Closing summary
Thanks for joining us for our live coverage of Christopher Wylie’s appearance before the Senate judiciary committee.
For close observers of the Cambridge Analytica story, there was little new information disclosed in this hearing. Since going public in the Observer in March, Wylie has spoken to numerous media outlets and testified to Parliament, so much of what he said today was familiar.
And while both Jamison and Hersh may have useful contributions to the debate about regulating social media and political advertisements, their presence at today’s seemed largely designed to allow Republican interlocutors to talk about something other than Cambridge Analytica.
Still, Wylie is an effective communicator about the complexities of data and privacy, and his remarks on the difficulty of having true informed consent when it comes to internet platforms are important. It’s also well worth keeping in mind that political scientists like Hersh are skeptical about claims being made about the efficacy of psychographic micro-targeting.
We’ll have a full report on the day’s proceedings from my colleague Olivia Solon shortly.
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And we’re done! Tillis closes out by entering articles about the Obama campaigns use of data into the record.
Tillis: We can talk about all the bad [social media platforms] have done, but I can also talk about the good they have done in crowdsourcing and preventing suicides.
Klobuchar on the Facebook algorithm: The message I’m getting is that if you want to do a moderate, policy based post, you better pay to promote it. But if you do something really partisan, it will get a lot of engagement.
Klobuchar is asking about the power of FB’s algorithms to suppress or promote speech.
Wylie: What you’re talking about is distortion in the information that is available to people. Notes that distortion in other areas, like the financial markets, is regulated.
Klobuchar: What do we know about the scope of Facebook’s data problem? How many more Cambridge Analyticas are out there?
Wylie: Only Facebook knows. He notes that Facebook threatened to sue the Guardian and banned him from the platform.
“We don’t require car companies to make unsafe cars and just put terms and conditions on the outside... We have rules that require safety and to put people first... In the 21st century it is nearly impossible for people to be functional without the use of the internet, so there should be some degree of accountability and oversight.”
Wylie: I never directly communicated with Facebook about that project until I left the company. My understanding is that Aleksandr Kogan did communicate with Facebook.
Blumenthal: In my questioning of Zuckerberg, I showed him the terms of service that showed Facebook was on notice of what Kogan was collecting.
Wylie: What I do know is that if you set up an app on FB, you have to submit the terms of service for review. So Facebook was notified, whether or not they bothered to read the terms and conditions, sort of like how many users don’t read the ToS, is another matter.
Were Mercer's investments in Cambridge Analytica non-disclosed political donations?
Blumenthal: Did CA provide “in kind” services to US candidates?
Wylie says not that he knows of, but that Mercer’s investment in the firm made it possible for CA to charge less for services than it would have.
Blumenthal is suggesting that this could be a non-disclosed campaign donation.
Wylie says this was an “ancillary benefit” of Mercer’s investments, such that his money could support CA’s clients without being reported as a donation.
Updated
Whitehouse is now asking about an individual who played a key role in connecting CA with BlackCube, and says she’s the same person who connected the Nigeria project and LeaveEU.
Wylie: The person you are referencing played a role in setting up the activity in Nigeria, which involved hacked material.
Whitehouse says this was Black Cube, the Israeli firm.
Wylie: She made introductions between a group of Israelis and SCL. Wylie says Whitehouse needs to ask CA about whether this was Black Cube.
Whitehouse is asking about the “overspending scheme” by one of the pro-Brexit campaigns, VoteLeave.
Whitehouse: Is it true that CA had zero role in the Brexit referendum?
Wylie: I don’t agree with that because AIQ was set up to service Cambridge Analytica and SCL. “AIQ was only set up to service SCL and Cambridge Analytica.” To say that CA didn’t have any role of infuence on Brexit is looking at it too narrowly.
And we’re back for a second round of questioning, starting with Senator Whitehouse, who is kicking us off by asking about Brexist and Aggregate IQ.
