Nix also shut down several lines of the committee’s questions, refusing to answer whether Cambridge Analytica/SCL had gone on to repeat the Facebook data-harvesting method at the heart of the scandal themselves, for example. Nor would he disclose who the owners and shareholders of Cambridge Analytica and SCL Group are — claiming in both cases that ongoing investigations prevented him from doing so.
Though, in the case of the Information Commission’s Office’s ongoing investigation into social media analytics and political campaigning — which resulted in the watchdog raiding the offices of Cambridge Analytica in March — committee chair Damian Collins made a point of stating the ICO had assured it it has no objection to Nix answering its questions. Nonetheless Nix declined.
He also refused to comment on fresh allegations printed in the FT suggesting he had personally withdrawn $8 million from Cambridge Analytica before the company collapsed into administration.
Did you ever undertake any denial of service attacks, Nix was asked?
“So this was a company that we looked at forming, and we never formed. And that company never undertook any work whatsoever,” he responded. “In answer to your question, no we didn’t.”
Why did you consider it, wondered Matheson?
“Uh, at the time we were looking at, uh, different technologies, expanding into different technological areas and, uh, this seemed like, uh, an interesting, uh, uh, business, but we didn’t have the capability was probably the truth to be able to deliver meaningfully in this business,” said Nix. “So.”
Matheson: “Was it illegal at that time?”
Nix: “I really don’t know. I can’t speak to technology like that.”
Matheson: “Right. Because it’s illegal now.”
Nix: “Right. I don’t know. It’s not something that we ever built. It’s not something that we ever undertook. Uh, it’s a company that was never realized.”
Matheson: “The only reason I ask is because it would give me concern that you have the mens rea to undertake activities which are, perhaps, outside the law. But if you never went ahead and did it, fair enough.”
https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/06/cambridge-analyticas-nix-said-it-licensed-millions-of-data-points-from-axciom-experian-infogroup-to-target-us-voters/
So yeah; Experian has basically all of America's credit card transactions. This is likely a far more valuable predictor of behavior than stuff you like or say on Facebook. As the saying goes "Put your money where your mouth is".
ReplyDelete"He had instead said that the work Dr. Aleksandr Kogan did for the company was “fruitless” and thus that the Facebook data Kogan had harvested and supplied to it had not been used."
I'm surprised that they were unable to get any signal out of it. However, something to keep in mind; shortly after the election, there were some news reports coming out that suggested that CA was grossly inflating the effectiveness of their abilities. Don't dismiss the idea that CA is basically no different than Theranos. Or your average blockchain deeplearning nodejs social startup.
By the way Experian got breached wholesale; and I don't hear anyone talking about regulating them more.
The recent reporting on the so called "data sharing" with Huawei has made it abundantly clear that the people reporting on this topic (and reading about it) don't have a fucking clue how anything actually works.