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UK Regulators Search Cambridge Analytica Offices

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British regulators on Friday began searching the London offices of Cambridge Analytica (CA), the scandal-hit communications firm at the heart of the Facebook data scandal, shortly after a judge approved a search warrant.

Around 18 enforcement agents from the office of Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham entered the company’s London headquarters at around 8:00pm (2000 GMT) to execute the warrant.

The High Court granted the raid request less than an hour earlier, as Denham investigates claims that Cambridge Analytica may have illegally harvested Facebook data for political ends.

A full explanation of the legal ruling by Judge Anthony James Leonard will be issued on Tuesday, according to the court.

“We’re pleased with the decision of the judge,” Denham’s office said on Twitter.

“This is just one part of a larger investigation into the use of personal data and analytics for political purposes,” it added in a statement.

“As you will expect, we will now need to collect, assess and consider the evidence before coming to any conclusions.”

The data watchdog’s probe comes amid whistleblower accusations that CA, hired by Donald Trump during his primary campaign, illegally mined tens of millions of users’ Facebook data and then used it to target potential voters.

Fresh allegations also emerged Friday night about the firm’s involvement in the 2016 Brexit referendum campaign.

Brittany Kaiser, CA’s business development director until two weeks ago, revealed it conducted data research for Leave.EU, one of the leading campaign groups, via the UK Independence Party (UKIP), according to The Guardian.

‘I was lying’

Kaiser, 30, told the newspaper she felt the company’s repeated public denials it ever worked on the poll misled British lawmakers and the public.

“In my opinion, I was lying,” she said. “In my opinion I felt like we should say, ‘this is exactly what we did.'”

CA’s suspended chief executive Alexander Nix told MPs last month: “We did not work for Leave.EU. We have not undertaken any paid or unpaid work for them, OK?”

Nix was suspended this week following the Facebook revelations and a further media sting in which he boasts about entrapping politicians and secretly operating in elections around the world through shadowy front companies.

He has already been called to reappear before British lawmakers to explain “inconsistencies” in past testimony about the firm’s use of the data.

Meanwhile Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has been forced to issue a statement outlining his firm’s role in the scandal and apologised Wednesday to its billions of users for the breach.

The company has seen its stock market value plunge by around $75 million amid the crisis, as shares closed the week down 13 percent — their worst seven days since July 2012.

Cambridge Analytica denies any wrongdoing, and said Friday it was undertaking an independent third-party audit to verify that it no longer holds any of the mined data.

“As anyone who is familiar with our staff and work can testify, we in no way resemble the politically-motivated and unethical company that some have sought to portray,” acting CEO Alexander Tayler said in a statement.

He apologised for the firm’s involvement, but said it had licensed the data from a research company, led by an academic, that “had not received consent from most respondents”.

“The company (CA) believed that the data had been obtained in line with Facebook’s terms of service and data protection laws,” Tayler said.

New review

Aleksandr Kogan, a University of Cambridge psychologist, created a personality prediction app that harvested the data of 270,000 people who downloaded it — as well as scooping up the information of their friends.

That was possible under Facebook’s rules at the time, and Kogan this week claimed he was being unfairly blamed.

“I’m being basically used as a scapegoat by both Facebook and Cambridge Analytica,” he said in interviews Wednesday.

“We were assured by Cambridge Analytica that everything was perfectly legal and within the terms of service” of Facebook, he added.

However, Cambridge University announced Friday it was “undertaking a wide-ranging review” of the episode and had written to Facebook “to request all relevant evidence in their possession”.

“Should anything emerge from this review, or from our request to Facebook, the University will take any action necessary in accordance with our policies and procedures,” it said in a statement.

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Facebook as an Election Weapon, From Obama to Trump

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The use of Facebook data to target voters has triggered global outrage with the Cambridge Analytica scandal. But the concept is nothing new: Barack Obama made extensive use of the social network in 2008 and stepped up “micro-targeting” in his 2012 re-election effort.

The unauthorized gathering of data on 50 million Facebook users by a British consulting firm that worked for Donald Trump has sparked intense debate on how politicians and marketers — appropriately or not — use such personal information.

