File this under "Yet Another National Database" cross referenced wih "What Could Possibly Go Wrong?"

The Sydney Morning Herald, 6 May 2018:

A massive breach of Commonweath Bank data exposed last week has raised security fears around a new national database of Australian bank customers, as Labor pushes for a delay to part of the scheme's scheduled introduction in less than two months.

The database - set to go live on July 1 - will include the details of every person who has taken out a loan or a credit card, along with their repayment history.

The Mandatory Comprehensive Credit Reporting scheme was a recommendation of the 2014 financial system inquiry and is designed to give lenders access to a deeper, richer set of data to ensure loans are only being approved for people who can afford to repay them.

The new requirements will first apply to the Commonwealth Bank, ANZ Bank, Westpac and National Australia Bank, given they account for up to 80 per cent of lending to households.

But the collection of sensitive data by private companies has raised concerns in the wake of several high-profile data breaches, including the disappearance of 20 million customers records from the Commonwealth Bank.

The Financial Rights Legal Centre and the Consumer Action Law Centre claim the financial details of millions of Australians will be vulnerable under the new scheme - which includes positive and negative credit histories.

Financial Rights Legal Centre policy officer Julia Davis said the development "was a major intrusion into our financial privacy".

"I don’t think Australians realise this is about to happen," she said.

The legislation states all credit reporting bodies must store the information on a cloud service that has been assessed by the Australian Signals Directorate. It also contains a provision allowing banks to stop supplying customer data to credit providers should there be a major security breach.

Ms Davis said the oversight was welcome but the internal systems of credit reporting bodies remained "completely opaque."

"Once that data goes live in the one place you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube," she said.

Equifax, one of the companies which will have access to the data, had its systems in the US hacked last year, exposing the personal information of 143 million Americans and triggering to the resignation of its chief executive.

It is also being sued by consumer watchdog the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission over allegations it misrepresented its product to consumers by asking them to pay for their own credit histories which are usually available online for free.

The company's general manager of external relations, Matthew Strassberg, said Equifax had "only been a marquee above the door for six months," after the US giant took over the Australian operation formerly known as Veda.

He said the credit reporting business would provide "a 360 degree picture."

"A bank will have a very deep insight into what they know of you," he told Fairfax Media.

Mr Strassberg said he recognised that Australians were concerned about data security…..

Is Telstra selling customer location data? Did it ever specifically request permission from account holders?

https://www.telstra.com.au/content/dam/tcom/personal/privacy/pdf/sample-data-oct-2015.pdf

The Sydney Morning Herald, 4 May 2018:

Telstra is making money by on-selling location data from its customers' mobile phones in similar deals to a partnership with the Bureau of Statistics that caused a public backlash last week.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics came under fire for partnering with the telco for a study in 2016, which used mobile phone data showing how many people were in particular suburbs hour by hour.

Similar data is now available for a fee, after the Location Insights program was quietly launched by the telco in July 2016. The Australian Bureau of Statistics was the first licensee under the program, but has not used Telstra's Location Insights since then.

Data available to Telstra's clients can be broken down into 15 minute increments, and demographics broken down by age groups and gender. The smallest geographic areas available for analysis are the same as the Australian Bureau of Statistics' smallest statistical area, which have an average population of 400 people and could have as few as 200 people.

In a video used to spruik the service by Telstra, potential customers are listed as local governments and transport companies. It’s not clear how many organisations have used the service, or what the price tag is for such information.

“Imagine if you could know what is happening in your community, region, or city hub, every 15 minutes,” a voiceover in the Youtube video promoting the program said.

“Telstra Location Insights builds industry-specific metrics where data sets are used for modelling purposes and then extrapolated to estimate for the entire population,” a Telstra spokesman said.

“These metrics are aggregated spatially and temporally before differential privacy and k-anonymisation are both applied to completely anonymise the data.”

This explanation is not accepted by senior lecturer at the University of Melbourne Vanessa Teague.

“In order to know whether those things actually work, we need to see what the parameters are and how they're applied to the data in order to be assured that they’re applied correctly and they work,” Dr Teague said.

Dr Teague is chair of the Cybersecurity and Democracy Network and was part of a team of researchers who re-identified patient health records from Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme data that was released by the government.

“It's possible that [anonymising the data] has been done correctly, it's also possible that they think it’s been done correctly but they’re wrong. And really the only way to assess that is to get a clear and detailed technical description of what they've done,” Dr Teague said.

“If they've done it right then there's no reason to be secretive about the details of what they’ve done, if they’ve done it wrong then they are better off getting a genuine open assessment of it so they can find out sooner rather than later.”

Telstra said the use of the information was in line with its privacy statement, which states that customers’ information could be shared with “our dealers, our related entities or our business or commercial partners and other businesses we work with”.

Dr Teague is sceptical about that explanation. “Just because a company holds highly sensitive information about you doesn’t mean that that data is their property that they should then be able to turnaround and sell without asking you,” she said.