Zuckerberg agrees to appear before European Parliament
While we’re waiting for the hearing to recommence... the president of the European parliament just announced that Mark Zuckerberg has agreed to appear at a closed-door meeting with MEPs in Brussels.
This decision is likely to only further anger the UK parliament, which has repeatedly called on the CEO to appear. MPs have gone so far as to threaten Zuckerberg with issuing a formal summons, so if Zuckerberg does travel to Brussels next week, we imagine he won’t be flying through Heathrow.
We’re taking a quick recess so the senators can vote on something. But referring back to Kennedy’s point on censorship: Facebook can and does censor what you see on the platform. Some of this censorship occurs automatically, through algorithms that promote certain posts while hiding others, depending on the various signals that Facebook uses to rank News Feed posts. Other censorship is based on the content of posts, and Facebook has only recently begun to be more transparent about how it determines what content is and is not allowed.
Hersh: We have a basic human response that we are attracted to provocation and extremism, and what the platforms are doing is promoting that attraction. It’s about what we want.
Kennedy: “Here’s the problem, we can all agree that poison is being spread on social media. Here’s the tough part: define poison. I don’t want Facebook censoring what I see.”
We’re returning to Senator Kennedy, who already asked questions earlier.
Kennedy: Did the Facebook co-founder share data with the Obama campaign that it didn’t share with the Romney campaign because he wanted Obama to win?
Jamison explains that this is not true. Chris Hughes was working for the Obama campaign. But he understood how Facebook worked and was able to teach the Obama campaign how to use it.
Booker: It was stunning to me that big data was used not to rally voters but to suppress voters? Was this a determined effort to suppress votes not just of African Americans or other groups?
Wylie: My understanding was that it was to suppress any group of voters that would go for Democracts, especially African Americans.
Booker: Was this about inflaming differences?
Wylie: The US went through a civil rights movement in an attempt to desegregate society. What we’re seeing now is a resegregation of society by algorithms. Some people call that echo chambers. CA was looking to exploit certain vulnerabilites in certain segments to send them information that will remove them from the public forum, and feed them conspiracies and they’ll never see mainstream media ... We have destroyed the public forum.
Wylie describes videos created by CA as “sadistic and Islamophobic”.
Corey Booker, Democrat from New Jersey, is raising the New York Times’ reporting on Facebook’s role in spreading violence and misinformation in Sri Lanka. He’s now quoting SCL’s Nigel Oakes speaking approvingly of Hitler’s propaganda tools.
Hirono is raising concerns about predictive technology that the government is seeking to do to forecast criminality.
Wylie points out that biased data produces biased results.
Senator Mazie Hirono, Democrat from Hawaii, addresses Hersh.
Hirono: If we were to consider regulating anything, should we focus on regulating ads or messages that demobilize people.
Hersh: I’ve worked for the ACLU on government voter suppression, but this is different. What’s the line for demobilization by a campaign? What if a campaign is just describing a candidate’s shortcomings? Is that demobilization?
Hirono: We’re talking about people paying to suppress votes? That’s different from someone just saying don’t vote for so-and-so.
Hirono seems to be suggesting that ads aimed at voter suppression could be regulated, but that seems highly questionable from a First Amendment point of view.
Durbin: Did you have any guidance from CA in terms of secrecy?
Wylie: Everybody had to sign a very thorough non-disclosure agreement.
Durbin: Alexander Nix was clearly involved in Cambridge Analytica.
Wylie: He was the CEO, so yes.
Durbin: Notes that federal law prohibits the direction of campaign work by foreigh nationals: “There is a red flag, or a red Union Jack.”
Senator Dick Durbin, Democrat from Illinois: I asked a question of Mr Zuckerberg, whether he felt comfortable telling me the name of the hotel that night, and after a couple seconds he said no. It really got to the heart of the issue about Mr Zuckerberg and his feelings about personal privacy and where he draws the line. The right of Facebook or any entity to use my information without my permission, I think is over the line. We have now put a little piece of electric tape over the camera on my laptop. People are watching.
