Facebook and Cambridge Analytica face class action suit for ‘misusing data of more than 71 million people’
The suit claims companies obtained users’ private information from Facebook to develop ‘political propaganda campaigns’ in the UK and the US
British and US lawyers have launched a joint class action suit against Facebook, Cambridge Analytica and two other companies for allegedly misusing the personal data of more than 71 million people.
The lawsuit claims the firms obtained users’ private information from the social media network to develop “political propaganda campaigns” in the UK and the US.
Facebook, it is said, may initially have been misled, but failed to act responsibly to protect the data of 1 million British users and 70.6 million people in America. The data, it is suggested, was first used in the campaign over the Brexit referendum and then in the US during the 2016 presidential election.
As well as Cambridge Analytica, the two firms named in the suit are SCL Group Limited and Global Science Research Limited (GSR).
Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s former campaign chief and White House adviser, led Cambridge Analytica in 2014, when the data was collected and extracted, the legal papers state.
The Cambridge University neuroscientist Aleksandr Kogan, a founding director of GSR, is also named. Cambridge Analytica was set up in 2013 as an offshoot of SCL Group, which offered similar services to businesses and political parties.