Cambridge Analytica stung again, denies offering honeytraps

Cambridge Analytica has hit back at an undercover British television report showing senior executives talking to reporters posing as potential clients about bribes, honeytraps and how the company allegedly obtains and distributes damaging material on political opponents.

The Channel 4 report is "edited and scripted to grossly misrepresent the nature of those conversations and how the company conducts its business", Cambridge Analytica said in a statement to CNN on Monday.

Privately-owned Cambridge Analytica, is partly owned by the family of Robert Mercer, an American hedge-fund manager who supports many politically conservative causes.

It is the controversial data firm that worked for Donald Trump's presidential campaign. The company reportedly harvested data from 50 million Facebook users, and is currently under investigation by the United Kingdom's Information Commissioner's Office for "the acquisition and use" of that data.

Facebook last week suspended Cambridge Analytica and its parent group Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL) after receiving reports that they did not delete information about Facebook users and it had been inappropriately shared (See: Facebook suspends Trump-linked Cambridge Analytica for data misuse).

Beyond reportedly harvesting user data, Cambridge Analytica is now under fire for other alleged campaign tactics highlighted in the Channel 4 report.

Channel 4 secretly recorded the company's chief executive Alexander Nix telling undercover reporters posing as prospective Sri Lankan clients that the company could entrap politicians in compromising situations.

When asked about getting damaging material on opponents, Nix said the company could "send some girls around to the candidate's house".

The undercover reporter then asked, "... you're using the girls for this, like the seduction, they're not local girls? Not Sri Lankan girls?"

Nix said no. "Just saying we could bring some Ukranians in," he said, adding "they are very beautiful, I find that works very well."

Nix also said Cambridge Analytica could send someone posing as a wealthy developer to Sri Lanka to bribe politicians, film the encounter "and then post it on the internet".

It is illegal in the United States and the United Kingdom to bribe public officials. Cambridge Analytica is registered in the United States and operates in the United Kingdom.

Cambridge Analytica said in a statement that Nix and the executives were humouring the undercover reporters posing as prospective clients, and when the conversation turned toward practices such as corruption and entrapment, the executives did not meet with them again.

The statement also includes an admission from Nix that he may have misjudged the situation.

"In playing along with this line of conversation, and partly to spare our 'client' from embarrassment, we entertained a series of ludicrous hypothetical scenarios," Nix said.

"I am aware how this looks, but it is simply not the case. I must emphatically state that Cambridge Analytica does not condone or engage in entrapment, bribes or so-called 'honeytraps', and nor does it use untrue material for any purpose," he said.

Previously, in the UK, Cambridge Analytica worked on the Leave EU-campaign for the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union.Its's role and effect on campaigns has been controversial and is the subject of ongoing criminal investigations in the US and the UK.

On March 17, 2018, The New York Times and The Observer reported on Cambridge Analytica's use of personal information acquired by an external researcher who claimed to be collecting it for academic purposes. In response, Facebook banned Cambridge Analytica from advertising on its platform. The Guardian also reported that Facebook had known about this security breach for two years, but did nothing to protect its users.