Wylie: Good.
Harris: What should Facebook have done to ensure you deleted the data?
Wylie: In 2016, they sent me a letter that requested me to delete the data and sign a certification that I did it.
Harris: Did you need a notary?
Wylie: No notary or legal procedure. So I signed the notification and sent it back.
Harris: What specifically did Steve Bannon decide motivates or demotivates African Americans to vote?
Wylie: When you poll a random sample of African Americans, they’re not the same people. Different lives, different characteristics. So you don’t treat them just as a black person, you treat them as who they are. That can be used to motivate them to vote or not to vote.
Harris: So how did they decipher who was African American and target them?
Wylie: Racial characteristics can be modeled. We were able to get an AUC score that was 0.89. It’s a way of measuring precision, which means it’s very high. But I didn’t participate on any voter suppression programs so I can’t comment on the specifics. Those questions are better for Steve Bannon.
Harris: I believe it is government’s responsibility to create rules to yield a better bargain for Americans.
Here’s Kamala Harris, Democrat from California.
Harris starts by discussing the Facebook business model: This arrangement is not always working in the best interest of the American people. Users have little to no idea of just how Facebook tracks their information ... In the real world, this would be like someone following you as you walk down the street, watching who you are, where you’re going, and who you’re with. For most people, this would be an invasion of privacy and most people would call the cops.
Blumenthal: Mentions that Jamison worked on the Trump transition. He asks whether Jamison had any contact with Michael Cohen.
Jamison says no.
Next up is Richard Blumental, Democrat from Connecticut: Are you aware of discussions between CA and representatives of the Russian government?
Wylie: I’m aware of conversations with Lukoil, which has ties to the Russian government.
Blumenthal: Asks about campaign donations?
Wylie: After I inquired about the relatively convoluted set up of CA, what was explained to me was that when you invest money as an investor into a company that you own, it doesn’t necessarily constitute an election donation which is declarable.
Blumenthal: Were you told that the purpose of the set up was to exploit this distinction?
Wylie: It was explained to me as a benefit of the setup.
Blumenthal: Were there firewalls set up to separate campaigns?
Wylie: Not that I saw. I did see memos about separating contact between campaigns and PACs. But when I was there I did not see those instructions followed.
Blumenthal: Can you provide examples of focus groups or other efforts to suppress voting?
Wylie: I can work with the committee to give a fuller explanation. I am aware of research that was looked at about what motivates and demotivates people.
Cruz is arguing that Facebook gives preferential treatment to Democratic campaigns.
Cruz: Does anyone on the panel know what the Hillary Clinton campaign did on the data side?
[crickets]
This is not really surprising since none of the witnesses have any connection to her campaign.
Next up is Senator Ted Cruz, another client of Cambridge Analytica. The Guardian first reported on the misappropriation of the Facebook dataset when CA was working for Cruz’s presidential campaign in December 2015.
Unsurprisingly, Cruz begins his questioning by turning to Obama’s use of Facebook data in 2015.
Wylie: Facebook not just a social networking site, also an "opportunity for information warfare"
Coons: Was one of Steve Bannon’s goals to supress voting?
Wylie: That was my understanding?
Coons: Was voter suppression a service that clients could request?
Wylie: Yes.
Coons: Why was CA testing Putin’s aggressive actions? And what would it mean if Russian intelligence got this dataset?
Wylie: I don’t have a clear answer for why the company was testing Russian expansionism. In terms of the dangers, data is powerful and if it’s put into the wrong hands it becomes a weapon. Companies like Facebook are not just social networking sites; they’re opportunities for information warfares, not just for state actors but also non-state actors. We have to look at protecting cyberspace just as we have agencies to protect the borders, land, space and air.
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Wylie: I don’t contest what Professor Hersh was saying in that it is true that persuading someone compared to motivating someone is very hard. But CA found that in comparison to traditional marketing sites, the data you can get from social media is much more dense and more valuable.
