Trump's Voter Profiling Firm "Harvested" Private Info From 50 Million Facebook Users Without Permission

Donald Trump

Donald Trump's voter-profiling company Cambridge Analytica "harvested" the private information of over 50 million Facebook users without permission in hopes of influencing voter behavior.

From The New York Times:

The firm had secured a $15 million investment from Robert Mercer, the wealthy Republican donor, and wooed his political adviser, Stephen K. Bannon, with the promise of tools that could identify the personalities of American voters and influence their behavior. But it did not have the data to make its new products work.

So the firm harvested private information from the Facebook profiles of more than 50 million users without their permission, according to former Cambridge employees, associates and documents, making it one of the largest data leaks in the social network’s history.

The breach allowed the company to exploit the private social media activity of a huge swath of the American electorate, developing techniques that underpinned its work on President Trump’s campaign in 2016.

An examination by The New York Times and The Observer of London reveals how Cambridge Analytica’s drive to bring to market a potentially powerful new weapon put the firm — and wealthy conservative investors seeking to reshape politics — under scrutiny from investigators and lawmakers on both sides of the Atlantic.

Christopher Wylie, who helped found Cambridge and worked there until late 2014, said of its leaders: “Rules don’t matter for them. For them, this is a war, and it’s all fair.”

“They want to fight a culture war in America,” he added. “Cambridge Analytica was supposed to be the arsenal of weapons to fight that culture war.”

According to The Times, Cambridge paid a third party to lie to Facebook in order to acquire the data saying the information was to be used for "academic purposes."

After knowing about the data breach for months, Facebook said last night it is suspending the account of Cambridge Analytica. I'm guessing the Times' article applied some pressure, no?

The article goes on to say that Cambridge still has most or all of the private information.