By Tripti Chanda
In the latest rage against the invasion of private user data, it has been found that a consulting firm working for Trump used the data of around 50 million Facebook users for his electoral campaign. This would come as no surprise given the claims of the Russian government being involved in influencing the user-base towards Trump, using targeted advertising during his elections. However, what does come as a surprise is that none of it was done illegally, as all of the users gave their permission for the usage of the said data.
The report of the case
The New York Times and the London Observer reported that Cambridge Analytica, a data analytics firm, was behind the data harvesting. Data of more than 50 million people were collected to develop strategies for the election campaign of Trump. Following the news report, the Massachusetts Attorney General declared that their department would be launching an investigation. Even the United Kingdom’s Information Commission announced that they would be looking into the matter since they had clients of the firm in their country too. The initial reports claimed that it was a data breach, and one of the largest in the history of Facebook. It had been going on since before the elections and had not stopped since, giving a huge database for the firm to use.
How was it done?
The data was collected through an app for personality tests called thisisyourdigitallife, built by Aleksander Kogan. Kogan, who was a researcher working with Cambridge University in association with his company Global Science Research and a university lecturer in the Department of Psychology, has now been banned from Facebook for improper use of data.
His app promised to analyse the user’s psyche based on their Facebook profile and a test. To do so, it asked for various permissions to access the user’s data, including their friend list, to better understand the user’s complete profile. This meant that, with a single test, the app would receive the data of hundreds of people and as the popularity of the app grew, its user base increased exponentially. A whistle-blower quoted the whole system as being like “target(ing) their inner demons”.
How did Facebook respond?
In its latest update, Facebook’s claimed the data breach to be a completely false occurrence. When the app asked for the information, the user knowingly and willingly provided that by giving the necessary permissions. This means that no security protocols were actually breached, any system hacked or any information stolen.
Facebook further maintained that they have always prioritised the absolute security of the users and expect the same from their app developers. They claim no knowledge of Aleksander collecting the data under the pretext of academic studies and selling it third-party firms. Even though the information was collected through legal channels, the crime here was the selling of the collected data. Facebook says that they are still improving their user privacy algorithms to provide maximum security, allowing them to choose the degree of information shared to each platform.
The legal action
Facebook claims that even after reporting the actions of Cambridge Analytica and SCL, the firms have yet not deleted the collected information. Only the data from GSR was deleted. This does not align with the terms and services of Facebook, providing it with a further backlash if the act committed is legally recognised as a data breach.
Even though this has not been proved as a data breach, it is still a huge breach of the privacy of social media users worldwide, and the world of politics is still playing the blame game. Facebook is declaring itself blameless and marking its users for negligence while the Democratic Senators of the US Senate are all trying to show how this is just the tip of the iceberg for all the previous invasions of privacy. The Senate, being Republican in the majority, has not released an official statement but the world does not seem to be waiting with abated breath for that.
The Trump-Analytica connect
Donald Trump campaign administration hired the company Cambridge Analytica in the year 2016, paying them over 6.2 million dollars, according to the records of Federal Election Commission. Contrary to this, the administration maintained that they actually used the voter data from the Republican National Committee for their campaign and not the data collected by these firms.
However, the company itself claims that it helped the President in his election campaign while the campaign’s digital ad operator revealed that they had used a Republican-affiliated firm for voter data. After the recent threat of Russia meddling in the 2016 elections, this claim carries more weight and greater implications for the recent elections and the upcoming ones in 2020.
What’s next?
The most dangerous part about this claim is that with specially designed and targeted advertisements, the firm was able to influence its user base to vote for a candidate to him a very powerful position, something they might not have done otherwise. There are still some who would deny the power of ads, but this has just proved what smart marketing can accomplish. This could mean a future governed by capitalism and ruled by consumerism.
The fact that all of this was so easy for a lecturer at a university to accomplish, points to a grim reality. With the rapidly increasing number of targeted advertisements all over the internet, the issue must urgently be brought to the general public’s attention. We are still at a stage where such instances are being pushed aside as jokes for the pop culture but hasn’t this finally gone too far?
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