Christopher Coons, Democrat from Delaware, starts by bringing up the research of Michal Kosinski on how Facebook likes can be used to predict personal traits about individuals.
Wylie: The basis of what we were doing at CA was the papers by Dr Kosinski. The firm replicated his approach and sought to use it. You can get to the same level of predicting personality traits as your spouse.
Hersh: I encourage my students to never share political ideas on social media. I don’t agree that you don’t have a choice not to use it. Facebook has a lot of data. I think it has acted really inappropriately, notes that they take no responsibility for how they’re used.
Tillis is again discussing the use of Facebook data by the Obama campaign. This is a common talking point for Republicans who want to make the point that data use by political campaigns is bipartisan, which is true enough. However, it’s worth keeping in mind that people who downloaded the Obama campaign app were clearly aware that they were using a political app. By contrast, the Facebook data set in question here was obtained via a personality quiz application whose users would have had no idea that their data would eventually be used by a political campaign.
Thom Tillis, Republican senator from North Carolina: “I hope that the result of this hearing is figuring out what if anything Congress should do with respect to a regulatory framework.”
Tillis was actually a client of Cambridge Analytica in 2014. He brings this up during his questioning of Wylie.
Klobuchar: What do you know about voter suppression?
Wylie: One of the things that provoked me to leave was discussions about “voter disengagement” and the idea of targeting African Americans. Mentions that he has seen documents about this.
Klobuchar: What states were focused on?
Wylie: States that were winnable by Republicans.
Klobuchar: What’s the potential overlap for users who were shown IRA ads and the users’ whose data was used by CA?
Wylie: My concern is that information may have been shared or misappropriated by a Russian entity from Cambridge Analytica. It’s not just whether or not these individual records were targeted, but if it was used to build an algorithm, other uses could also have been exposed.
Wylie: We should be requiring safety standards for online platforms and software.
Amy Klobuchar, Democratic senator from Minnesota, raises her legislation to allow opting out of data collection.
Would this legislation have prevented the Facebook data harvest?
Wylie: Not really because of the API that was allowing people to pull data.
Wylie: You have to imagine what the developments we’ll see moving forward. Notes that when he signed up for Facebook, it didn’t have facial recognition so he uploaded photos. Then it started scanning faces. We have to think about how data will be used in the future.
Wylie: Social media is not really a choice for most people. The internet is not really a choice for most people. I don’t know a job that would let you go in and not use Google. Although we use this narrative of choice, they substantially don’t have a choice. I don’t know a job that would hire someone who refuses to use the internet.
Cornyn: There’s this idea in the law that your consent must be informed. Is that too much to ask for?
Wylie: People absolutely should have informed consent. But when you go and see a doctor, you consenting to surgery is proportionate to the benefit you are getting. When someone “consents” to something online, if that’s the only way you can get a job it’s not really a fair situation. We should take a step back from this narrative of consent and look at the fact that you don’t have a lot of choice.
Cornyn: But I can use Twitter instead of Facebook.
Wylie: Yeah, but they all do the same thing and conduct a huge amount of data comparative to the benefit they give you.
Wylie: Facebook's system "catalyzes misuse" of data
Cornyn: Mark Zuckerberg kept saying that they don’t sell data, and I said they clearly rent it. How would you characterize it?
Wylie: They’ve created a platform that encourages the use of data. It’s true that you can’t go to Facebook and simply buy it, but they make it readily available through network of applications, or the fact that the layout of the profiles make it very conducive to scraping data. They have a setup that catalyzes misuse in my view.
Updated
Senator John Cornyn: Did CA serve all comers?
Wylie: That was the impression I got at first, but after Mercer put in money, the only restriction was not to work for Democrats.
Referring back to Black Cube, this is the Israeli company that was reportedly involved in efforts to prevent victims of Harvey Weinstein from speaking publicly, as well as investigations into Obama administration officials who were involved in negotiations with Iran.
