| Type | Data mining, data analysis, data brokerage |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Victoria, British Columbia, Canada |
| Website | aggregateiq |
AggregateIQ (AIQ) previously known as SCL Canada is a Canadian political consultancy and technology company, based in Victoria, British Columbia. [1]
AIQ was founded in 2013 by Zack Massingham, a former university administrator and Jeff Silvester. [2] As of February 2017, AIQ employed 20 people and was based in downtown Victoria, British Columbia. [3]
AIQ has attracted controversy over its involvement in the Vote Leave and BeLeave campaigns in 2016 and the Cambridge Analytica scandal that broke out in 2018.
Two years after the Brexit vote in 2016, it was revealed that AggregateIQ had been paid £3.5 million by four pro-Brexit campaigning groups - Vote Leave, BeLeave, Veterans for Britain, and Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party - to design software aimed at aggregating personal data and influencing voters through messaging on social media. [4] Under UK law, co-ordination between groups during an election is prohibited. [1] In May 2018, a Facebook executive testified before the House of Commons Select Committee for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport that Vote Leave and BeLeave were targeting exactly the same audiences on Facebook via AIQ. [5]
Prior to the Brexit campaign, AIQ had worked with John Bolton before he became Donald Trump's national security adviser, and with US senators Thom Tillis and Ted Cruz on their senatorial campaigns. [4] As part of Cambridge Analytica's work for the Cruz campaign, AIQ created Ripon, a customized campaign software platform that became the prototype used by pro-Brexit campaign groups, including VoteLeave and BeLeave. [1]
On 6 April 2018, Facebook suspended AggregateIQ from its platform due to concerns over its possible affiliation with SCL Group, the parent company of Cambridge Analytica. [6] [4] [7] [8] Facebook stated, "In light of recent reports that AggregateIQ may be affiliated with SCL and may, as a result, have improperly received FB user data, we have added them to the list of entities we have suspended from our platform while we investigate." [4]
On 20 September 2018, AggregateIQ became the first company to be served a formal notice by the UK's Information Commissioner's Office for breaching the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation. The company has launched an appeal against the notice. [9]
AIQ has also been reprimanded by the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and the Privacy Commissioner of British Columbia, who stated in a report issued in November 2019 that the company had violated privacy laws in its handling of British voters' data during the Vote Leave campaign. The report noted, “When the company used and disclosed the personal information of Vote Leave supporters to Facebook... it went beyond the purposes for which Vote Leave had consent to use that information.” [10]
Robert Leroy Mercer is an American hedge fund manager, computer scientist, and political donor. Mercer was an early artificial intelligence researcher and developer and is the former co-CEO of the hedge fund company Renaissance Technologies.
Social media analytics is the process of gathering and analyzing data from social networks. It is commonly used by marketers to track online conversations about products and companies. One author defined it as "the art and science of extracting valuable hidden insights from vast amounts of semi-structured and unstructured social media data to enable informed and insightful decision making."
SCL Group was a private British behavioural research and strategic communication company that came to prominence through the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal involving its subsidiaries Cambridge Analytica and Crow Business Solutions MENA. It was founded in 1990 by Nigel Oakes, who served as its CEO. The company described itself as a "global election management agency". The company's leaders and owners had close ties to the Conservative Party, the British royal family, British military, United States Department of Defense and NATO and its investors included some of the largest donors to the Conservative Party.
Cambridge Analytica Ltd (CA), previously known as SCL USA, was a British political consulting firm that came to prominence through the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal. It was started in 2013, as a subsidiary of the private intelligence company and self-described "global election management agency" SCL Group by long-time SCL executives Nigel Oakes, Alexander Nix and Alexander Oakes, with Nix as CEO. The well-connected founders had contact with, among others, the British Conservative Party, royal family, and military. The firm maintained offices in London, New York City, and Washington, D.C. The company closed operations in 2018 in the course of the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal, although firms related to both Cambridge Analytica and its parent firm SCL still exist.
Elizabeth Denham CBE, LL. D. (hon.) was the UK Information Commissioner at the Information Commissioner's Office in Cheshire from July 2016, taking over the role from Christopher Graham, until November 2021. Denham previously held the title of Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia, having been appointed to that role in May 2010. Prior to this she had been the Assistant Privacy Commissioner of Canada from 2007.
Russian interference in the 2016 Brexit referendum is a debated subject and remains unproven, though multiple sources argue evidence exists demonstrating that the Russian government attempted to influence British public opinion in favour of leaving the European Union. Investigations into this subject have been undertaken by the UK Electoral Commission, the UK Parliament's Culture Select Committee and Intelligence and Security Committee, and the United States Senate. "The Russia Report" published by the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament in July 2020 did not specifically address the Brexit campaign, but it concluded that Russian interference in UK politics is commonplace. It also found substantial evidence that there had been interference in the 2014 Scottish independence referendum.
