Cambridge Analytica? Oh, you mean Cambridge Analytica
The lawyer District Secretary General Secretary may have received internal company emails showing that Facebook had knowledge of Cambridge Analytics data collection efforts months earlier than CEO Mark Zuckerberg turned on last year. But the company is now in court and claims to keep the emails under seal, saying that the company's data scraping is not related to the other privacy violation that it faced criticism for over a year.
In a court application this week, district lawyers said they had e-mail addresses that showed Facebook employees based in Washington, DC, "played a leading role in responding to how third-party applications mistakenly sold consumer data to Cambridge Analytica (and other parties ) contrary to Facebook's guidelines. "
The submission, which is partially edited, also states that email messages show a Facebook employee" warned the company "about Cambridge Analytics' data scraping" in September 2015, about three months before the Guardian reported that the company had purchased data on millions of Facebook users without their consent.
In a statement last year on Facebook, Zuckerberg claimed that his company first learned about Cambridge Analytics' unauthorized collection of user data in December 2015, after the Guardian and broke the story.
Facebook now claims that the conversation about Cambridge Analytica in the emails is unrelated to the data illegally obtained from Aleksandr Kogan, a university researcher from Cambridge who originally purchased it through a personality quiz he operated on the platform. (The question, installed by about 300,000 people, enabled Kogan to collect not only their data but data of around 50 million other Facebook users.)
"In September 2015, employees heard speculation that Cambridge Analytica was scratching data, which unfortunately is unfortunate. common to any internet service, "said a Facebook spokesman in a statement to the press. "In December 2015, we first learned through media reports that Kogan sold data to Cambridge Analytica and we took action. There were two different things."
Facebook is sued in DC over what his lawyer, Karl A. Racine, says misleading privacy policies during the 2016 election in violation of the district's Consumer Protection Act. District lawyers say nearly half of all DC residents were swept up in illegal sales of Facebook data.
Facebook this week filed a motion in DC superior court to keep their internal e-mails from public and claim that the district's complaint against the company lacks personal jurisdiction and that the document itself contains sensitive commercial information.
District attorneys claim that there is nothing sensitive to the document, that the information it contains is already known to the public, and that Facebook's concerns are "ultimately recognized."
They also confess Facebook's argument that e The posts are "separate from the actual claims in the complaint" and say they illustrate how Facebook employees in the district "played a leading role" in responding to the privacy scandal.
Moreover, the emails are consistent, the lawyers said, with the gender equality lawyer's claim that Facebook employees embedded in several presidential campaigns "knew or should have known" that Facebook's user data was harvested by Cambridge Analytica, "among other parties."
Senator Ted Cruz's presidential campaign largely funded the development of Cambridge Analytics campaign software, Ripon, paying the company at least $ 5.8 million. After the nominee Donald Trump was nominated for Republican candidate, the Trump campaign gave the firm another $ 5 million.
As Gizmodo first reported last year, Cambridge Analytica announced the development of AggregateIQ's software, a British Columbia-based data management. Several GOP operations consider Ripon to be vaporware. Sources in the Cruz campaign told Gizmodo that it never worked.
Cambridge Analytics main investor, hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, contributed around $ 10 million to the Cruz campaign before Trump's nomination. He also contributed around $ 15.5 million to Trump.
Lawyers for Facebook and the District performed before Judge Fern Saddler at 15 on Friday to argue for their ongoing moves. Saddler is expected to soon decide on a written decision that determines whether Facebook's internal email is allowed.
If you have a tip on Facebook or the Cambridge Analytica case, email the author: dell@gizmodo.com. You can also get out securely with SecureDrop.