Now when I read Telstra's privacy statement I do not recall that it mentioned that it would be selling mobile phone location information in SA1 statistical level data bundles captured at 15 minute intervals (as mentioned in the news article) and, that those bundles could be used to create data sets which track an individual's movements over time in relatively fine detail.

Yamba in the Clarence Valley NSW is a quiet little town with a population of approx. 6,076 persons living in 3,820 dwellings spread across est. 16 SLA1 statistical levels and in over 100 even smaller statistical Mesh Blocks.

http://stat.abs.gov.au/itt/r.jsp?ABSMaps 

I suspect that many Yamba residents will not be happy with the idea that Telstra Corporation Limited will alllow their movements to be tracked and their daily habits predicted if an individual, private company, government agency or political party pays them for the town's mobile phone location data.

In Febuary-March 2018 there were 63 Notifiable Data Breaches in Australia involving the personal information of up to 341,849 individuals

In the 2016–17 financial year, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) reported that it received 114 data breach notifications on a voluntary basis.

On 22 February the Notifiable Data Breaches (NDB) scheme came into force.

Between 22 February and 31 March 2018 there were 63 mandatory notifiable data breaches reported involving the personal information of up to est. 341,849 individuals, with 55 of these breaches reported in March alone.

Of these breaches:

24 were the result of criminal or malicious attack;

32 were the result of human error;

2 were system fault; and

1 was classified as “Other”.

The type of personal information involved in the data breaches:

Three of these data breaches involved the personal information of between 10,000 and 999,999 people in each instance.

At least 15 of the 63 data breached involved personal information held by “health service providers”. Health service providers are considered to be any organisation that provides a health service and holds health information.

Every individual whose personal information was breached was supposed to be notified by the entity holding their information, however the OAIC Quarterly Statistics Report: January 2018 - March 2018 did not specifically state that this had occurred. 

Turns out that Facebook Inc is the biggest baddie of all on the Internet

“The FTC is firmly and fully committed to using all of its tools to protect the privacy of consumers. Foremost among these tools is enforcement action against companies that fail to honor their privacy promises, including to comply with Privacy Shield, or that engage in unfair acts that cause substantial injury to consumers in violation of the FTC Act. Companies who have settled previous FTC actions must also comply with FTC order provisions imposing privacy and data security requirements. Accordingly, the FTC takes very seriously recent press reports raising substantial concerns about the privacy practices of Facebook. Today, the FTC is confirming that it has an open non-public investigation into these practices.”  [US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Statement, 26 March 2018]

It may have been the Cambridge Analytica-Facebook situation as first set out by Carole Cadwalladr at The Guardian & The Observer (UK) that recently alerted the average Internet user to the issue of digital privacy on social media and, it was certainly the situation which caught the eye of the US Federal Trade Commission which is now investigating.

The story of that data harvest so far.....

The Guardian UK, 25 March 2018:

The story of how those data made the journey from Facebook’s servers to Cambridge Analytica’s is now widely known. But it is also widely misunderstood. (Many people were puzzled, for example, by Facebook’s vehement insistence that the exfiltration of a huge trove of users’ data was not a “breach”.) The shorthand version of what happened – that “a slug of Facebook data on 50 million Americans was sucked down by a UK academic named Aleksandr Kogan, and wrongly sold to Cambridge Analytica” – misses an important point, which is that in acquiring the data in the first place Kogan was acting with Facebook’s full knowledge and approval.

In 2013, he wrote an app called “Thisisyourdigitallife” which offered users an online personality test, describing itself as “a research app used by psychologists”. 

Approximately 270,000 people downloaded it and in doing so gave their consent for Kogan to access information such as the city they set on their profile, or content they had liked, as well as more limited information about friends who had their privacy settings set to allow it. This drew more than 50 million unsuspecting Facebook users into Kogan’s net.

The key point is that all of this was allowed by the terms and conditions under which he was operating. Thousands of other Facebook apps were also operating under similar T&Cs – and had been since 2007, when the company turned its social networking service into an application platform.

So Kogan was only a bit player in the data-hoovering game: apps such as the insanely popular Candy Crush, for example, were also able to collect players’ public profiles, friends lists and email addresses. And Facebook seemed blissfully indifferent to this open door because it was central to its commercial strategy: the more apps there were on its platform the more powerful the network effects would be and the more personal data there would be to monetise.

That’s why the bigger story behind the current controversy is the fact that what Cambridge Analytica claimed to have accomplished would not have been possible without Facebook. Which means that, in the end, Facebook poses the problem that democracies will have to solve. [my yellow highlighting]

However, it is not the only way Facebook is collecting personal information to enrich Zuckerberg and his shareholders.

Now we find out that Facebook Inc is scraping information from Android devices such as mobile phones and adding phone logs to its Big Brother database.

