Cambridge Analytica board suspends CEO, pending probe into misuse of Facebook user data

Kim Hjelmgaard | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption How Cambridge Analytica, Facebook swayed the 2016 election Here's how a data firm helped Donald Trump get elected as president. We have the FAQs.

LONDON – The board of Cambridge Analytica, the political data firm that allegedly exploited information from 50 million Facebook users to help Donald Trump's campaign, suspended CEO Alexander Nix on Tuesday for his comments secretly recorded by a British broadcaster.

In a series of broadcasts by Britain's Channel 4, Nix was filmed making controversial statements about his firm's work on elections, including how Cambridge Analytica played a major role in Trump's presidential victory, including "all the data, all the analytics, all the targeting."

The suspended CEO also suggested to a potential client that his company could portray politicians in compromising situations. Nix's suspension was effective immediately.

"Mr. Nix’s recent comments secretly recorded by Channel 4 and other allegations do not represent the values or operations of the firm and his suspension reflects the seriousness with which we view this violation," the board of directors said in a statement.

The broadcasts come amid questions about how Cambridge Analytica gained access to people's online profiles, as well as criticism against Facebook for its alleged inaction to protect users’ privacy.

A British parliamentary committee on Tuesday summoned Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to answer questions on whether personal data was improperly used to influence elections.

Facebook sidestepped questions on whether Zuckerberg would appear, saying the tech giant is focused on its own reviews.

In the latest broadcast, which aired Tuesday evening in Britain, Nix downplayed his private testimony before the House Intelligence Committee in December when he was asked about his firm's work for Trump's presidential campaign.

Nix claimed that Republican lawmakers asked him just three questions. "After five minutes — done," he said about his testimony behind closed doors. "They’re politicians, they’re not technical. They don’t understand how it works," he added.

Facebook rocked by data breach scandal as probe loom Facebook rocked by data breach scandal as probe loom Video provided by AFP

Nix, in the video shown Tuesday, also claimed credit for Cambridge Analytica's work with data and research that he said allowed Trump to win the election with a narrow margin of "40,000 votes" in three swing states, giving Trump an electoral college victory, despite losing the popular vote.

Since Trump’s election, Cambridge Analytica has flip-flopped over its role in the campaign. The company initially claimed credit for helping elect Trump, but Nix also sought to portray the firm's role as minimal amid investigations into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Channel 4's broadcast came a day after the network showed surreptitiously obtained video of Nix saying his company could entrap politicians. Monday night's broadcast in Britain showed one exchange in which Nix said the company could "send some girls around to the candidate’s house." Ukrainian girls, he said, "are very beautiful. I find that works very well."

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Cambridge Analytica, in a statement Monday, denied that it or its affiliates "use entrapment, bribes or so-called honey-traps" against politicians. It also denied any wrongdoing over the Facebook data it acquired from Cambridge University psychology professor Alex Kogan.

The television station said it filmed a series of meetings at London hotels from November to January, during which a Channel 4 reporter posed as an operative for a wealthy client hoping to get candidates elected in Sri Lanka.

In addition to Nix, other senior Cambridge Analytica executives, including Mark Turnbull, the firm's managing director, attended the meetings.

In videos of the meetings broadcast by Channel 4, Cambridge Analytica executives boasted that it and its parent, Strategic Communications Laboratories, had worked in more than 200 elections across the world, including Nigeria, Kenya, the Czech Republic, India and Argentina.

In another exchange, Turnbull described how Cambridge Analytica can discreetly publicize damaging material about a political opponent on social media and the Internet.

"We just put information into the bloodstream of the Internet, and then, and then watch it grow, give it a little push every now and again ... like a remote control. It has to happen without anyone thinking, ‘that’s propaganda,’ because the moment you think ‘that’s propaganda,’ the next question is, 'Who’s put that out?' "

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Tuesday night's broadcast also featured an on-the-record interview with Hillary Clinton conducted in October, when she was promoting her book. She said it would be "very disturbing" if Cambridge Analytica were found to be involved in Russia’s alleged attempt to influence the election.

"So you’ve got CA, you’ve got the Republican National Committee — which of course has always done data collection and analysis — and you’ve got the Russians. And the real question is, how did the Russians know how to target their messages so precisely to undecided voters in Wisconsin or Michigan or Pennsylvania — that is really the nub of the question," Clinton said in the interview.

Cambridge Analytica denied any involvement with Russia and said any such allegation is false.