But Cambridge Analytica, the firm at the center of the firestorm, has stressed it is far from alone in using data gleaned online to precisely target voters.

“Obama’s 2008 campaign was famously data-driven, pioneered micro-targeting in 2012, talking to people specifically based on the issues they care about,” the British firm said on Twitter.

Former members of the Obama team fiercely dispute any comparison to the Cambridge Analytica case, in which an academic researcher is accused of scooping up a massive trove of data without consent using a Facebook personality quiz, and transferring it improperly to the firm.

“How dare you!” tweeted Michael Simon, who headed Obama’s micro-targeting team in 2008, in response to the firm.

“We didn’t steal private Facebook profile data from voters under false pretenses. OFA (Obama’s campaign) voluntarily solicited opinions of hundreds of thousands of voters. We didn’t commit theft to do our groundbreaking work.”

Jeremy Bird, a member of the 2012 Obama team, echoed those sentiments, warning: “Do not use the Obama campaign to justify your shady business.”

But while Cambridge Analytica’s methods for acquiring data are in dispute, the underlying goal — using social media to take the pulse of voters and find those who are persuadable — was common to both campaigns.

So-called micro-targeting, which borrows techniques from the marketing world, is as much about mobilizing voters and getting them to the polls as about changing minds.

And micro-targeting long pre-dates the internet, with campaigns as early as 1976 using this method, according to Victoria Farrar-Myers, a political scientist and researcher at Southern Methodist University.

Everyone who uses social media makes a decision to share some personal information, she says, although they “may not be fully aware of how people can utilize that.”

“Being able to micro-target a voter down to what magazine they read and what issues might make them turn out does have an advantage for a candidate when they’re running for an election.”

“The Trump campaign did quite a good job at micro-targeting,” she said, noting that it put a heavy focus on seemingly marginal localities that were identified as potentially winnable thanks to socal media, and ended up tipping Republican.

According to documents released by the Federal Election Commission (FEC), Trump’s new choice of national security advisor John Bolton also hired Cambridge Analytica to conduct profiling work for his Super PAC fundraising group in support of Republican congressional candidates.

Waking up to problem

What remains unclear is whether the techniques made a difference in the 2016 US election.

Chirag Shah, a Rutgers University professor of information and computer science, said the data gleaned could have been instrumental to Trump’s campaign.

“We know from other applications, not just in the political domain, but also all kinds of marketing commercialization domains that these things are very, very instrumental,” Shah said.

“It is however speculative to say this really change the outcome of the election. All we can say is that, yes there were people who were influenced or targeted using this data.”

Experts also stress that neither the Obama nor the Trump campaign broke any laws on the protection of private data — or even Facebook’s internal rules — which were tightened in 2015 to prevent developers from collecting people’s data without explicit consent.

Shah noted the concerns about improper use of personal data are not new.

“The problem is once people access the data from Facebook, for which they often pay, that data is out of Facebook’s hands and out of Facebook’s users hands.

“And there’s no way that Facebook will be able to track all of the data being shared by third parties, fourth parties.”

Rayid Ghani, a University of Chicago researcher who was chief scientist for the 2012 Obama campaign, defended his team’s use of Facebook data while arguing for a need for better information that would allow users to know when and how their personal information is collected.

“The public needs to be aware of what data is being collected about them, what it is being used for, who it is shared/sold to, and what they’re doing with it,” Ghani said in a Medium blog post.

“We need to push corporations to make their privacy policies and terms of use more human-friendly, and less fine-print. “

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U.S. Imposes Sanctions on Iranians for Hacking

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U.S. Charges Iranians in Massive Hacking Scheme

The United States unveiled charges on Friday against nine Iranians for their alleged involvement in a massive state-sponsored hacking scheme which targeted hundreds of universities in the US and abroad and stole “valuable intellectual property and data.”

Ten Iranians were also hit with sanctions along with an Iranian company, the Mabna Institute, which engaged in computer hacking on behalf of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, the US Treasury Department said.

