Facebook has announced it is suspending Cambridge Analytica, a data firm with ties to President Donald Trump’s campaign, over concerns about violations of the social media site’s policies.
On Friday, Facebook’s vice president and deputy general counsel, Paul Grewal, said in a detailed statement that a University of Cambridge psychology professor, Aleksandr Kogan, had passed Facebook user data he gained through an app on to third-parties, including Cambridge Analytica — a breach of the social media site’s policies on protecting people’s information.
Grewal said in the statement that after the discovery of this violation in 2015, Facebook “demanded certifications from Kogan and all parties he had given data to that the information had been destroyed.”
Despite telling the company that the data was destroyed, the Facebook statement said it recently received reports that indicated otherwise and was suspending Cambridge Analytica, its parent company Strategic Communication Laboratories, Kogan and another person he shared the information with, Christopher Wylie of Eunoia Technologies Inc.
Facebook’s move to suspend Cambridge Analytica came just hours before The New York Times and the British newspaper The Observer both released reports that raised questions about the handling of Facebook data by the company and its associates.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Cambridge Analytica denied that the organization is in violation of Facebook’s terms and said it is in communication with Facebook following the news it had been suspended from the platform.
The spokesperson said that in 2014, Cambridge Analytica contracted with Kogan’s company Global Science Research (GSR) “to undertake a large scale research project in the United States,” obtaining data and seeking “the informed consent of each respondent.”
Sen. Mark Warner called the suspension “more evidence that the online political advertising market is essentially the Wild West.”
Warner, a Virginia Democrat, serves as vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. In his statement, he added: “Whether it’s allowing Russians to purchase political ads, or extensive micro-targeting based on ill-gotten user data, it’s clear that, left unregulated, this market will continue to be prone to deception and lacking in transparency.”
Cambridge University acknowledged they knew of Kogan’s company, Global Science Research (GSR), but said they do not believe “he used University data or facilities for his work with GSR, and therefore that there is no reason to believe the University’s data and facilities were used as the basis for GSR’s subsequent work with any other party.”
