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Facebook Hires Firm To Conduct Forensic Audit of Cambridge Analytica Data (cbsnews.com)
After it was revealed that political data analytics firm, Cambridge Analytica, harvested personal data from more than 50 million Facebook users, the social media company has been scrutinized for not better protecting its users. Today, CBS News reports that Facebook has recently hired Stroz Friedberg, a digital forensics firm, to conduct an audit of Cambridge Analytica. According to a press release issued by Facebook on Monday, Cambridge Analytica has agreed to "comply and afford the firm complete access to their servers and systems." From the report: The social network said it asked Christopher Wylie and University of Cambridge professor Aleksandr Kogan to submit to an audit. Facebook says Kogan has verbally agreed to participate, but Wylie has declined. Wylie is a former employee of Cambridge Analytica who described the company's use of illicit data in interviews late last week. Cambridge Analytica, Kogan and Wylie were banned from Facebook on Friday. Cambridge Analytica did not immediately confirm that it had agreed to comply with the audit. The firm has denied the allegations that it improperly collected and used the data. A spokeswoman for Stroz Friedberg declined to comment on the firm's involvement with an audit.
"We are moving aggressively to determine the accuracy of these claims," Facebook officials said in a statement. "We remain committed to vigorously enforcing our policies to protect people's information. We also want to be clear that today when developers create apps that ask for certain information from people, we conduct a robust review to identify potential policy violations and to assess whether the app has a legitimate use for the data. We actually reject a significant number of apps through this process. This is part of a comprehensive internal and external review that we are conducting to determine the accuracy of the claims that the Facebook data in question still exists. If this data still exists, it would be a grave violation of Facebook's policies and an unacceptable violation of trust and the commitments these groups made."
"We are moving aggressively to determine the accuracy of these claims," Facebook officials said in a statement. "We remain committed to vigorously enforcing our policies to protect people's information. We also want to be clear that today when developers create apps that ask for certain information from people, we conduct a robust review to identify potential policy violations and to assess whether the app has a legitimate use for the data. We actually reject a significant number of apps through this process. This is part of a comprehensive internal and external review that we are conducting to determine the accuracy of the claims that the Facebook data in question still exists. If this data still exists, it would be a grave violation of Facebook's policies and an unacceptable violation of trust and the commitments these groups made."
"The Data Crunching Prowess of Barack Obama" - https://politics.slashdot.org/...
Carol Davidsen, former director of integration and media analytics for Obama for America:
"“They [Facebook] came to office in the days following election recruiting & were very candid that they allowed us to do things they wouldn’t have allowed someone else to do because they were on our side,” Davidsen tweeted." https://ijr.com/2018/03/107708...
...when I first heard this story, it was that Facebook sold an analytics firm a shit-ton of data on their users. You can argue all day long whether FB's gathering was moral or no, but the sale seemed straightforward.
Now this has morphed into "..it was revealed that political data analytics firm, Cambridge Analytica, harvested personal data from more than 50 million Facebook users,..." . ...which has an entirely more malignant sound. Coincidence?
So - did CA "harvest" this data in any sort of illegitimate way, or does that have more to do with the person/party they did it FOR than anything?
-Styopa
A lot of people stayed home because they just couldn't pull the trigger for Hillary. There was plenty of reasons to not vote for her. Including the ongoing meltdown she's still has over her second failed attempt at being president. And the worst part is, Trump beat the only person he was capable of beating, because she stank so bad.
Now, you can blame that loss on all sorts of reasons, but the plain fact is, she sucked as a candidate. Most of the reason she lost was her own making.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.