Cambridge Analytica working to stop undercover report on its practices from airing: report

Cambridge Analytica is trying to prevent an undercover report by London’s Channel 4 News that shows the firm’s CEO Alexander Nix speaking candidly about the firm’s practices from airing, according to the Financial Times.

Reporters for Channel 4 posed as prospective clients and secretly filmed a number of meetings with the firm.

The Financial Times’s report did not make clear how the data firm was working to stop the report from airing. 

Cambridge Analytica, which was used by President Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, was suspended by Facebook Friday for breaching its privacy policy. {mosads}

The firm had obtained the private information of more than 50 million people from Aleksandr Kogan, a University of Cambridge professor. Kogan got the information through an app he created that uses a Facebook login.

About 30 million of the profiles Kogan shared had enough information for the firm to create psychographic profiles, according to The New York Times. Only 270,000 users gave permission for their data to be collected.

Facebook discovered in 2015 that Cambridge Analytica had violated its policies and demanded it certify that it had destroyed the data. The firm provided the certification, but recent reports indicate it did not delete all the data.

Cambridge Analytica and Facebook threatened to sue The Guardian to keep them from publishing an exposé focusing on the whistleblower who released the data breach, according to CBS News.

The whistleblower has also said that Facebook suspended him after he revealed the information he claims Facebook was aware of for two years.

Special counsel Robert Mueller has reportedly requested all emails between the Trump campaign and Cambridge Analytica. The House Intelligence Committee has also reportedly interviewed Nix.