Global News, 25 March 2018:

In the same week Facebook found itself in the middle of a massive data scandal, recent reports indicate that the social media giant has also scraped records of phone calls and SMS data from its users with Android devices without explicit permission.

New Zealand-based software developer Dylan McKay tweeted earlier this week that upon downloading his Facebook data in zip file (which is an option for all users) he claims to have discovered records of phone calls and a historical data of every contact on his phone., including contacts he no longer had, from a period between 2016 and 2017.

Downloaded my facebook data as a ZIP file

Somehow it has my entire call history with my partner's mum pic.twitter.com/CIRUguf4vD

— Dylan McKay (@dylanmckaynz) March 21, 2018

After he made the discovery, McKay set up a Google poll to gather evidence from other users who’ve been affected.

So far, just under 900 people have responded to the poll, and more than 20 per cent confirmed they found call records and/or text metadata in their Facebook data archive. Another 74 people responded to the poll saying that MMS data was collected, 106 people responded saying that SMS data was collected, and 104 responded saying that cellular calls were collected.

READ MORE: Here’s who’s using your Facebook activity to get inside your head

The story was first published by the tech news website Ars Technica on Saturday, who interviewed several Facebook users, and had a member of its staff download their Facebook data archive. Following, this, the site could confirm that the data file downloaded by the staff member contained call logs from a device that individual used between 2015 and 2016, as well as SMS and MMS message data.

Several Global News staff members also requested their data archives as well in the preparation of this story and some found that the contact lists from their mobile devices were recorded in the file. No one noted any text message or call logs in the data files they downloaded.

Ars Technica reached out to Facebook for comment before the publication of its story, who said that the practice was a common one among social networking and messaging apps.

“The most important part of apps and services that help you make connections is to make it easy to find the people you want to connect with. So, the first time you sign in on your phone to a messaging or social app, it’s a widely used practice to begin by uploading your phone contacts.”

Following McKay’s tweets, other users came out on social media expressing similar concerns about what they discovered after downloading their data archives.

Oh wow my deleted Facebook Zip file contains info on every single phone cellphone call and text I made for about a year- cool totally not creepy.

— Mat Johnson (@mat_johnson) March 23, 2018

I’ve just looked at the data files I requested from Facebook and they had every single phone number in my contacts. They had every single social event I went to, a list of all my friends (and their birthdays) and a list of every text I’ve sent.

— Emma Kennedy (@EmmaKennedy) March 25, 2018

…In recent years, the company has updated this process to clarify that when requesting access to your contact list, it intends to access all call logs and SMS text messages as well, but Android users in the past may have unknowingly given Facebook access to this data. [my yellow highlighting]

It is also wise to remember that even Internet users who do not have a Facebook account have their PC or other digital device scanned for information each time they click on a link to Facebook. 

Facebook image via ZDNet, 3 January 2014

ZDNet on 3 January 2014: By "content" Facebook means “anything you or other users post on Facebook”. By "information" Facebook means “facts and other information about you, including actions taken by users and non-users who interact with Facebook”. [my yellow highlighting]

Nor should we ignore this report about Facebook's surreptitious activities.......

Law360 (March 2, 2018, 7:02 PM EST) -- A California federal judge held Friday that Facebook can’t shake a proposed class action over its allegedly unlawful collection and storage of non-users’ facial scans, declining to toss the matter for lack of standing, just as he recently did in a related suit involving users of the site.

U.S. District Judge James Donato rejected Facebook Inc.’s renewed motion to dismiss litigation led by Frederick William Gullen for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction, pointing to his Feb. 26 decision in a related proposed class action accusing the social media... [my yellow highlighting]

Then there is the lobbying to discourage federal regulation of Facebook.......

According to SOCIAL MEDIA CASEROUNDUP (selected cases) in April 2015, by 2013 Facebook Inc had spent more than US$1 million on lobbying efforts to water down the US Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). It was particularly concerned about any change of status of third party "add ons"/"plug-ins" which might by default make platforms like Facebook legally liable for any harm to a minor/s which occurred, as well asbeing resistant to any increase in general protections for minors or any expanded definition of protected "personal information" being included in the Act.

Quartz, 22 March 2018:

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said yesterday that the company welcomes more regulation, particularly to bring transparency to political advertising online. But in recent months, Facebook has been quietly fighting lawmakers to keep them from passing an act that does exactly that, campaign transparency advocates and Congressional staff tell Quartz.

The Honest Ads Act was introduced last October to close a loophole that has existed since politicians started advertising on the internet, and was expected by many to sail through Congress. Coming as Congress investigated how Russia used tech companies to influence the 2016 election, it was considered by many in Washington DC to be the bare minimum lawmakers could do to address the problem.

The act introduces disclosure and disclaimer rules to online political advertising. Tech companies would have to keep copies of election ads, and make them available to the public. The ads would also have to contain disclaimers similar to those included in TV or print political ads, informing voters who paid for the ad, how much, and whom they targeted.

