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Tribune News Service
Tribune News Service
World
Christopher Brennan

Cambridge Analytica employee said it used 'sex compass' quiz too

Consulting firm Cambridge Analytica used questionnaires including a "sex compass" to gather data on far more users than the 87 million previously mentioned.

Brittany Kaiser, an American who worked as a business development director for the company, testified before a British Parliament committee on Tuesday over the company's work in the UK and in the United States.

Cambridge Analytica came under fire last month after whistleblower Christopher Wylie spoke about practices including harvesting the data of Facebook users, many without their consent.

Facebook, whose founder Mark Zuckerberg has been heavily scrutinized, has said that up to 87 million people had data taken after they or one of their friends took a "This is your digital life" quiz created by researcher Alexander Kogan.

But testimony from Kaiser on Tuesday said that the number of users is higher because a "wide range" of other Facebook-connected surveys were used to gather data.

She said that Cambridge Analytica and other companies were involved in surveys including a "sex compass" quiz, but did not give details about the data gathered.

Cambridge Analytica says that it has deleted the data and doesn't use it. However, Wylie has said that the data was used as the basis for projects to target voters first for Sen. Ted Cruz and then for President Trump.

The head of the company, backed by the conservative Mercer family, was scheduled to give testimony on Wednesday but backed out because of a criminal investigation against him, according to Conservative member of parliament Damien Collins.

University of Essex propaganda researcher Emma Briant also gave information to the parliamentary committee, and said that Cambridge Analytica used false statements and anti-Muslim messages in swing states.

"Trump's false racist and Islamophobic comments, resentment and fear were deployed where they would be most effective " mobilizing swing state audiences, using voters' personal data to monitor them, and using psychological profiling to manipulate their emotional responses en masse," she said.

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