The two founders of the Mabna Institute, Gholamreza Rafatnejad, 38, and Ehsan Mohammadi, 37, were among the nine Iranians indicted in New York and whose assets are subject to US seizure.

Since 2013, the Mabna Institute carried out cyber intrusions into the computer systems of 144 US universities, the Treasury Department said, and 176 universities in 21 foreign countries.

Mabna Institute employees and contractors “engaged in the theft of valuable intellectual property and data from hundreds of US and third-country universities… for private financial gain,” it said.

“For many of these intrusions, the defendants acted at the behest of the Iranian government and, specifically, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps,” Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said.

The US Department of Labor, the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, dozens of private firms and non-governmental organizations such as the United Nations Children’s Fund were also allegedly targeted.

Geoffrey Berman, US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said the Iranians conducted spearphishing attacks designed to steal passwords from email accounts in one of the “largest state-sponsored” hacking schemes ever uncovered.

– 8,000 accounts compromised –

The email accounts of more than 100,000 university professors worldwide were targeted, Berman said, and about 8,000 accounts were compromised.

He said 31 terabytes — about 15 billion pages — of academic data and intellectual property were stolen.

This included “research, and other academic data and documents, including, among other things, academic journals, theses, dissertations, and electronic books,” the Justice Department said.

“The defendants targeted data across all fields of research and academic disciplines, including science and technology, engineering, social sciences, medical, and other professional fields,” it said.

David Bowdich, deputy director of the FBI, said the defendants are in Iran and “apprehending these individuals presents a challenge.”

“(But) the long arm of the law reaches worldwide,” he said. “You cannot hide behind a keyboard half way around the world and expect not to be held to account,” Berman said.

One of the 10 Iranians subject to sanctions, Behzad Mesri, was already indicted in November 2017 in connection with the theft of scripts and plot summaries for HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” and for trying to extort $6 million in Bitcoin out of the network.

The Justice Department said that besides targeting university professors in the United States, the hackers also compromised accounts in Australia, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and the United Kingdom.

Rafatnejad, Mohammadi and the seven other Mabna Institute employees or contractors were charged with identity theft, conspiracy to commit computer intrusions and other crimes.

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Worried About Being on Facebook? Some Options Explained

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Managing Your Privacy with Facebook

A snowballing Facebook scandal over the hijacking of personal data from millions of its users has many wondering whether it’s time to restrict access to their Facebook information or even leave the social network altogether, with the #deletefacebook movement gaining traction.

Here are some options open to the worried Facebook user.

Put it to sleep 

Putting a Facebook account on hold used to be difficult but has become a lot easier.

To deactivate their account, users need to go on their “settings” page, then on to “manage account”, where they can “deactivate” their account. Facebook defines this action as putting activity “on hold”.

The move disables a user’s profile and removes their name and pictures from most things they have shared.

Some information may still remain visible, like a user’s name in a friend’s list, or messages exchanged with friends.

If they have second thoughts, users can easily restore a de-activated profile.

Kill the account

Deleting an account is a more radical step, as users will not be able to access it again once they’ve gone for that option.

Facebook warns users that it can take up to 90 days to purge the network of a user’s posts.

Even so, some information is likely to stay online, for example messages sent to friends.

According to French data expert Nathalie Devillier there is also a chance that Facebook holds on to information about some users if asked to by US authorities in the name of national security.

Be more alert

Facebook users can check with the network how much of their personal information is accessible on the network.

In “settings“, the option “download a copy of your Facebook data” allows a user to do just that.

Once Facebook has double-checked a user’s password, the site compiles and then e-mails a compressed file.

The file gives an overview of the pictures and videos a user has posted, their downloaded apps, message traffic with friends, their “likes”, unfriended friends and ads clicked.

The information can be difficult to decrypt, as are some passages in Facebook’s privacy rules.

It is possible to exercise some control over some ad preferences. This includes, for example, users deciding whether their relationship status can be used as a criterion for targeted ads.

– Go after Facebook – 

Some experts and consumer rights organizations argue that rather than withdraw from Facebook, users should help shift the balance of power between the social network giant and individuals by legal means.