“The benefit of having disclaimers on all political ads [is] the more suspicious ads would be more identifiable,” said Brendan Fischer, the director of federal and Federal Election Commission reform at theCampaign Legal Center (CLC) in Washington.

In a vote of confidence from bitterly-divided Washington, the act was rolled out by a bipartisan group of senators—John McCain, the Republican from Arizona, and Democrats Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota and Mark Warner of Virginia—and it currently has the support of 18 senators. But it hasn’t moved from the committee on “Rules and Administration” since was first introduced, thanks in part to Facebook’s lobbying efforts.

Fischer, who is a co-author of a CLC report on US vulnerabilities online after the 2016 election, accuses Facebook of “working behind the scenes using the levers of power to stop any legislation from moving forward.”

Facebook’s lobbying clout

Lobbyists for the company have been trying to dissuade senators from moving the Honest Ads Act forward, some Congressional aides say. 

Facebook’s argument to Congress behind the scenes has been that they are “voluntarily complying” with most of what the Honest Ads Act asks, so why pass a law, said one Congressional staffer working on the bill. Facebook also doesn’t want to be responsible for maintaining the publicly accessible repository of political advertising, including funding information, that the act demands, the staffer said.

Facebook spent nearly $3.1 million lobbying Congress and other US federal government agencies in the last quarter of 2017, on issues including the Honest Ads Act according to its latest federal disclosure form. It also signed on Blue Mountain Strategies, a lobbying firm founded by Warner’s former chief of staff, an Oct. 30, 2017 filing shows.

It’s part of a massive uptick in lobbying spending in recent years. [my yellow highlighting]

Despite all its lobbying Facebook Inc is not immune from official censure for its deceptive business practices.

Take this analysis of a 2011 binding agreement between the US Federal Trade Commission and Facebook Inc.....

Federal Register / Vol. 76, No. 233 / Monday, December 5, 2011 / Notices

FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION [File No. 092 3184], 2 December 2011:

The Federal Trade Commission has accepted, subject to final approval, a consent agreement from Facebook, Inc. (‘‘Facebook’’)……

The Commission’s complaint alleges eight violations of Section 5(a) of the FTC Act, which prohibits deceptive and unfair acts or practices in or affecting commerce, by Facebook:

* Facebook’s Deceptive Privacy Settings: Facebook communicated to users that they could restrict certain information they provided on the site to a limited audience, such as ‘‘Friends Only.’’ In fact, selecting these categories did not prevent users’ information from being shared with Apps that their Friends used.

* Facebook’s Deceptive and Unfair December 2009 Privacy Changes: In December 2009, Facebook changed its site so that certain information that users may have designated as private— such as a user’s Friend List —was made public, without adequate disclosure to users. This conduct was also unfair to users.

* Facebook’s Deception Regarding App Access: Facebook represented to users that whenever they authorized an App, the App would only access the information of the user that it needed to operate. In fact, the App could access nearly all of the user’s information, even if unrelated to the App’s operations. For example, an App that provided horoscopes for users could access the user’s photos or employment information, even though there is no need for a horoscope App to access such information. 

* Facebook’s Deception Regarding Sharing with Advertisers: Facebook promised users that it would not share their personal information with advertisers; in fact, Facebook did share this information with advertisers when a user clicked on a Facebook ad.

* Facebook’s Deception Regarding Its Verified Apps Program: Facebook had a ‘‘Verified Apps’’ program through which it represented that it had certified the security of certain Apps when, in fact, it had not. 

* Facebook’s Deception Regarding Photo and Video Deletion: Facebook stated to users that, when they deactivate or delete their accounts, their photos and videos would be inaccessible. In fact, Facebook continued to allow access to this content even after a user deactivated or deleted his or her account.

* Safe Harbor: Facebook deceptively stated that it complied with the U.S.-EU Safe Harbor Framework, a mechanism by which U.S. companies may transfer data from the European Union to the United States consistent with European law.

The proposed order contains provisions designed to prevent Facebook from engaging in practices in the future that are the same or similar to those alleged in the complaint.

Part I of the proposed order prohibits Facebook from misrepresenting the privacy or security of ‘‘covered information,’’ as well as the company’s compliance with any privacy, security, or other compliance program, including but not limited to the U.S.-EU Safe Harbor Framework. ‘‘Covered information’’ is defined broadly as ‘‘information from or about an individual consumer, including but not limited to: 

(a) A first or last name; 

(b) a home or other physical address, including street name and name of city or town; (c) an email address or other online contact information, such as an instant messaging user identifier or a screen name; 

(d) a mobile or other telephone number; 

(e) photos and videos; (f) Internet Protocol (‘‘IP’’) address, User ID, or other persistent identifier; (g) physical location; or 

(h) any information combined with any of (a) through (g) above.’’

