Trump advisers used Facebook data for 50 million users

While trying to crack the market between the American mesmandat elections in 2014, the newly opened voter profile company “Cambridge Analytica” faced a problem.

The firm had received $15m in investments from Robert Mercer, the wealthy Republican donor who had convinced his political adviser, Stephen K. Bannon, with the promise that the company would offer tools that could identify the character of American voters, thus affecting their conduct at the polls. But he still had no record of putting the new product to work.

Thus, the firm collected private information from over 50 million Facebook users without their permission, according to Cambridge employees, according to his associates and other documents. This turned it into the largest flow of information throughout the history of social networks. A leak that gave the company the opportunity to exploit social networking activity of a large part of American voters, developing techniques that were strengthened during Trump's campaign in 2016.

An analysis conducted by “York Times” and “The Observer of London” shows that the ability of “Cambridge Analytica” to introduce a new weapon into the market, put the firm é and rich conservative investors who wanted to change politics under surveillance by investigators and lawmakers in America and Britain.

Christopher Wylie, who helped establish Cambridge and even worked there by the end of 2014, gave this description to the company's directors: “For them do not matter the rules. For them this is war, and in war everything is right”

“Want to launch a cultural war in America”, he added. “ ) Cambridge Analytica was supposed to be the arsenal for this cultural war”.

Details for Facebook data that were bought and used by “Cambridge” has appeared several times since the company started working for the 2016 campaign, sparking a heated debate on company techniques called “psychographic models”.

But the actual size of the available personal data had never been made public, and Facebook had not, until now. Interrogating about six former employees and contractors, as well as checking the company's documents and e-mails, have shown that Cambridge not only based all its work on private Facebook data, but continued to own most of them, if not all.

Cambridge had paid for an external data collection researcher who, according to Facebook, had claimed to be doing it for academic reasons.

During a week of investigations conducted by the “The Times”, Facebook tried to lower the importance of information flow, and did not believe the data was still out of control. But on Friday the company posted a statement expressing alarm and promising to take measures.

“Speaking for a fraud scheme”, Paul Grewal, Vice-President and Deputy General Adviser of the Social Network, said in a statement to “The Times”. He said the company was suspending Cambridge Analytca, Mr. Williee and the researcher, Alexandr Kogan, a Russo-American academic, from Facebook. We will take all necessary measures to hide the data in question once and for all, and we will act against the parties that have committed violations”, said Mr. Grace.

During a hearing session in parliament, Alexander Nix, executive director of “Cambridge Analytica” and other officials had denied several times that they received or used Facebook data. But in a statement to the “The Times”, the company admitted to buying the data, but blamed Mr. Kogan for breaking Facebook rules. They said they erased the information as soon as they learned about the problem two years ago.

In Britain, “Cambridge Analytica” has been subjected to investigations being conducted simultaneously by Parliament and the government, on suspicion that they violated laws during the “Brexit” campaign. There are very strict laws on privacy in Britain, and the information commissioner said Saturday they were investigating whether Facebook data was purchased and used illegally.

In the United States, Mr. Mercer's daughter, Rebecca, board member; Mr. Bannon and Mr. Nix, they were warned by their lawyer that it was illegal to hire foreigners during political campaigns, according to company documents and several former employees.

Congress investigators have questioned Mr. Nix for the company's role in Trump's campaign. Special Adviser of the Justice Department Robert S. Mueller III, has requested e-mails of “employees Cambridge Analytica” who worked for the Trump team, under the investigation he is leading to verify Russian interventions in the American elections.

And the essence of interest in Mr. Mueller is preserved with great secrecy, the first documents from the “The Times” show that the company's British subsidiary has claimed to have worked in Russia and Ukraine. Wikipedia founder Julian Assang indicated that Mr. Nix had contacted him during the campaign in hopes he would receive private e-mail from political opponent Hillary Clinton, a candidate of the Democratic Party.

The documents raise new questions about Facebook, which is being highly criticised for spreading false news and Russian propaganda. The data Cambridge collected from the profiles, part of which were viewed by the “The Times”, had information on the identity of users, about their friends and the sites they liked. Only a tiny fraction of these users had admitted that their information was given to third parties.

“Protecting people's information is the essence of everything we do, said Grawalk. “has not been infiltrated into any system, not stolen or hacked passwords or sensitive”.

“However,” he added, “is a serious violation of our rules. ”

Reading the Mind of Voters

Mr. Wylie recalls during an interview that the wines “Bordeaus” were streaming as Mr. Nix and other colleagues were dining at the Palace Hotel, Manhattan, late 2013. They had a lot to celebrate.

