«Israeli» «Intelligence Gathering» Used in Facebook Data-Mining Controversy

Local Editor

A UK-based data analysis company hired by US President Donald Trump's election campaign to sway voters' choices used "Israeli" companies to assist its work, a British television investigation revealed on Monday.

In the undercover report by Britain's Channel 4 news, Cambridge Analytica's CEO Alexander Nix said his firm campaigns secretly in a host of global elections -- including Argentina, the Czech Republic, India, Kenya and Nigeria -- explaining the surreptitious methods used to garner information. Tactics used involve entrapping politicians and bribing Ukrainian sex workers.

Nix and the managing director of Cambridge Analytica's political division, Mark Turnbull also disclose how information is acquired through the help of ex-spies from Britain and the "Israeli" entity.

"We have two projects at the moment, which involve doing deep, deep, depth research on the opposition and providing source... really damaging source material, that we can decide how to deploy in the course of the campaign," he told an undercover reporter in one exchange.

"We use some British companies, we use some "Israeli" companies," Nix added. "From ‘Israel', very effective in intelligence gathering."

Responding to the Channel 4 report, according to the Times of Israel, the data-mining organization said: "We entirely refute any allegation that Cambridge Analytica or any of its affiliates use entrapment, bribes or so-called ‘honey-traps' for any purpose whatsoever."

Elizabeth Denham, UK's Information Commissioner who presides over data regulation, said she intended to gain a warrant to access Cambridge Analytica's server. She added that the company had been "uncooperative" to requests for access to its records and missed a Monday deadline.

Over the weekend, the New York Times and the Guardian newspaper revealed that the company stole information from 50 million Facebook users' profiles in the tech giant's biggest-ever data breach, to help the Trump election campaign design software to predict and influence voters' choices at the ballot box.

Facebook responded to the explosive comments of misuses of data by suspending the account of Cambridge Analytica. On Monday, it said it hired a digital forensics firm, Stroz Friedberg, to examine how the data leaked occurred and to ensure that any data collected had been destroyed.

The EU Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova said the harvesting of data from millions of users is "horrifying" and promised to launch an investigation. Expressing her concerns over how the data was "so easily mishandled" she added, "we don't want this in the EU and will take all possible measures including stricter data protection rules and stronger enforcement granted by the #GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation)."

Calls for an investigation were also echoed by those in the US as Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar and Republican John Kennedy called for Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg to appear before Congress, along with Google and Twitter's CEOs.

The lawmakers said the companies "have amassed unprecedented amounts of personal data" and that the lack of oversight "raises concerns about the integrity of American elections as well as privacy rights."

The Channel 4 report was Part Two of a three-part documentary ‘Data, Democracy and Dirty Tricks' investigating the workings of Cambridge Analytica. Part Three focusing on the company's work in the United States will air in the UK tonight.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team