Part II of the proposed order requires Facebook to give its users a clear and prominent notice and obtain their affirmative express consent before sharing their previously-collected information with third parties in any (a) through (g) above.’’ Part II of the proposed order requires Facebook to give its users a clear and prominent notice and obtain their affirmative express consent before sharing their previously-collected information with third parties in any way that materially exceeds the restrictions imposed by their privacy settings. A ‘‘material . . . practice is one which is likely to affect a consumer’s choice of or conduct regarding a product.’’ FTC Policy Statement on Deception, Appended to Cliffdale Associates, Inc., 103 F.T.C. 110, 174 (1984).

Part III of the proposed order requires Facebook to implement procedures reasonably designed to ensure that a user’s covered information cannot be accessed from Facebook’s servers after a reasonable period of time, not to exceed thirty (30) days, following a user’s deletion of his or her account.

Part IV of the proposed order requires Facebook to establish and maintain a comprehensive privacy program that is reasonably designed to: 

(1) Address privacy risks related to the development and management of new and existing products and services, and 

(2) protect the privacy and confidentiality of covered information. The privacy program must be documented in writing and must contain controls and procedures appropriate to Facebook’s size and complexity, the nature and scope of its activities, and the sensitivity of covered information. Specifically, the order requires Facebook to:

* Designate an employee or employees to coordinate and be responsible for the privacy program;

* Identify reasonably-foreseeable, material risks, both internal and external, that could result in the unauthorized collection, use, or disclosure of covered information and assess the sufficiency of any safeguards in place to control these risks;

* Design and implement reasonable controls and procedures to address the risks identified through the privacy risk assessment and regularly test or monitor the effectiveness of these controls and procedures;

* Develop and use reasonable steps to select and retain service providers capable of appropriately protecting the privacy of covered information they receive from respondent, and require service providers by contract to implement and maintain appropriate privacy protections; and

* Evaluate and adjust its privacy program in light of the results of the testing and monitoring, any material changes to its operations or business arrangements, or any other circumstances that it knows or has reason to know may have a material impact on the effectiveness of its privacy program.

Part V of the proposed order requires that Facebook obtain within 180 days, and every other year thereafter for twenty (20) years, an assessment and report from a qualified, objective, independent third-party professional, certifying, among other things, that it has in place a privacy program that provides protections that meet or exceed the protections required by Part IV of the proposed order; and its privacy controls are operating with sufficient effectiveness to provide reasonable assurance that the privacy of covered information is protected. Parts VI through X of the proposed order are reporting and compliance provisions. Part VI requires that Facebook retain all ‘‘widely disseminated statements’’ that describe the extent to which respondent maintains and protects the privacy, security, and confidentiality of any covered information, along with all materials relied upon in making such statements, for a period of three (3) years. Part VI further requires Facebook to retain, for a period of six (6) months from the date received, all consumer complaints directed at Facebook, or forwarded to Facebook by a third party, that relate to the conduct prohibited by the proposed order, and any responses to such complaints. Part VI also requires Facebook to retain for a period of five (5) years from the date received, documents, prepared by or on behalf of Facebook, that contradict, qualify, or call into question its compliance with the proposed order. Part VI additionally requires Facebook to retain for a period of three (3) years, each materially different document relating to its attempt to obtain the affirmative express consent of users referred to in Part II, along with documents and information sufficient to show each user’s consent and documents sufficient to demonstrate, on an aggregate basis, the number of users for whom each such privacy setting was in effect at any time Facebook has attempted to obtain such consent. Finally, Part VI requires that Facebook retain all materials relied upon to prepare the third-party assessments for a period of three (3) years after the date that each assessment is prepared. 

Part VII requires dissemination of the order now and in the future to principals, officers, directors, and managers, and to all current and future employees, agents, and representatives having supervisory responsibilities relating to the subject matter of the order. Part VIII ensures notification to the FTC of changes in corporate status. Part IX mandates that Facebook submit an initial compliance report to the FTC and make available to the FTC subsequent reports. Part X is a provision ‘‘sunsetting’’ the order after twenty (20) years, with certain exceptions.

The purpose of the analysis is to aid public comment on the proposed order. It is not intended to constitute an official interpretation of the complaint or proposed order, or to modify the proposed order’s terms in any way. 

By direction of the Commission. 

Donald S. Clark, Secretary. [FR Doc. 2011–31158 Filed 12–2–11; 8:45 am [my yellow highlighting]

A brief scrutiny of the byzantium maze that is Cambridge Analytica

Attempting to make sense of a group of corporate actors who obviously delighted in establishing a veritable labyrinth of companies and to create a reference to follow any future revelations.........

