

I guess I could make an ironic comparison with how US authorities claimed jurisdiction over and prosecuted the NatWest Three....
 
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