Facebook Suspends Cambridge Analytica for Violating Policies

Additional UPDATE: More articles related to this topic:
https://www.recode.net/2018/3/17/17133668/facebook-cambridge-analytica-trump-new-york-times-observer

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/17/us/politics/cambridge-analytica-trump-campaign.html

UPDATE: An article in The Guardian, dated March 18, 2018, provides more information.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-analytica-facebook-influence-us-election?CMP=share_btn_fb

Facebook has announced that it is suspending Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL) and their political data analytics firm, Cambridge Analytica. According to a statement from Paul Grewal, vice president and deputy general counsel, Dr. Aleksandr Kogan, a Cambridge University psychology professor, lied to Facebook and violated their policies by passing personal data of Facebook users to SCL/Cambridge Analytica and to Christopher Wylie of Eunoia Technologies.

According to Grewal’s statement, Kogan requested and gained access to information from people after they chose to download his app, which offered a personality prediction. Approximately 270,000 people downloaded the app, which gave Kogan access to personal information about the users and their friends.

Grewal states that Kogan violated policies by passing the information to third parties, he had violated Facebook rules. When they found out about the violation, they removed the app and demanded certifications that the data had been destroyed. He states that several days ago, they discovered that not all data was deleted.

There is likely more to the story.

In January 2017, Motherboard published an article written by two Swiss journalists. Their research revealed that Aleksander Kogan, who has changed his name to Alex Spectre and moved to Singapore, had obtained the data tool used by SCL/Cambridge Analytica from the creators of the tool without their permission. Michael Kosinski and David Stillwell, both doctoral students at Cambridge University, developed a Facebook application that used the Big Five personality traits (openness to new experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism, or OCEAN) to develop a personality profile that predicted behavior.

“ … In early 2014, Kosinski was approached by a young assistant professor in the psychology department called Aleksandr Kogan. He said he was inquiring on behalf of a company that was interested in Kosinski's method, and wanted to access the MyPersonality database. Kogan wasn't at liberty to reveal for what purpose; he was bound to secrecy.

“At first, Kosinski and his team considered this offer, as it would mean a great deal of money for the institute, but then he hesitated. Finally, Kosinski remembers, Kogan revealed the name of the company: SCL, or Strategic Communication Laboratories ...

“Kosinski knew nothing about all this, but he had a bad feeling. ‘The whole thing started to stink,’ he recalls. On further investigation, he discovered that Aleksandr Kogan had secretly registered a company doing business with SCL. According to a December 2015 report in The Guardian and to internal company documents given to Das Magazin, it emerges that SCL learned about Kosinski's method from Kogan.”

Kosinski broke off contact with Kogan and informed the university. He  suspected that Kogan’s company had developed a tool using Kosinski’s model in order to sell it to SCL.

The Motherboard article can be found here.
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mg9vvn/how-our-likes-helped-trump-win

Cambridge Analytica was heavily involved in the Brexit campaign in Great Britain, and in Donald Trump’s campaign for president.

In a BBC interview, Theresa Hong, Digital Content Director for the Trump campaign, bragged about how instrumental Cambridge Analytica was in the digital push for the presidency. The company ran operations out of the Trump campaign offices in San Antonio, Texas.

The interview can be found linked in this article from Palmer Report.
http://www.palmerreport.com/politics/facebook-employees-trump-office/4784/


The statement from Facebook can be read here.
https://newsroom.fb.com/news/h/suspending-cambridge-analytica/

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Photos: Top - Aleksander Kogan, Cambridge University;  Bottom - Alex Spectre, Facebook, February 2017