Brittany Kaiser | |
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![]() Brittany Kaiser in November 2019 during Web Summit 2019 in Lisbon, Portugal. | |
Born | Brittany Nicole Kaiser 6 November 1987 [1] [2] Houston, Texas, U.S. |
Brittany Nicole Kaiser (born November 6, 1987) [1] [2] 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 [3] of the UK Parliament and to the Mueller investigation. [4] [5]
Kaiser was born in Houston and grew up in Lincoln Park on the North Side of Chicago. [2] [6] Her father worked in real estate development and her mother worked for Enron. [7] She has a sister named Natalie. [8]
Kaiser attended elementary school in Chicago until she moved to attend Phillips Academy Andover in 2005, then went on to study at the University of Edinburgh, the City University of Hong Kong, the University of London’s Birkbeck College, and earned certificates of study at the World Bank Institute and US Institute of Peace. She later obtained her Doctor of Philosophy from Middlesex University. [9] [7] [10] [11]
While she was studying at the University of Edinburgh, Kaiser took time off to work on Barack Obama's media team during his presidential campaign in 2007. She also worked for Amnesty International as a lobbyist appealing for an end to crimes against humanity. [11] [12]
Between February 2015 and January 2018, Kaiser worked full-time for the SCL Group, the parent company of Cambridge Analytica, as director of business development. During her time at Cambridge Analytica, Kaiser worked under senior management, including CEO Alexander Nix. [7] Following the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal, Kaiser fled to Thailand. In 2018, she testified before the digital, culture, media and sport select committee of the UK Parliament that far more than 87 million people may have had their Facebook data harvested by Cambridge Analytica, and discussed privacy issues posed by Facebook. [3] [2] In April 2018, Kaiser started a Facebook campaign appealing for transparency, called #OwnYourData. [12]
Kaiser is one of the subjects of the Netflix documentary The Great Hack , talking about her work with Cambridge Analytica. [10] [13] The documentary provides details about how Cambridge Analytica used data brokers and an online app to accumulate information on tens of millions of Facebook users, gathering data on a massive scale. [14]
Kaiser's memoir, Targeted: The Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower's Inside Story of How Big Data, Trump, and Facebook Broke Democracy and How It Can Happen Again, was published by Harper in October 2019. The book details how companies are illegally using data to influence people’s choices. [15] [16] [17]
In a 2019 interview with the BBC, Kaiser said she wanted Facebook to ban political advertising. [18]
In June 2019, Kaiser was appointed to the advisory board of Phunware, a tech company that collects smartphone location and user data. [19] The company became involved in the Trump 2020 reelection campaign through a $3 million contract awarded by Brad Parscale's American Made Media Consultants. [20] Kaiser resigned from the board.[ citation needed ]
On New Year’s Day 2020, Kaiser began to release internal documents from Cambridge Analytica links to material on elections in Brazil, Kenya and Malaysia. [21]
In an online interview with Philippine media outlet Rappler on July 15, 2020, Kaiser revealed that former Senator Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr, son of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr, had approached Cambridge Analytica with a request to do a "rebranding" of the family's image. [22] She described the efforts of the Marcos family to rebrand their family image as an example of historical revisionism in a data-driven and scientific way. This request was said to have brought up heavy debate among the staff at Cambridge Analytica, but was nevertheless accepted by CEO Alexander Nix, as it was a financial opportunity. Rappler requested a comment from Marcos' spokesperson Vic Rodriguez, who replied on Thursday morning, denying the allegations brought up by Kaiser. Rodriguez branded the report as "patently fake, false, and misleading", saying that his party had never heard of Cambridge Analytica until their data breach scandal. He also accused Rappler of creating a "marketing ploy" to boost support towards the news outlet and stated that Marcos is considering legal options against Rappler for the report. [23]
In July 2020, Kaiser became the campaign manager for the Brock Pierce 2020 presidential campaign. [24]
In an interview with Business Digest Magazine, Kaiser said she wanted people to be able to own their data and receive a dividend or a portion of the multi trillion-dollar industry. [25]
Giving evidence for the House of Commons committee[ which? ] the information commissioner Elizabeth Denham said that Kaiser refused to be interviewed by them regarding their investigation into Cambridge Analytica/Facebook. [26] [ dead link ]
In 2020, Kaiser was the subject of an art installation by Tara Kelton. [27]
Carole Jane Cadwalladr is a British author, investigative journalist and features writer. She is a features writer for The Observer and formerly worked at The Daily Telegraph. Cadwalladr rose to international prominence in 2018 for her role in exposing the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal for which she was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, alongside The New York Times reporters.