Alexander James Ashburner Nix is a British businessman, the former CEO of Cambridge Analytica and a former director of the Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL) Group, a behavioural research and strategic communications consultancy, leading its elections division. Cambridge Analytica and its parent SCL were involved in psychological warfare operations for the British military and involved in influencing hundreds of elections globally; Cambridge Analytica helped Leave.EU with its Brexit campaign, according to both Leave.EU and Cambridge Analytica staff. The company was also engaged by the Ted Cruz and Donald Trump campaigns during the 2016 US presidential election. The company also ran Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta's campaign.
Christopher Wylie is a Canadian data consultant. He is noted as the whistleblower who released a cache of documents to The Guardian he obtained while he worked at Cambridge Analytica. This prompted the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal, which triggered multiple government investigations and raised wider concerns about privacy, the unchecked power of Big Tech, and Western democracy's vulnerability to disinformation. Wylie was included in Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People of 2018. He appeared in the 2019 documentary The Great Hack. He is the head of insight and emerging technologies at H&M.
Nigel John Oakes is a British businessman, and the founder and CEO of Behavioural Dynamics Institute and SCL Group, the parent company of Cambridge Analytica and her sister AggregateIQ ; the companies became known to a wider audience as a result of the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal involving the misuse of data. From the early 1990s Oakes' companies, operating under succession of names, were involved in influencing elections in developing countries, and with the onset of the War on Terror they were also contracted by the British military. Oakes first became known as the boyfriend of Lady Helen Windsor in the 1980s.
In the 2010s, personal data belonging to millions of Facebook users was collected without their consent by British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, predominantly to be used for political advertising.
BeLeave was a campaign group which campaigned for the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union in the 2016 EU referendum. The group was set up to focus on younger voters.
Faculty AI is a British technology company based in London, UK. It provides software, consulting, and services related to artificial intelligence. The company was founded in 2014, as a fellowship programme for PhD graduates. Some of its governmental and political work has attracted conflict of interest concerns.
Several allegations of unlawful campaigning in the 2016 EU referendum have been made. Some allegations were dismissed by the investigating bodies, but in other cases wrongdoing was established, leading to the imposition of penalties. Sanctions have included the levying of the maximum fine possible on Facebook for breaches of data privacy.
Alexandra Lesley Phillips is a British journalist and former politician. She served as a Brexit Party Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the South East England constituency from 2019 to 2020. She was the second candidate on the party's list for the constituency after party leader Nigel Farage. Phillips was previously head of media at the UK Independence Party (UKIP), which she left in September 2016. She was a GB News presenter between June 2021 and September 2022. In February 2023, Phillips joined Reform UK.
The Great Hack is a 2019 documentary film about the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal, produced and directed by Jehane Noujaim and Karim Amer, both previous documentary Academy Award nominees. The film's music was composed by Emmy-nominated film composer Gil Talmi. The Great Hack premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival in the Documentary Premieres section and was released by Netflix on July 24, 2019.
Brittany Nicole Kaiser is the former business development director for Cambridge Analytica, which collapsed after details of its misuse of Facebook data became public. Cambridge Analytica potentially impacted voting in the UK Brexit referendum and the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Kaiser testified about her involvement in the work of Cambridge Analytica before a select committee of the UK Parliament and to the Mueller investigation.
Emerdata Limited is a political consulting company based in London, formed in 2017 after filing for insolvency of Cambridge Analytica. Emerdata is accused by privacy advocates as its rebranded form and is headed by several of its executives.
Thomas Borwick is an SEO strategist, CEO and right-wing digital influencer. He has undertaken work for Vote Leave and the Conservative Party.
Alexander Waddington Oakes is a British businessman, and the co-founder and an executive of Behavioural Dynamics Institute and SCL Group, the parent company of Cambridge Analytica and her sister AggregateIQ; the companies became known to a wider audience as a result of the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal involving the misuse of data. From the early 1990s Oakes' companies, operating under succession of names, were involved in influencing elections in developing countries, and with the onset of the War on Terror they were also contracted by the British military.
Emma L. Briant is a British scholar and academic researcher on media, contemporary propaganda, surveillance and information warfare who was involved in exposing the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal concerning data misuse and disinformation. She is an associate researcher at Bard College and teaches in the School of Communication at American University. Briant became an honorary associate in Cambridge University Center for Financial Reporting & Accountability, headed by Alan Jagolinzer, and joined Central European University, as a Fellow in the Center for Media, Data and Society in 2022.
