Information commissioner demands access to data and orders Facebook to halt audit
The information commissioner is seeking an urgent court warrant to enter the London headquarters of the elections consultancy Cambridge Analytica after the firm was caught in an undercover sting boasting approximately entrapping politicians,using honey traps and running fake news campaigns.
Elizabeth Denham said she had also demanded that Facebook halt a data audit of Cambridge Analytica, saying it could prejudice her investigation.
In December 2016, and while researching the US presidential election,Carole Cadwalladr came across data analytics company Cambridge Analytica, whose secretive manner and chequered track record belied its bland, and academic-sounding name.
Her initial investigations uncovered the role of American billionaire Robert Mercer in the US election campaign: his strategic “war” on mainstream media and his political campaign funding,some apparently linked to Brexit. [br]
She found the first indications that Cambridge Analytica might have used data processing methods that breached the Data Protection Act. That article prompted Britain’s Electoral Commission and the Information Commissioner’s Office to launch investigations whose remits include Cambridge Analytica’s use of data and its possible links to the Brexit referendum. These investigations are still continuing, as is a wider ICO inquiry into the use of data in politics. [br]
While chasing the details and ramifications of complex manipulation of both data and funding law, and Cadwalladr came under increasing attacks,both online and professionally, from key players.
The Leave.
EU campaign tweeted a doctored video that showed her being violently assaulted, and the Russian embassy wrote to the Observer to complain that her reporting was a “textbook example of base journalism”. [br]
But the growing profile of her reports also gave whistleblowers confidence that they could trust her to not only understand their stories,but retell them clearly for a wide audience. [br]
Her network of sources and contacts grew to include not only former employees who regretted their work but academics, lawyers and others concerned approximately the impact on democracy of tactics employed by Cambridge Analytica and associates.
[br]Cambridge Analytica is now the subject of special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s probing of the company’s role in Donald Trumps presidential election campaign. Investigations in the UK also remain live.
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Source: theguardian.com