Cambridge Analytica: Academic at centre of Facebook data scandal says he is being made 'scapegoat'

A UK-based academic whose app harvested the data of 50 million Facebook users has claimed he is being made a scapegoat by the social media company and Cambridge Analytica.

Aleksandr Kogan, a psychology lecturer at Cambridge University, developed a personality app which amassed a huge cache of personal information from Facebook for the British political consultancy accused of an illegal data grab.

Cambridge Analytica (CA) is alleged to have used the information to help Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and on Tuesday suspended its chief executive, Alexander Nix, after he was secretly recorded boasting about the firm’s pivotal role in the US election.

MPs have summoned Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to give evidence over the “catastrophic failure of process” behind the breach and have accused the social media giant of misleading Parliament about how companies acquired and held user data.

Facebook, which also faces an investigation by the US Federal Trade Commission, has suspended activity for CA and Dr Kogan for violating its policies. The social media site claimed the academic “lied” by promising data collected by his app would not be passed to third parties.

But the lecturer insisted he was being unfairly blamed for the scandal and had been advised by CA he was doing nothing wrong.

Dr Kogan told Radio 4’s Today Programme: “The events of the past week have been a total shell shock, and my view is that I’m being basically used as a scapegoat by both Facebook and Cambridge Analytica when, honestly, we thought we were acting perfectly appropriately. We thought we were doing something that was really normal.

“We were assured by Cambridge Analytica that everything was perfectly legal and within the terms of service.”

He denied first approaching CA with the app and said he worked with the company in 2014 they contacted him.

Dr Kogan’s app, called “thisisyourdigitallife”, was downloaded by 270,000 users but also collected data about some of their friends, allowing it to mine personal information about millions of people.

The academic said CA paid between up to $800,000 (£570,000) for data on about 30 million users, mostly Americans. He said he was “never part of the subsequent process” and did not know how CA used the information.

“The only thing I think I really did wrong was not ask enough questions,” added Dr Kogan, whose app was not connected to his work at the university.

“In terms of the usage of Facebook data [CA] wrote the terms of service for the app, they provided the legal advice that this was all appropriate.

“I had never done a commercial project, I didn’t really have any reason to doubt their sincerity. That’s certainly something I strongly regret now.”

He also suggested the accuracy of the dataset had been “extremely exaggerated” and was unlikely to have helped Mr Trump.

Asked if using the data to target voters could swing election, Dr Kogan replied: “I personally don’t think so. I think it could have only hurt the [Trump] campaign.

“I think what Cambridge Analytica has tried to sell is magic, and they’ve made claims that this is incredibly accurate and it tells you everything there is to tell about you. But I think the reality is it’s not that.”

He said he would feel “absolutely horrible” if he had influenced the outcome of the election because “Mr Trump is not someone whose values align with mine”.

Whistleblower Christopher Wylie has told The Observer that CA used personal information taken without consent from 50 million Facebook users to build a system that could could profile individual US voters and target them with personalised political advertisements.

CA has insisted Mr Trump’s team did not use its data and said it only “provided limited staffing”. But in a recording broadcast by Channel 4 News, its chief executive boasted that the firm worked on “all” the elements on the Republican’s campaign.

“We did all the research, all the data, all the analytics, all the targeting, we ran all the digital campaign, the television campaign and our data informed all the strategy,” Mr Nix told an undercover reporter.

He also said the company used a “self-destructing” email system which leaves no trace of correspondence.

In a subsequent statement, the CA board said Mr Nix’s comments did not represent ”the values or operations of the firm”. He has been suspended “with immediate effect, pending a full, independent investigation,” it added.

The UK Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham, who is investigating the use of personal data for political campaigns, has confirmed she is seeking a warrant to access CA’s systems after the firm failed to respond to an earlier demand.

Facebook is also under growing pressure in the UK and the US over its response to misuse of user data. Mr Zuckerberg is yet to comment personally on the scandal, which knocked $40m (£28m) off his company’s market value.

Damian Collins, chair of Parliament’s influential Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee (DCMS), said the social media giant had previously given “misleading” evidence to Parliament and “consistently understated the risk” of user data being used without their consent.

In a sternly worded letter, Mr Collins said it was time for the Facebook founder to address MPs over CA’s alleged illegal data grab.

Meanwhile, the US Federal Trade Commission is said to be probing if the social media giant had violated the terms of a 2011 settlement reached after Facebook was accused of of misleading consumers about keeping their data private.

In a statement, Facebook said: “Aleksandr Kogan requested and gained access to information from users who chose to sign up to his app, and everyone involved gave their consent. People knowingly provided their information, no systems were infiltrated, and no passwords or sensitive pieces of information were stolen or hacked.

“Although Kogan gained access to this information in a legitimate way and through the proper channels that governed all developers on Facebook at that time, he did not subsequently abide by our rules.”