Whitehouse asks about connection to Palantir.
Wylie says Palantir staff were involved but in a private capacity.
Whitehouse: Has SCL worked with Black Cube?
Wylie: There wasn’t a contract with Black Cube, but says there were dealings with former Israeli security services.
Next up is Sheldon Whitehouse, Democratic senator from Rhode Island.
Whitehouse is asking about Aggregate IQ and Ripon, the software they created. Wylie describes AIQ as a “franchise” of SCL, though the Canadian firm has contested claims that it is closely related to SCL.
Hersh: "In a presidential campaign ... the effect of any one ad is usually zero"
Lee: Is the use of social media to market different than what we’ve seen in the past?
Hersh: Just because a campaign spends a lot of money on a kind of ad, doesn’t mean it works. Robocalls don’t work but people still use it. Probably nobody in this room changed their mind because of any ad that was run in the 2016 election. Given that there’s been whistleblowing, there has been no evidence provided of the advertisements actually working. In a presidential election with so much going on, the effect of any one ad is usually zero.
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Lee asks about Kogan’s connection to the Russian team researching the “dark triad” of personality traits. Wylie said that he learned of this directly from Kogan, and then through the Guardian and Observer’s reporting.
Lee: How did you learn about CA’s black ops?
Wylie: Alexander Nix told me?
Lee: Who was involved in them?
Wylie: My understanding was that in various projects, misappropriated information was used as kompromat against opposition candidates.
Michael Lee, Republican senator from Utah: You took that same data with you upon leaving the company.
Wylie: Most people were contractors or had companies. I received a copy of that data.
Lee: After leaving the company you had a series of meetings with a major campaign to discuss micro-targeting.
Wylie: That’s not true.
Lee: You were going to use that data for something.
Wylie: The data was never used on any commercial project. I didn’t take any data from Cambridge Analytica.
Lee: You didn’t take it because it was already with you?
Wylie: Yes. After I left CA, I continued working on independent projects, but I didn’t use that data on any commercial contract.
Lee: Couldn’t that data have proven useful to you?
Wylie: I could have, but I didn’t use it.
Steve Bannon wanted 'weapons to fight a culture war'
Leahy: How does traditional online marketing compare to what CA did?
Wylie: Traditional marketing doesn’t misappropriate tens of millions of people’s data, and it is not or should not be targeted at people’s mental state like neuroticism and paranoia, or racial biases.
Leahy: Why did the investors think this would work?
Wylie: Steve Bannon believes that politics is downstream from culture. They were seeking out companies to build an arsenal of weapons to fight a culture war.
Updated
Senator Patrick Leahy is up next. He brings up reports that CA was testing messages like “drain the swamp”, “build the wall”, and “deep state” in 2014, before the Trump campaign ever existed.
Leahy: What did the company learn from these tests?
Wylie: The company learned that there were segments of the populace that were responsive to these messages that weren’t necessarily reflected in other polling.
Leahy: Our laws prohibit non-Americans from working on US campaigns. Did CA follow this law?
Wylie: To my understanding, the legal advice memo on this issue was ignored. Many of the people who were sent to the US to work on campaigns were not privy to the memo and may not have known that they were violating US law.
Kennedy asks if any of the other CA data was obtained legally.
Wylie: The consumer data lists were acquired through contracts?
Kennedy: Did CA hack anyone while you were there?
Wylie: I have seen documents that refer to special operations.
Kennedy: Did CA get info from Wikileaks?
Wylie: Not while he was there.
Kennedy: List all of CA’s clients while you were there.
Wylie: There were PACs and various candidates. A network of PACs that were primarily financed by Robert Mercer, and then several senatorial and congressional campaigns, some issue campaigns, John Bolton’s PAC.
Kennedy: Did it work for Russia while you were there.
Wylie: We did not have a Russian client while I was there.
