Cambridge Analytica misled MPs, public in UK, says former top employee
26 Mar 2018
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Cambridge Analytica (CA), the British political consulting firm, which is being probed for its role in the Donald Trump election campaign and the Leave-EU Campaign, misled the public and MPs in the UK, according to a former employee.
Britanny Kaiser, who quit as business development director of the company a fortnight ago, told The Guardian newspaper that the company did research for a leading Brexit campaign group and misled MPs and the public over the work it had done.
Kaiser, 30, told the newspaper that she felt she had lied by supporting her company’s line that it had done “no paid or unpaid work” for Leave.EU. According to her, the work was part of an effort to secure formal business with the campaign group.
The Electoral Commission in the UK is probing the role of CA in the EU referendum campaign.
Facebook (FB) is also facing problems because of the CA scandal.
Mark Zuckerberg, the FB founder and CEO, who had publicly apologised on Saturday (See: Mark Zuckerberg apologises for 'major breach of trust) issued full-page ads in more than half a dozen British and American newspapers, apologising for a data breach. The papers included leading ones such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal (all of the US) and The Sunday Times, The Observer and The Mail on Sunday (from the UK).
“We have a responsibility to protect your information,” he told readers in the ad. “If we can't, we don't deserve it. He said FB has stopped third-party apps from getting so much information and had started limiting the data that apps get when a person signs up.
Zuckerberg has admitted that FB erred in the CA cam, and assured users of the security measures being taken to protect data. “This was a breach of trust, and I'm sorry we didn't do more at the time. We're now taking steps to make sure this doesn't happen again,” he said in the ad.