“We must be able to use the service without being under Facebook’s surveillance,” said Arthur Messaud at Quadrature du Net, a French organization that defends the rights of internet users.

The group is planning a class action suit against Facebook in France, based on a new set of EU data protection rules that come into force in May, Messaud said.

He said one aim of the lawsuit is to force Facebook to seek explicit user consent for the use of data by, for example, ticking a box.

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Growing Mistrust Threatens Facebook After Data Mining Scandal

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As Facebook reels from the scandal over hijacked personal data, a movement to quit the social network gathered momentum Wednesday, portending threats to one of the most powerful internet firms.

In a sign of the mood, one of those calling it quits was a high-profile co-founder of the WhatsApp messaging service acquired by Facebook in 2014 for $19 billion.

“It is time. #deletefacebook,” Brian Acton said in a tweet, using the hashtag protesting the handling of the crisis by the world’s biggest social network.

The WhatsApp co-founder, who now works at the rival messaging application Signal, posted the comment amid a growing uproar over revelations that Facebook data was harvested by a British political consulting firm linked to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

“Delete and forget. It’s time to care about privacy,” he said.

The huge social network also faces investigations on both sides of the Atlantic over its data practices, and a handful of lawsuits which could turn into class actions that may prove a costly distraction for Facebook.

It remains to be seen whether the uproar would lead to any significant departures, but the topic was active on social media, including on Facebook itself.

Donella Cohen, a Weather Channel product manager, posted on her Facebook page that she would be off the network by midnight.

“The latest revelations are showing just how corrupt and detrimental to society this particular platform is,” she wrote. 

“I hope that a new social network emerges. One that isn’t so greedy as to corrupt the political process in the name of the almighty dollar.”

– Fabric of internet –

Yet analysts noted Facebook is unlikely to fade quickly because of how it is woven into the fabric of the internet, with “like” buttons on websites, comments sections for news articles and an ad network that delivers messages to those who are not Facebook members.

The #deleteFacebook movement “is a social media feedback loop from the public — we saw the same thing with #deleteUber,” said Jennifer Grygiel, a communications professor at Syracuse University.

“Sure, some people will delete Facebook, but to truly delete Facebook would mean that users would need to delete Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger. This is not realistic for most people given how social media has been integrated into everyday life.”

Sandra Proske, head of communications for the Finland-based security firm F-Secure, said it’s not easy to break up with Facebook.

“If this (scandal) makes you uncomfortable you can choose to not use the site, of course,” Proske wrote in a blog post.

“But given how intertwined in our lives Facebook and the sites it has acquired, including Instagram and WhatsApp, have become, you may not consider this an option. And for some people and even some countries, Facebook is the internet.”

Proske and others offer suggestions on how Facebook users can improve privacy by limiting what is shared and which apps have access to their data.

Several websites offered tips on how to quit Facebook, while noting that the process is more complicated than it appears.

Facebook offers users the option to “deactivate” an account for users who want to take a break and return later, or to “delete” the account and its data entirely.

But Facebook noted that some data such as posts on friends’ timelines might remain in the system even after an account is deleted.

And longtime Facebook users could face complications on dealing with log-ins and authorizations to other websites and apps through the social network.

The tech website The Verge published a guide to deletion, advising users to download a copy of all personal data including photos and posts before quitting.

The website noted that it could take up to 90 days to fully delete an account, and that data may be inaccessible during that period.

It was unclear how many users were following through on plans to quit Facebook, which has more than two billion users worldwide.

But Roger McNamee, an early investor in Facebook, said the social network was losing the trust of its users.

“The issue is a callous disregard for the privacy rights of users and a lack of care with respect to data that had been entrusted to Facebook,” McNamee told National Public Radio. 

“I’m not sure exactly what’s going on here, but I’m afraid there is a systemic problem with the algorithms and the business model of Facebook that allow bad actors to cause harm to innocent users of Facebook.”

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U.S. Military Should Step Up Cyber Ops: General

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Washington – US efforts to conduct offensive and defensive operations in cyberspace are falling short, a top general warned Tuesday amid ongoing revelations about Russian hacking.