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.
Ineitha Lynnette Hardaway and Herneitha Rochelle Hardaway Richardson, known as Diamond and Silk, respectively, were a pair of American conservative political commentators and vloggers. They are known for their support of former U.S. president Donald Trump. Both have served as contributors for conservative news channel Newsmax.
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.
Social media played an important role in shaping the course of events leading up to, during, and after the 2016 United States presidential election. It enabled people to have a greater interaction with the political climate, controversies, and news surrounding the candidates. Unlike traditional news platforms, such as newspapers, radio, and magazines, social media gave people the ability to comment below a candidate's advertisement, news surrounding the candidates, or articles regarding the policy of the candidates. It also allowed people to formulate their own opinions on public forums and sites and allowed for greater interaction among voters. The accessibility of information online enabled more voters to educate themselves on candidates' positions on issues, which in turn enabled them to form unique opinions on candidates and vote on those opinions, ultimately impacting the election's outcome.
Rebekah Mercer is an American heiress, Republican political donor, and director of the Mercer Family Foundation.
Brad Parscale is an American digital consultant and political advisor who served as the senior adviser for data and digital operations for Donald Trump's 2020 presidential campaign. He previously served as the digital media director for Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and as campaign manager for Donald Trump's 2020 presidential campaign from February 2018 to July 2020, being replaced by Bill Stepien. In September 2020, he stepped away from his company and the Trump campaign.
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.
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.
AggregateIQ (AIQ) previously known as SCL Canada is a Canadian political consultancy and technology company, based in Victoria, British Columbia.
Data Propria is a company formed in 2018. It is managed by Cambridge Analytica's former head of product, Matt Oczkowski, and employs at least three other former Cambridge Analytica staffers including Cambridge Analytica's former chief data scientist, David Wilkinson. It reportedly worked on the 2020 Donald Trump presidential campaign.
[We're] doing the president's work for 2020.
Oczkowski acknowledges there will be plenty of "overlap" with Cambridge Analytica. Like that company, Data Propria will focus on behavioral data science, which is essentially the practice of using data to target people with ads and marketing based on, as Oczkowski puts it, people's "motivational behavioral triggers."
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.
Karim Amer is an Egyptian-American film producer and director. He worked on The Square (2013) and The Great Hack (2019); the former was the first Egyptian film to earn an Academy Award nomination and went on to win three Emmy Awards, while the latter got nominated for an Emmy and a BAFTA Award. In 2020, he produced and directed The Vow, an HBO documentary series about the self-improvement group, NXIVM. In 2022, he produced and directed Flight/Risk for Amazon Studios, revolving around whistleblowers at Boeing.
This is a timeline of events related to Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.
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 became Associate Professor of News and Political Communication at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia in 2023. Before this she was an associate researcher at Bard College and taught 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.
Elizabeth Woodward is an American film producer and founder of WILLA. She has produced On The Divide (2021), You Resemble Me (2021), and Another Body (2023).
Kaiser, former business-development director at Cambridge Analytica ... The 31-year-old Texas native
Kaiser first emerged in last year's Cambridge Analytica scandal ... Kaiser — at the time a 30-year-old
Brittany Kaiser, 31