Kennedy asks for all the sources of data beyond Facebook.
Wylie: Experian, Acxiom, voter rolls. Smaller firms with niche data. Experiments on collecting other social media data like Twitter.
Kennedy: “Put Facebook aside for a moment. The justice department and FBI will get to the bottom of that.”
Senator John Kennedy: Professor Hersh, if what you’re saying is that the American people aren’t persuadable by advertising, I think that’s rubbish. I see kids walking around saying “dilly dilly” and they didn’t get that from nowhere.
Feinstein asks if the Facebook data set could have ended up in Russia. Wylie brings up the connections between Aleksandr Kogan and St Petersburg university. It’s worth noting that Kogan has denied any insinuation that his work with Russian academics.
Wylie: “The only foreign leader that was tested when I was there was Vladimir Putin.” The bulk of the message testing was about Russian expansion.
Wylie says he can’t say there was any connection to IRA, but that there was “a lot of noise”.
Feinstein: Starts with question about “information warfare” campaign by the IRA. What can you tell us about connections between SCL/CA and IRA/Russia?
Wylie: One of my concerns was the level of engagement the company had with Lukoil. CA made presentations and sent documents to Lukoil that made reference to its experience. Alexander Nix emailed me to say that he gave a white paper to the CEO of Lukoil. Research Alex Kogan was also working with a Russian university.
Grassley: If CA had kept the Facebook data and used it during the Trump campaign, what impact would that have on influencing the election.
Hersh: It is hard to move people. It’s easier to mobilize or demobilize than it is to persuade people. There hasn’t been any data released from Facebook to help us know what the answer is. If this had actually been effective, Facebook and CA would know from the data analytics. Repeats his skepticism of the efficacy.
Grassley just established that Wylie did not work for CA while it was working for Trump, which he acknowledged was true.
We’re moving on to questioning. Everyone gets 5 minutes, but I’m not sure if that’s 5 minutes per witness, or total. Grassley goes first.
Jamison: New regulations are likely to harm FB users. They would likely serve to protect FB from new competition.
Jamison says that Europe’s new GDPR regulations are stifling competition and driving small firms out of Europe.
Jamison: Each of Facebook’s steps over the years probably made sense at the time, but taken as a whole, there’s a broader problem.
Jamison: Facebook has pivoted from being a connector of communities to someone that investigates people’s lives and filters their messages.
Now for Jamison who sums up his testimony with three points:
- Using Facebook and other social media data in ways that are not transparent to users is not unusual.
- Facebook has allowed itself to drift from serving users to serving advertisers, which is not a regulatory problem.
- New regulations are more likely to benefit Facebook than to rein it in.
Wylie: "Social platforms are no longer safe for users"
Wylie: My Facebook ban reveals the unchecked power of technology companies, when they can delete my entire digital presence because I spoke out.
“Social platforms are no longer safe for users.”
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Wylie: The work of CA is not comparable to other political marketers, because it used rumor, misinformation, and kompromat.
Wylie: I have seen documents where the firm sought to obtain hacked materials. Some of the subjects were heads of state...
Wylie: Data is being used to algorithmically segregate us. Cambridge Analytica is the canary in the coal mine.
Hersh is casting doubt on whether Cambridge Analytica’s psychographic targeting claims. He says campaigns that attempt to predict race of voters are wrong 25% of the time. If campaigns get race wrong a quarter of the time, how can we expect them to predict psychographic traits like neuroticism?
Hersh: “Every election brings exaggerated claims about the technological feats of campaigns.”
Hersh points out that this occurs both because new technology is an easy story for the media, and because political consulting firms need to market their wares.
Grassley is now swearing in the witnesses. We’re going to start with Eitan Hersh.
The contrast between Grassley and Feinstein’s perspectives on this hearing is stark. Grassley basically said, everyone uses data and microtargeting, but sure, let’s talk about it in general. Feinstein is asking questions about the shadiest aspects of CA’s activities, digging into possible connections to Russia, WikiLeaks, and hackers.