General John Hyten, who leads US Strategic Command (STRATCOM), told lawmakers the US has “not gone nearly far enough” in the cyber domain, also noting that the military still lacks clear rules of cyber engagement.

“We have to go much further in treating cyberspace as an operational domain,” Hyten told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“Cyberspace needs to be looked at as a warfighting domain, and if somebody threatens us in cyberspace we need to have the authorities to respond.”

Hyten noted, however, that the US had made some progress in conducting cyber attacks on enemies in the Middle East, such as the Islamic State group.

His testimony comes weeks after General Curtis Scaparrotti, commander of NATO forces in Europe, warned that US government agencies are not coordinating efforts to counter the cyber threat from Russia, even as Moscow conducts a “campaign of destabilization.”

And last month, Admiral Michael Rogers, who heads both the NSA — the leading US electronic eavesdropping agency — and the new US Cyber Command, said President Donald Trump had not yet ordered his spy chiefs to retaliate against Russian interference in US elections.

The US has accused Russia of actively interfering in the 2016 presidential election, stealing Democratic party communications and pushing out disinformation through social media.

It also accuses Moscow of stealing hacking secrets of the US intelligence community — while US cyber security investigators have accused the Russian government of a sustained effort to take control of critical US infrastructure systems including the energy grid.

Hyten added the military needs clear authorities and rules of engagement so operators know when and how to respond to attacks.

“We need to have specific rules of engagement in cyber that match the other domains that we operate in,” Hyten said.

“We need to delegate that authority all the way down so we can deal with threats that exist that challenge the United States.”

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Telegram Must Give FSB Encryption Keys: Russian Court

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Moscow – Russia’s Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled the popular Telegram messenger app must provide the country’s security services with encryption keys to read users’ messaging data, agencies reported.

Media watchdog Roskomnadzor instructed Telegram to “provide the FSB with the necessary information to decode electronic messages received, transmitted, or being sent” within 15 days, it said on its website.

Telegram had appealed against an earlier ruling that it must share this information, but this appeal was rejected on Tuesday.

If it does not provide the keys it could be blocked in Russia.

The free instant messaging app, which lets people exchange messages, photos and videos in groups of up to 5,000 people, has attracted more than 100 million users since its launch in 2013.

Telegram’s self-exiled Russian founder Pavel Durov said in September 2017 the FSB had demanded backdoor access.

When Telegram did not provide the encryption keys, the FSB launched a formal complaint.

Durov wrote last year that the FSB’s demands are “technically impossible to carry out” and violate the Russian Constitution which entitles citizens to privacy of correspondence.

Tuesday’s ruling is the latest move in a dispute between Telegram and the Russian authorities as Moscow pushes to increase surveillance of internet activities.

Last June, Russia’s state communications watchdog threatened to ban the app for failing to provide registration documents. Although Telegram later registered, it stopped short of agreeing to its data storage demands.

Companies on the register must provide the FSB with information on user interactions.

From this year they must also store all the data of Russian users inside the country, according to controversial anti-terror legislation passed in 2016 which was decried by internet companies and the opposition.

Related: Russia Fines Telegram For Not Giving Backdoor Access

Related: Zero-Day in Telegram’s Windows Client Exploited for Months

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Facebook Security Chief Changes Role to Focus on Election Fraud

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Facebook’s chief of security late Monday said his role has shifted to focusing on emerging risks and election security at the global social network, which is under fire for letting its platform be used to spread bogus news and manipulate voters.

Alex Stamos revealed the change in his role at work after a New York Times report that he was leaving Facebook in the wake of internal clashes over how to deal with the platform being used to spread misinformation.

“Despite the rumors, I’m still fully engaged with my work at Facebook,” Stamos said in a message posted at his verified Twitter account.

“It’s true that my role did change. I’m currently spending more time exploring emerging security risks and working on election security.”

Stamos advocated investigating and revealing manipulation of news at the social network by Russian entities, to the chagrin of chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg and other top executives, the Times reported, citing unnamed current and former employees.