So what does the British-US company Cambridge Analytica which; 
(i) has been accused of rat f**king the 2015 Nigerian presidential election and the 2013 & 2017 Kenyan elections, 
(ii) allegedly influenced the 2016 UK Brexit referendum vote by assisting the Leave.EU campaign, 
(iii) was known to have purchased data from Global Science Research Ltd who harvested personal details from an est. 50 million Facebook user accounts and, 
(iv) later sold a breakdown of user data first to a number of GOP candidates during 2014 midterms, as well as to Ted Cruz during the US primaries and then to Donald Trump during the 2016 US presidential campaign,
actually look like on paper?

This appears to be the company whose business name is included in so many media reports at the moment:

Cambridge Analytica LLC incorporated in Delaware USA on 31 December 2013 offering data mining, analysis, and behavioral communication solutions according to Bloomberg.com and, now considered a subsidiary of SCL Group Limited.

“The genesis of Cambridge Analytica was to address the vacuum in the US Republican political market that became evident after [Mitt] Romney’s defeat in 2012” [Alexander Nix, CEO Cambridge Analytics].

Executives

Alexander James Ashburner Nix  Chief Executive Officer

Julian David Wheatland Chief Financial Officer

Mark Turnbull Managing Director of CA Political Global

Thomas Finkle Global Head of Client Services

It shares its name with a UK Company CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA (UK) LIMITED - formerly SCL USA Limited incorporated 6 January 2015. 

Directors

NIX, Alexander James Ashburner Appointed founding sole director 6 January 2015. Only shareholder - in his own name and through another company solely owned by him,  SCL Elections Limited (incorporated 17 October 2012). 

SCL Elections Limited is described by Cambridge Analylitica as "an affiliate of Cambridge Analytica" and also the "genisis" of Cambridge Analytica. It is now being blamed for receiving harvested Facebook data and Cambridge Analytica is hypocritically trying to distance itself in a company media release on 23 March 2018.

The Cambridge Analytica website states it has offices in London, New York, Washington DC, Brazil and Malaysia. Until 20 March 2018 Alexander Nix was listed as its CEO. Acting CEO is now Chief Data Scientist at SCL Group Limited Dr. Alexander Tayler.

How do two firms on opposite sides of the world - one of which has only one director/owner and no indentifiable board members - suddenly become this company with reputed influence and tentacles everywhere?

Perhaps the answer lies in the est. US$15 million in indirect funding Cambridge Analytica has allegedly received from right-wing American billionaire Robert Mercer & his daughter Rebekah through one or all five affiliated US 'front' companies including Cambridge Analytica LLC and in its relationship with another UK corporation with which it shares information/data/personnel.

The remaining US 'front' companies are:

Cambridge Analytica Holdings LLC (Delaware (US), 9 May 2014- )

Cambridge Analytica Commercial LLC (Delaware (US), 21 Jan 2015- )

Cambridge Analytica Political LLC (Delaware (US), 21 Jan 2015- )

That other UK company is SCL Group Limited – formerly Strategic Communication Laboratories Limited incorporated on 20 July 2005 by STG Secretaries Limited on behalf of an unidentified person/s, with an opening share capital of £100,000.

Directors

NIX, Alexander James Ashburner Appointed co-founding director along with Alexander Waddinton Oakes on 20 July 2005, resigned on 7 December 2012 and reappointed on 28 January 2016. Shareholder. Owner of Cambridge Analytica (UK) Limited.

OAKES, Nigel John Appointed on 3 October 2005. Shareholder.

GABB, Roger Michael Appointed on 10 November 2005. Shareholder. Ownership of shares – more than 25% but not more than 50%. Ownership of voting rights - more than 25% but not more than 50%

WHEATLAND, Julian David Appointed on 20 December 2007. Shareholder.

Barclays Bank PLC – current lender to the company It seems this bank assisted in restructuring SCL Group Limited's finances.

Company Positions Identified by LinkedIn

United Kingdom

Web / Software Developer at Cambridge Analytica / SCL Group

Twickenham, United Kingdom

Current: Web Developer at SCL Group

Data Engineer presso Cambridge Analytica

London, United Kingdom

Current: Data Engineer at Cambridge Analytica & SCL Group

Account Director at Cambridge Analytica

London, United Kingdom

Current: Senior Project Manager at SCL Group

Chairman at SCL Group Chief Executive at Hatton International

London, United Kingdom

Current: Chairman at SCL Group

CEO, SCL Group - Behavioural Influence

London, United Kingdom

Current: CEO at SCL Group - Strategic Communication Laboratories

Financial Crime Investigations & Security Intelligence

London, United Kingdom

Current: Head - Fraud Surveillance, Corruption, Investigations at SCL Group

Head of Elections

London, United Kingdom

Current: Head of Elections at SCL Group

Lead Data Scientist at SCL Group

London, United Kingdom

Director of Operations (SCL) / Consultant (BDI)

London, United Kingdom

Current: Director of Operations (from 2011), Head of Infrastructures (2009-2011) at The SCL Group