Mr.Nix, with the ability of a dashing salesman, had run the small SLC Group election unit, a contracting company for political issues and protection. Throughout that year he had been trying to enter the lucrative new world of political data, recruiting Mr. Wylie, a 24-year-old employee who was linked to President Obama's campaign veterans. Mr. Wylie was interested in using the psychological characteristics of voters to influence their behavior. He had assembled a team of psychologists and data-gathering scientists, some of whom were linked to the University “Cambridge”

The group had experimented abroad in the Caribbean and Africa, when privacy laws are weak or non-existence, and where politicians who had hired SCL gave private government data without a problem.

Then, Mr. Nix met by chance with Mr. Nix. Bannon, a zealous news member “Breitbart”, who later became adviser to President Trump at the White House. He also met with Mr. Mercer, one of the richest people in the world.

Mr. Nix and his colleagues were hanged by Mr. Mercer, who believed that a sophisticated data collection company could make it crucial to the republican victory, along with his daughter, Rebekah, who shared the same conservative views. Mr. Bannon was seduced by the opportunity to use personal profiles of people to change American culture and renew the political system, as Mr. Wylie and other former company employees who spoke anonymously because they had signed trust contracts. Mr. Bannon and Mercer refused to comment.

Mr. Mercer agreed to help finance a $1.5 million pilot project that would give voters a survey and test psychographic messages during Virginia's election for governors in November 2013. In this election, Republican Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli was running against Terry McAuliffe, a fundraiser for Democrats. Even though Mr. Cuccinelli lost, Mr. Mercer committed himself to continue.

Mercer's wanted to see the results soon and have more business requirements. In early 2014, investor Toby Neugebauer and other wealthy conservatives were preparing to provide tens of millions of dollars for the presidential campaign of Senator Ted Cruz, from Texas, a job that Mr. Nix wanted to win it.

When Mr. President's colleagues. Wylie couldn't create a memo that would explain Mr. Neugebauer's job, Mr. Nix rebuked them sharply in his e-mail.

“J ONLY 2 PAGE! Over four hours of work, or one hour each. What did you all do?

Mr. President's team. Willie had a bigger problem. Establishing psychographic profiles on a national scale required data that the company could not collect without spending too much. Traditional analytical companies used voting records and the history of things people had bought to predict their political animation and who they would vote for.

But this data didn't show whether a specific voter, by the way, was a closed and nervous man; an open, overreligious man; a liberal equivalent; a mystery worshipper, etc. These psychological descriptions, according to the firm, created an extremely powerful way to mold specific political messages.

Mr. Wylie found a solution at Cambridge University's Psychometric Center. Researchers there had developed a technique that designed personality traits based on pages they liked on Facebook. Researchers gave small amounts to users to do a test and download an app, which received private information from their profiles and from their friends, an activity Facebook allowed at the time. This way, according to scientists, could tell more about that person than if you asked his parents, or romantic partners a claim that has been debated.

When the Psychometric Center refused to work with the company, Mr. Wylie found someone else who could do it: Dr. Kogan, who was then a professor of psychology at the university, was aware of the techniques. Dr. Kogan created the app in June 2014, and began collecting data for “Cambridge Analytica” Business covered costs of more than 800,000 ] and allowed it to retain a copy of the research, as verified by the company's financial data and e-mails.

As Facebook and users (of fine letters paragraph), information was being collected for academic reasons, the social network says. Facebook didn't verify this statement. Dr. Kogan refused to give details about what happened, citing a trust agreement between Facebook and “Cambridge Analytica”, and he insisted that his program was a very common app.

He managed to give the company 50 million Facebook profiles, according to Mr. Wylie, a number confirmed by a company e-mail and a former colleague. 30 million of them, a number reported by “The Intercept”, contained so much information, including settlements, that the company could comply with other users and build psychographic profiles. Only 270,000 of these users had agreed to obtain the data, those who had been part of the survey.

Mr. Wallie said that Facebook data was what saved them, which enabled his team to give Mercer the promised models.

“We wanted to get as much as”, he admitted. We weren't asking where they came from and who gave us permission to get”.

Mr. Nix tells a different story. When he presented himself to the parliamentary commission last month, he described Dr. Kogan is useless.

International Efforts

Exactly when Dr. Kogan was offering his efforts, Mr. Mercer agreed to invest $15m in a joint venture with the SCL election department. The orchestras created a complex corporate structure, forming a new American company, almost all owned by Mr. Mercer, with licenses for the psychographic platform developed by Mr. Willie, according to company documents. Mr. Bannon, who became an investor and board member, chose the name: “Cambridge Analytica”

It was practically a “guaque” company. According to documents, and according to some of the former employees, the contracts won by Cambridge, originally Incorporated in Dellauer, would be handled by London-based SCL, and monitored by Mr. Nix, a British citizen appointed simultaneously to “Cambridge Analytica”, even at SCL. Most SCL employees and contractors were Canadians, like Mr. Willie, or European.

