Who is Cambridge Analytica?<\/h2>\n
<\/span>Cambridge Analytica is a London-based organization, founded in 2013 as an offshoot of SCL group, that offers services to businesses and political organizations to change audience behavior.<\/p>\n The company analyzes huge amounts of data and uses behavioral science to help identify people that various organizations can target. At this point, the group is admittedly conservative \u2013 not in the traditional sense, but in the way that conservative is used today in American politics to describe individuals and organizations that are right of center.<\/p>\n The company\u2019s founder and CEO Alexander Nix has told the website Contagious<\/a> that Cambridge Analytica was created to address the \u201cvacuum in the US Republican political market\u201d that Nix perceived when Mitt Romney failed to beat Barack Obama for the US presidency in 2012.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Democrats had ostensibly been leading the tech revolution, and data analytics and digital engagement were areas where Republicans had failed to catch up. We saw this as an opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Nix eventually met two influential \u201cconservatives.\u201d The first was Steve Bannon, the leader of the right-wing news site Breitbart, then later he crossed paths with Republican megadonor Robert Mercer.<\/p>\n Mercer was looking for a leg up politically, something that would make him a Republican kingmaker. He opted to invest in Cambridge Analytica, though he wanted to see something solid before allotting anymore funding to the upstart company.<\/p>\n Mercer invested 1.5 million Cambridge Analytica at the beginning. It didn\u2019t go well. The company failed to produce a memo that adequately explained the work they do to Toby Neugebauer, another conservative donor that was backing the presidential campaign of Texas Senator Ted Cruz.<\/p>\n Mercer freaked out via email, \u201cIT\u2019S 2 PAGES! 4 hours work max (or an hour each). What have you all been doing??\u201d<\/p>\n Traditionally, analytics companies use what\u2019s publicly available and consumer product histories to try to predict behaviors. Unfortunately, that data isn\u2019t really that useful compared to what can be found on a social media network like Facebook. For instance, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, political beliefs and mental state.<\/p>\n So, the problem was that the data that Cambridge Analytica had collected using traditional methods wasn\u2019t all that useful for what the company was trying to do. The information they needed was prohibitively expensive.<\/p>\n Christopher Wylie helped start the company but left in 2014. He spoke with the New York Times extensively about Cambridge Analytica. It was Wylie who found a solution at nearby Cambridge University\u2019s Psychometrics Centre. Cambridge researchers developed a technique that mapped individuals\u2019 personality traits based on their Facebook use. The researchers paid Facebook users to take a personality quiz and download an app. The app scraped private information from the individuals\u2019 Facebook profile and those of their friends. At the time, this was permitted.<\/p>\n Unfortunately for Cambridge Analytica, Cambridge University wouldn\u2019t work with them.<\/p>\n \u201cRules don\u2019t matter for them, for them, this is a war, and it\u2019s all fair,\u201c Wylie told the New York Times<\/a>. \u201cThey want to fight a culture war in America. Cambridge Analytica was supposed to be the arsenal of weapons to fight that culture war.\u201d<\/p>\n That explains Cambridge Analytica\u2019s next move. It found a workaround in the form of Dr. Aleksandr Kogan, a Russian-American professor at Cambridge University that taught psychology and knew the methods that had been developed by the Psychometrics Centre.<\/p>\n Dr. Kogan developed an app, similar to the one used by the Psychometrics Centre, it cost $800,000 to make and Cambridge Analytica let him keep a copy for himself.<\/p>\n After linking up with Kogan, Cambridge Analytica received $15-million from Mercer, the company became a little more official, in the shadiest way possible. They essentially created a shell. Any contracts that Cambridge Analytica were given to its parent company, SCL in London.<\/p>\n Bannon and Mercer\u2019s daughter joined the Cambridge Analytica board. It was also purportedly Bannon who came up with the name Cambridge Analytica in the first place.<\/p>\n It was at this point that the company began its Facebook Data Leak, using Kogan\u2019s app to harvest millions of profiles under false pretenses. The app falsely claimed that it was harvesting user data for academic purposes. It harvested over 50-million profiles.<\/p>\n \u201cThis was a scam \u2013 and a fraud,\u201d Paul Grewel, Facebook\u2019s general counsel said in a statement<\/a> to the New York Times. \u201cWe will take whatever steps are required to see that all the data in question is deleted once and for all \u2013 and take action against all offending parties.\u201d<\/p>\n Facebook has already suspended Cambridge Analytica, Wylie and Kogan from its network. But the damage is done, per the Times, Cambridge Analytica still has the data.<\/p>\n While over 50-million profiles were stolen by Kogan\u2019s app (a figure confirmed by company emails), only about 30-million were viable. The rest didn\u2019t contain enough information to be usable.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s what Cambridge Analytica was looking to determine from the data, per an email between Kogan and Wylie that was disclosed to the New York Times.<\/p>\n \u201cWe wanted as much as we could get,\u201d Wylie told the Times. \u201cWhere it came from, who said we could have it \u2013 we weren\u2019t really asking.\u201d<\/p>\n In July 2014, over two years before Trump\u2019s victory in the 2016 election, an election lawyer, Laurence Levy, raised a red flag about whether Cambridge Analytica was violating laws that limit involvement in American elections<\/a> by foreign nationals.<\/p>\n This memo went to Bannon, Rebekah Mercer (Robert\u2019s daughter) and Nix\u2014all board members. It didn\u2019t dissuade them.<\/p>\n A little after this time, in early 2015, Wylie and most of his team left the company over political disagreements with the direction it was headed. Wylie and the other departures are left of center politically and didn\u2019t like working with Mercer-selected hard right candidates.<\/p>\n\n
Cambridge Analytica gets Financial Backing<\/h2>\n
\u201cRules don\u2019t matter for them\u201d<\/h2>\n
The Facebook Data Leak<\/h2>\n
What\u2019s in the Data?<\/h2>\n
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Cambridge Analytica and Donald Trump<\/h2>\n