Feinstein: We do not know the extent to which CA worked with hackers to obtain damaging information on opponents... We do not know the extent of CA’s contact with Julian Assange...
Next up is Dianne Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the committee.
While Grassley was going big picture, Feinstein is digging into the details of Cambridge Analytica’s dealings, giving a description of Project Ripon – the campaigning interface the company built – and how they used psychographic profiles to segment voters and craft messages.
Grassley is bringing up other uses of microtargeting and Facebook data, such as the Obama campaign’s use of a Facebook app in 2012.
Grassley: The underlying facts of what happened with CA and the Facebook data haven’t changed much since December 2015, when the Guardian first reported on the data’s use by the Ted Cruz campaign. What’s changed is that CA went to work for Trump, and Trump won.
And we’re off, with an opening statement by Chuck Grassley, the Republican chairman.
Grassley says that he requested Cambridge Analytica to appear at this hearing, but they declined in light of their recent declaration of insolvency.
Eitan Hersh, the political scientist and expert on microtargeting who is also testifying at today’s hearing, just released his written testimony.
The testimony is eight pages long, but here’s the introduction (emphasis mine):
First, I will describe voter targeting practices. Based on the information I have seen from public reports about Cambridge Analytica, it is my opinion that its targeting practices in 2016 ought not to be a major cause for concern in terms of unduly influencing the election outcome. Second, I will explain the gaps in our knowledge about the effects of social media-based targeting. Much more could be learned by impartial researchers to determine the power of targeting tools used in the 2016 election and, more importantly, the landscape of targeting in the coming years. In order for researchers to learn these things, they will need access to data held by Facebook. Third, I will suggest that those interested in the effect of social media platforms on electoral politics should focus not only on the supply of provocative political information from campaigns and firms like Cambridge Analytica, but also on the demand for provocative information from American citizens.
Senators are filing into the hearing, and the witnesses are seated, so we should be getting started soon.
Report: FBI and DOJ investigating Cambridge Analytica
Last night, the New York Times reported that the department of justice and FBI have begun investigating the now-defunct Cambridge Analytica.
According to the Times, investigators have been questioning former CA employees, as well as its banks. Wylie confirmed to the Times that he had been contacted by both the FBI and the DOJ, and was planning to meet with their investigators.
The political consultancy is also facing investigations in the UK.
Opening summary
Welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of Christopher Wylie’s appearance before the Senate judiciary committee.
Wylie is the pink-haired Canadian data scientist whose decision to blow the whistle on the use of Facebook data by Cambridge Analytica set off shock waves that are still reverberating through Westminster, Washington DC, and Silicon Valley. Since Wylie went public with the story of how the personal information of tens of millions of people was harvested from Facebook and used by a political consultant for Donald Trump, Cambridge Analytica has collapsed and Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg was hauled in front of Congress for the first time.
Wylie appeared before the digital, culture, media and sport select committee of Parliament in late March, and he met privately with House Democrats in April. Today’s hearing, titled “Cambridge Analytica and the Future of Data Privacy”, will be his first public appearance before US lawmakers.
Also testifying are Eitan Hersh, a professor of political science and author of Hacking the Electorate, and Mark Jamison, a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and director of the University of Florida’s Public Utility Research Center.
Jamison has written about the fallout from the Cambridge Analytica scandal from a business perspective, noting that while the use of data for political campaigns is normal, Facebook was wrong not to be more transparent with its users:
For markets to perform well, customers should be given complete and understandable information on the nature of the services they are buying, even those that have a zero monetary price as in the case of Facebook. This isn’t happening.
Hersh, whose book studies the use and efficacy of micro-targeting by political campaigns, has called Cambridge Analytica’s claims about psychographic profiling “snake oil”.
“To me, the story is 99% about Facebook and 1% about Cambridge Analytica,” Hersh told the LA Times.
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