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
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.
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%
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
inactive branch SCL USA INC. (Virginia (US), 25 May 2016-31 Jul 2017)
branch SCL USA Inc. (District of Columbia (US), 22 Apr 2014- )
BACKGROUND
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.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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”.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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.