Stamos reportedly decided in December he was done with Facebook, but remained at the social network as part of a plan to smoothly hand his job off to a successor. Neither Facebook nor Stamos directly commented on how long he intended to remain at the company, referring to his tweet in response to queries.

Word from Stamos came as the California-based social media giant faced an onslaught of criticism at home and abroad over revelations that a firm working for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign harvested and misused data on 50 million members.

Calls for investigations came on both sides of the Atlantic after Facebook responded to the explosive reports of misuse of its data by suspending the account of Cambridge Analytica, a British firm hired by Trump’s 2016 campaign.

Vera Jourova, the European commissioner for justice, consumers and gender equality, called the revelations “horrifying, if confirmed,” and vowed to address concerns in the United States this week.

In Britain, parliamentary committee chair Damian Collins said both Cambridge Analytica and Facebook had questions to answer.

According to a joint investigation by the Times and Britain’s Observer, Cambridge Analytica was able to create psychological profiles on 50 million Facebook users through a personality prediction app downloaded by 270,000 people, but also scooped up data from friends.

A Cambridge Analytica statement denied misusing Facebook data for the Trump campaign.

Facebook said it had hired a digital forensics firm to examine how the data leak occurred and to ensure that any data collected had been destroyed.

An undercover investigation of Cambridge Analytica by Britain’s Channel 4 found executives boasted they could entrap politicians in compromising situations with bribes and Ukrainian sex workers, and spread misinformation online.

The executives claimed to have worked in more 200 elections across the world, including Argentina, the Czech Republic, India, Kenya and Nigeria. The British firm said it “strongly denies” the claims from Channel 4 as well as reports on misuse of Facebook data.

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Facebook Rocked by New Data Breach Scandal

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Facebook shares plunged Monday following revelations that a firm working for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign harvested data on 50 million users, as analysts warned the social media giant’s business model could be at risk.

Calls for investigations came on both sides of the Atlantic after Facebook responded to the explosive reports of misuse of its data by suspending the account of Cambridge Analytica, a British communications firm hired by Trump’s 2016 campaign.

“This is a major breach that must be investigated. It’s clear these platforms can’t police themselves,” Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar said on Twitter. 

Expressing “serious concern regarding recent reports that data from millions of Americans was misused in order to influence voters,” Klobuchar and Republican Senator John Kennedy called for Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg and other top executives to appear before Congress, along with the CEOs of Google and Twitter.

In Europe, officials voiced similar outrage.

Vera Jourova, European Commissioner for Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality, called the revelations “horrifying, if confirmed,” and vowed to address her concerns while travelling to the United States this week.

In Britain, parliamentary committee chair Damian Collins said both Cambridge Analytica and Facebook had questions to answer following what appears to be a giant data breach, carried out in an attempt to influence voters’ choices at the ballot box.

“We have repeatedly asked Facebook about how companies acquire and hold on to user data from their site, and in particular whether data had been taken from people without their consent,” Collins said in a statement.

“Their answers have consistently understated this risk, and have also been misleading to the committee.”

‘Systemic problems’

On Wall Street, Facebook shares skidded 7.7 percent in midday trade amid concerns about pressure for new regulations that could hurt its business model.

Brian Wieser at Pivotal Research said the revelations highlight “systemic problems at Facebook,” but that they won’t immediately impact Facebook revenues.

Still he said “risks are now enhanced” because of the potential for regulations on how Facebook uses data for advertising and monitoring users.

According to a joint investigation by The New York Times and Britain’s Observer, Cambridge Analytica was able to create psychological profiles on 50 million Facebook users through the use of a personality prediction app that was downloaded by 270,000 people, but also scooped up data from friends.

Cambridge Analytica said it was in touch with Facebook while denying any misuse of data.

Facebook on Friday suspended the firm, but pushed back against the claim of a major breach, suggesting misused data was limited to a far smaller group of users.

‘Huge impact’

Jennifer Grygiel, a Syracuse University professor who studies social media, said the disclosures will increase pressure to regulate Facebook and other social media firms.

“Self-regulation is not working,” Grygiel said.

“I’m wondering how bad this needs to get before our regulators step in and hold these companies accountable.”