But in July 2014, Lawrence Levy, an American election lawyer assigned to the company, informed them that these appointments could violate laws restricting the involvement of foreigners in American elections.

In a memo for Mr. Bannon, Ms. Mercer and Mr. Nix, the lawyer, who was working for the Bracewell& Gioliani at the time, warned that Mr. Nix would have to take responsibility for “independent management” of any client involved in American elections. The data company had to find American subjects or persons with “Green Card”, as Mr. Levy, “to manage the work and cover the decision-making roles regarding the company's remittances and messages”.

In summer and autumn 2014, “Cambridge Analytica” was introduced in the American middle school elections, engaging SCL contractors and employing people across the country. Few Americans were involved in a job dealing with surveys, focus groups and election message creations for John Bolton Super PACE; for conservative groups in Colorado and for the campaign by Senator Thom Tillis, a republican from North Carolina.

“Cambridge Analytica” says in a statement to the “The Times” that “personnel engaged in strategic roles was American substate or with Green Card”. Mr. Nix “has never had a strategic role or decisionmaker in the US election campaign”, the company says.

Whether the company's actions in America violated election laws or not depended on the role of foreign employees in the campaign, and whether their work was considered strategic counsel, according to Federal Election Commission rules.

“Cambridge Analytica” has shown similar behavior and in the 2016 elections when it worked for Mr. Cruz and Mr. Trump. Although Cambridge employed more Americans for that year's elections, the majority of scientists involved in data were from the UK or other European countries, according to two former employees.

Under the direction of Brad Parscale, Mr. Trump in 2016, and now his campaign manager for the reconstruction of 2020, Cambridge has performed many services, as former campaign officials say. This includes selecting the public to receive digital ads; calling for fundraising; molding participation in elections; paying $5 million in television advertising; and determining where Mr. Trump to get more support. Cambridge management has given various versions of the use of psychographic data in the campaign. Mr. Nix said the company profiles helped Mr. Trump to build strategy ʹthe declaration that has been rejected by other officials, but also said Cambridge did not have enough time to influence Trump voters.

In an interview for the BBC in December of last year, Mr. Nix said Trump's efforts attracted inherited psychographics, created for Mr. Cruz.

After data leak

Early in 2015, Mr. Willie and more than half of the company's original members, about six people, had left the company. Most were liberal, and they had no desire to work for the tough rightist candidates that the Mercer family was supporting.

“Cambridge Analytica” said in a statement that Mr. Wylie had left to launch a rival firm, and that they had taken legal measures against him to implement intellectual property rights. They described Mr. Wylie and other former contractors as individuals engaged in malicious acts at the expense of the company.

By the end of that year, an article in the “The Guardian” found that “Cambridge Analytica” was using private Facebook data for Cruz' campaign, recording actions done by Facebook users. In a statement given at the time, Facebook guaranteed that he was investigating the case very carefully, and that any company that misused the data would apply to erase.

Facebook verified the flow of information, and without publicly accepting it, moved to secure the information. These efforts continued until August 2016. That month, social network lawyers contacted “contractors Cambridge Analytica” “These data were received and used without permission”, said a letter provided by the “The Times”. “are not legal to use in the future, so it must be deleted immediately”.

Mr. Grewaal, the deputy general adviser to Facebook, said in a statement that Dr.Kogan, SCL Group and Cambridge Analytica had authorized them to erase the data in question.

But the copies that could have been made are out of Facebook control. “The Times” saw some raw profile data that had collected “Cambridge Analytica”

While Mr. Nix had reported to MPs that the company has no Facebook data, a former employee said he had recently seen hundreds of gigabyte data on Cambridge servers, and that files were not encrypted.

Today, while “Cambridge Analytica” tries to expand business in the United States and abroad, Mr. Nix mentioned some questionable practices. This January, in secret footage taken from Channel 4 News in Britain, also seen by the “The Times”, he boasted that he had employed companies and former tours for political clients worldwide, and had even suggested various ways to trap politicians, creating compromising situations.

The numerous investigations undertaken have damaged the political business of “Cambridge Analytica” There is no American campaign or “Super PACE” reportedly paid them for the 2018 mesmandat election. It is still unclear whether “Cambridge Analytica” will be taken to work on the Trump re- running.

Meanwhile, Mr. Nix is trying to get psychographic profiles into the commercial advertising market. It has again positioned itself as a digital-era “ ”, “Math Man”, as he calls it. A former employee said that last year, Cambridge has approached companies like Mercedes-Benz, Metlife and AB InBev, but has not signed yet.

Matthew Rosenberg, Nicholas Confessor and Carole Cadwalldr reported from London on this article. Gabriel J.X. Dance contributed by reporting from London, and Danny Hakim from New York, to the NY Times.