DevOps Engineer at SCL Group

London, United Kingdom

Current: Development Operations Engineer at SCL Group

Senior Planning Engineer at SCL Group

Birmingham, United Kingdom

Community manager chez SCL Group

London, United Kingdom

Current: Community manager at SCL Group

Financial Controller at SCL Group

London, United Kingdom

Management Accountant at SCL Group

London, United Kingdom

Account Coordinator at SCL Group

United Kingdom

Paralegal

London, United Kingdom

Current: Paralegal at SCL Group

IT Support Analyst at SCL Group

Slough, United Kingdom

United States

Director, Business Development at SCL Group

Washington D.C. Metro Area

Senior Data Scientist at SCL Group

Washington D.C. Metro Area

Canada

Technical Manager at SCL Group

Alberta, Canada

Russia

Менеджер по закупкам - SCL Group [purchasing manager]

Russian Federation

Current: Менеджер по закупкам at SCL Group

Macedonia

Head of SCL Balkans at SCL Group

Macedonia

Germany

Project Manager bei SCL Group

Hannover Area, Germany

Current: Project Manager at SCL Group

Netherlands

Behavioural & Legal Research Scientist // BDI Consultant

Breda Area, Netherlands

Australia

Project Portfolio Manager at SCL Group Australia

Sydney, Australia

Current: Project Portfolio Manager at SCL Group

New Zealand

SCL Products Manager at SCL Group

Auckland, New Zealand

Malaysia

Head, CA Political/Commercial Southeast Asia

Putra Jaya, Malaysia

Current: Director of SCL Southeast Asia at SCL Group

India

Research Analyst at SCL Group

New Delhi Area, India

Director Business Development at SCL Group

New Delhi Area, India

China

CUSTOMER SERVICE at SCL Group

China

Open Corporates' Company Grouping for Cambridge Analytica

 SCL GROUP LIMITED (United Kingdom, 20 Jul 2005- ) directors

 SCL INSIGHT LIMITED (United Kingdom, 13 Sep 2016- ) directors

 SCL ELECTIONS LIMITED (United Kingdom, 17 Oct 2012- ) director

 SCL ANALYTICS LIMITED (United Kingdom, 23 Oct 2015- ) directors

 CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA(UK) LIMITED (United Kingdom, 6 Jan 2015- ) director

 STRATEGIC COMMUNICATION LABORATORIES PRIVATE LIMITED (India, 16 Nov 2011- ) 

 SCL COMMERCIAL LIMITED (United Kingdom, 10 Jan 2014- ) director

SCL SOCIAL LIMITED (United Kingdom, 19 Feb 2013- ) director

 inactive SCL SOVEREIGN LIMITED (United Kingdom, 6 Jan 2015-28 Jun 2016) director Voluntarily dissolved June 2016

 inactive BOLDNOTE LIMITED (United Kingdom, 27 Oct 2004- 8 Jan 2013) directors Voluntarily dissolved January 2013

inactive SCL DIGITAL LIMITED (United Kingdom, 6 Jan 2015-28 Jun 2016) director Voluntarily dissolved January 2015

CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA LLC (Delaware (US), 31 Dec 2013- ) 

 inactive branch SCL USA INC. (Virginia (US), 25 May 2016-31 Jul 2017) 

 SCL USA INC. (Delaware (US), 22 Apr 2014- ) details

 branch SCL USA INC. (New York (US), 10 May 2016- )

 branch SCL USA Inc. (District of Columbia (US), 22 Apr 2014- ) 

 inactive Strategic Communication Laboratories LLC (Virginia (US), 7 Mar 2011-30 Jun 2013) 

 STRATEGIC COMMUNICATION LABORATORIES, INC. (Delaware (US), 23 Aug 2006- )

 CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA COMMERCIAL LLC (Delaware (US), 21 Jan 2015- ) 

 CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA POLITICAL LLC (Delaware (US), 21 Jan 2015- ) 

BACKGROUND

The Sydney Morning Herald, 23 March 2018:

Wylie, a Canadian citizen, moved to London in 2010 and started to work in 2013 for SCL Group, which he said conducted "information operations" around the world and also worked in campaigns, especially in African nations.

As research director, Wylie helped that company give birth to Cambridge Analytica as "an American brand" that would focus on US politics with at least $US10 million from billionaire hedge fund manager Robert Mercer. The Cambridge Analytica office was in the posh Mayfair neighbourhood of London, and the dozens of young workers - many of them contractors, a number of whom were from Eastern Europe - buzzed about with Apple laptops.

At the helm, said Wylie, was Mercer's daughter Rebekah, who was president, and conservative strategist Steve Bannon, who was vice president. Running day-to-day operations was a smooth-talking upper-crust Briton, Alexander Nix……

Wylie said that it was under Nix's direction - but with the knowledge of Bannon and Rebekah Mercer - that Cambridge Analytica began an ambitious data-gathering program that included tapping into the Facebook profiles of 50 million users through the use of a personality-testing app. The company did that with the help of a Russian American psychologist at Cambridge University, Aleksandr Kogan, who also made regular visits back to Russia, according to Wylie.

