It was used, it is said, “to accomplish Cambridge Analytica’s driving principle: to build psychological profiles of voters to affect election results in the UK and the US”. The extracted data included names, phone numbers, mail and email addresses, political and religious affiliations, and other interests. This case will go some way to ensure that neither of these things can happen in the future.” He said: “The defendants effectively abused the human right to privacy of ordinary Facebook users and, if that were not enough, then the fruits of that abuse are alleged to have undermined the democratic process. Jason McCue, of the London-based McCue and Partners, which specialises in data privacy and human rights law, is leading the UK arm of the claim. US lawyers said the legislation provides for a minimum $1000 (£700) penalty for any violation found by a court, meaning that, if the case goes against Facebook, it could face damages in excess of $70bn. It has been brought under the US Stored Communications Act. The numbers may expand as the case proceeds. Seven individual plaintiffs, all Facebook users, are named in the writ five American and two British. The claim, the first involving British citizens, has been lodged in the US state of Delaware where Facebook, SCL and Cambridge Analytica are all incorporated. “It has become open season for critics to say whatever they like about us based on speculation and hearsay,” the acting chief executive, Alexander Tayler, said. It argued, among other things, that it only ever received data on 30 million US citizens that it did not use the data at all in the Trump campaign or the Brexit referendum and that the Facebook data it received was legally obtained through a Facebook tool. The Cambridge University neuroscientist Aleksandr Kogan, a founding director of GSR, is also named.Ĭambridge Analytica was set up in 2013 as an offshoot of SCL Group, which offered similar services to businesses and political parties.Īll the companies and Kogan have repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.Ĭambridge Analytica on Monday again rebutted many claims made about the company’s business. Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s former campaign and White House adviser, led Cambridge Analytica in 2014, when the data was collected and extracted, the legal papers state. The data, it is suggested, was first used in the British EU referendum and then in the US during the 2016 presidential election.Īs well as Cambridge Analytica, the two firms named in the legal writ are SCL Group Limited and Global Science Research Limited (GSR). The lawsuit claims the firms obtained users’ private information from the social media network to develop “political propaganda campaigns” in the UK and the US.įacebook, it is said, may initially have been misled, but failed to act responsibly to protect the data of 1 million British users and 70.6 million people in America.
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British and US lawyers have launched a joint class action against Facebook, Cambridge Analytica and two other companies for allegedly misusing the personal data of more than 71 million people.