Grygiel said the breach stems from “thin” regulations that allowed Facebook and its partners to exploit data without oversight.

“They grew because of this,” she said. “This was not a mistake.”

Daniel Kreiss, a professor of media and communications at the University of North Carolina, said Facebook failed to live up to its responsibilities in handling targeted political ads as it expanded.

“The fact that Facebook seems to make no distinction between selling sneakers and selling a presidential platform is a deep problem,” Kreiss said.

Some analysts suggested the breach posed an existential crisis for Facebook because of how it gathers and uses data on its two billion members.

David Carroll, a media professor at the New School’s Parsons School of Design, said Facebook and others will soon be forced to live with new privacy rules such as those set to take effect in the European Union.

“Facebook and Google will have to ask users a lot more permission to track them,” Carroll said. “Most people are going to say no, so I think it’s going to have a huge impact on these companies.”

Carroll has filed a legal action in Britain calling on Cambridge Analytica to disclose what data was gathered and used on him.

“If I can get them to disclose my data or my personality score, it indicates every other American has the right to the same thing,” he said.

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Cambridge Analytica: Firm at the Heart of Facebook Scandal

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At the center of a scandal over alleged misuse of Facebook users’ personal data, Cambridge Analytica is a communications firm hired by those behind Donald Trump’s successful US presidential bid.

An affiliate of British firm Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL), Cambridge Analytica has offices in London, New York, Washington, as well as Brazil and Malaysia.

Here’s the story behind the company using data to fuel political campaigns:

What does Cambridge Analytica do?

The company boasts it can “find your voters and move them to action” through data-driven campaigns and a team including data scientists and behavioural psychologists.

Cambridge Analytica“Within the United States alone, we have played a pivotal role in winning presidential races as well as congressional and state elections,” with data on more than 230 million American voters, Cambridge Analytica claims on its website.

Speaking to TechCrunch in 2017, CEO Alexander Nix said the firm was “always acquiring more” data. “Every day we have teams looking for new data sets,” he told the site.

Who are the company’s clients?

As well as working on the election which saw Trump reach the White House, Cambridge Analytica has been involved in political campaigns around the world.

In the US, analysts harnessed data to generate thousands of messages targeting voters through their profiles on social media such as Facebook, Snapchat, or the Pandora Radio streaming service.

British press have credited Cambridge Analytica with providing services to pro-Brexit campaign Leave.EU, but Nix has denied working for the group.

Globally, Cambridge Analytica said it has worked in Italy, Kenya, South Africa, Colombia and Indonesia.

What has the company been accused of?

According to the New York Times and Britain’s Observer newspapers, Cambridge Analytica stole information from 50 million Facebook users’ profiles in the tech giant’s biggest-ever data breach, to help them design software to predict and influence voters’ choices at the ballot box.

University of Cambridge psychologist Aleksandr Kogan created a personality prediction test app, thisisyourdigitallife, which was downloaded by 270,000 people.

The tool allowed Kogan to access information such as content Facebook users had “liked” and the city they listed on their profile, which was then passed to SCL and Cambridge Analytica.

The Observer reported the app also collected information from the Facebook friends of people who had taken the test.

Christopher Wylie, a former Cambridge Analytica employee, worked with Kogan and told Canadian television channel CBC the company used “private data they acquired without consent”.

Who else is involved?

US hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer — and major Republican party donor — bankrolled Cambridge Analytica to the tune of $15 million (12 million euros).

The Observer said it was headed at the time by Steve Bannon, a top Trump adviser until he was fired last summer.

How has Facebook responded?

Facebook suspended SCL and Cambridge Analytica, as well as Kogan and Wylie. In explaining its decision on Friday, the social media giant said the thisisyourdigitallife app was legitimate, but accused Kogan of subsequently violating Facebook’s terms by passing the data on to SCL/Cambridge Analytica.

Facebook said it found out what had happened in 2015 and was told all parties involved had deleted the data.

“The claim that this is a data breach is completely false,” Facebook said in a new statement on Saturday, saying app users knowingly provided their information.

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