Wylie said he and others at Cambridge Analytica were initially skeptical of the power of this tactic for gathering data. But when the company approved $US1000 for Kogan to experiment with his app, he produced data on 1000 people who downloaded it and roughly 160,000 of their friends - all in a matter of hours.

Cambridge Analytica next approved $US10,000 for a second round of testing and was rewarded with nearly a million records, including names, home towns, dates of birth, religious affiliations, work and educational histories, and preferences, as expressed using the popular Facebook "like" button on many social media updates, news stories and other online posts.

They soon married that data with voter lists and commercial data broker information and discovered they had a remarkably precise portrait of a large swath of the American electorate.

Kogan's app, called "thisisyourdigitallife" and portrayed as being for research purposes, gathered data on the 270,000 people who downloaded it and tens of millions of their Facebook friends. It was this data and others that Wylie later worried might have ended up in Russian hands.

"I'm not saying that we put it on a drive and posted it to Vladimir Putin on Number 1 Red Square," Wylie said, referring to the Russian president's official residence. But he said that he and others affiliated with Cambridge Analytica briefed Lukoil, a Russian oil company, on its research into American voters. 

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The Guardian, 14 May 2017:

What was not known, until February, was the relationship between all these figures and the Leave campaign. That was when Andy Wigmore, Leave.EU’s communications director, revealed to this paper that Farage was a close friend of both Bannon and Mercer. He said that the Leave campaign was a “petri dish” for the Trump campaign. “We shared a lot of information because what they were trying to do and what we were trying to do had massive parallels.”

Wigmore also said that Mercer had been “happy to help” and Cambridge Analytica had given its services to the campaign for free. It was the general secretary of Ukip, a British lawyer called Matthew Richardson, who effected Leave.eu’s introduction to Cambridge Analytica, Wigmore said. “We had a guy called Matthew Richardson who’d known Nigel for a long time and he’s always looked after the Mercers. The Mercers hadsaid that here’s this company that we think might be useful.”

He said that Mercer, Farage and co had all met at a conference in Washington. “The best dinner we ever went to. Around that table were all the rejects of the political world. And the rejects of the political world are now effectively in the White House. It’s extraordinary. Jeff Sessions. [Former national security adviser Michael] Flynn, the whole lot of them. They were all there.”

When the Observer revealed Mercer’s “help” in February, a “gift” of services, it triggered two investigations. One by the Information Commissioner’s Office about possible illegal use of data. And another by the Electoral Commission. Cambridge Analytica is a US company and Mercer is a US citizen and British law, designed to protect its electoral system from outside influence, expressly forbids donations from foreign – or impermissible – donors. The commission is also looking into the “help” that Gunster gave the campaign. It was not declared in Leave.EU’s spending returns and if donated, it would also be impermissible. Gavin Millar QC, an expert in electoral law, says it raises questions of the utmost importance about the influence of an American citizen in a UK election.

But the contents of this document raise even more significant and urgent questions. Coordination between campaigns destroys the “level playing field” on which UK electoral law is based. It creates an unfair advantage.

Millar said that one of the significant and revealing aspects of the arrangement was that it was hidden. “It’s the covert nature of the relationship between these two companies and campaigns that I find particularly revealing and alarming. If there is covert cooperation via offshore entities, [it] is about as serious a breach of the funding rules as one can imagine in the 21st century.”

Millar said that this case was without precedent. “To have a billionaire so directly buying influence in a British election is absolutely unheard of. This is completely out of the ordinary. And what’s clear is that our electoral laws are hopelessly inadequate. The only way we would be able to find the truth of what happened is through a public inquiry.”

The link between Cambridge Analytica and AggregateIQ was never supposed to come to light. And it is still uncertain how Vote Leave came to work with AggregateIQ.

There are several major Tory donors and pro-Brexit figures associated with Cambridge Analytica and SCL Elections, including Lord Marland, former treasurer of the Conservative party and head of the Commonwealth Enterprise and Investment Council. The pro-Brexit Tory donor Roger Gabb, the owner of South African wine company Kumala, is also a shareholder and was involved in one of the Leave campaigns. In a separate incident he was fined £1,000 by the Electoral Commission for failing to include “imprints” – or campaign branding – on newspaper ads.

The Observer revealed last week that two core members of the Vote Leave team used to work with both Cambridge Analytica and AggregateIQ. Cummings said that he found the company – on which he spent by far the biggest chunk of his campaign budget – “on the internet”.

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Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, Oral evidence: Fake News, HC 363, Tuesday 27 February 2018, Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 27 February 2018.

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Cambridge Analytica is currently under investigation in the UK with the Information Commissioner's Office entering the company's London office under search warrant on 23 March 2018.