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Palantir Technologies is a public American software company that specializes in big data analytics. Headquartered in Denver, Colorado, it was founded by Peter Thiel, Nathan Gettings, Joe Lonsdale, Stephen Cohen, and Alex Karp in 2003. The company's name is derived from The Lord of the Rings where the magical palantíri were "seeing-stones," described as indestructible balls of crystal used for communication and to see events in other parts of the world.
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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. SCL began targeting elections in developing countries in the early 1990s, and has engaged in psychological warfare in military contexts as a contractor for the American and British militaries during the Afghanistan War and the Iraq War. In 2013 it established the subsidiary Cambridge Analytica that worked on the Ted Cruz and Donald Trump campaigns during the 2016 US presidential election and even now the proclaimed associated office in Cairo that opened during the global pandemic of COVID-19. In 2020 it was linked to the Bahraini company named Crow Trading ltd. that was founded by Dr. Mohamed Y. Abdelrahman, an Egyptian scientist in behavioral psychology. It performed data mining and data analysis on its audience. Based on results, communications would then be specifically targeted to key audience groups to modify behaviour in accordance with the goal of SCL's client. The company described itself as a "global election management agency". The company's leaders and owners had close ties to the Conservative Party (UK), the British royal family and the British military, and its investors included some of the largest donors to the Conservative Party.
Cambridge Analytica Ltd (CA) 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 company had close ties to the Conservative Party (UK), the British royal family and the British military. The firm maintained offices in London, New York City, and Washington, DC. 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.
Russian interference in the 2016 Brexit referendum remains unproven but there are multiple sources saying that evidence exists to show that Russia attempted to persuade the British public to leave the European Union. While an investigation is being 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, with an attempt to obtain a vote in favour of the split.
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Christopher Wylie is a Canadian data consultant who previously worked at Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm led by Alexander Nix.
Aleksandr Kogan, who has also briefly used the name Dr Spectre, is a Moldovan-born American data scientist, who is known for having developed the app that allowed Cambridge Analytica to collect personal details of 80 million Facebook users. He worked as a research associate at the University of Cambridge.
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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.
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Emerdata Limited is a political consulting company based in London, formed in 2017 after filing for insolvency of Cambridge Analytica. Former employees of Cambridge Analytica and SCL moved to successor firms, these companies dissolved with acquisition by holding company Emerdata Limited. The company now appears to be largely owned by Rebekah Mercer and Jennifer Mercer according to Cambridge Analytica's bankruptcy filing in New York. Cambridge Analytica was before partially owned by their family, including their father Robert Mercer, a computer scientist who made contributions to brown clustering. In July 2018 the Emerdata director was Jacquelyn James-Varga. The Federal Trade Commission of the United States has imposed to sue Cambridge Analytica after misusing data scraped from 87 million unwitting social media users. The company was soon acquired by Emerdata Limited after the news on misappropriation of digital assets was publicized.
Facebook, Inc. is an American multinational technology company based in Menlo Park, California. It was founded in 2004 as TheFacebook by Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes, roommates and students at Harvard College. The namesake social networking service eventually became Facebook, amassing 2.9 billion monthly users by 2021. The company acquired Instagram in 2012, then WhatsApp and Oculus in 2014. It is one of the world's most valuable companies and is considered one of the Big Five companies in U.S. information technology, alongside Google, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon. The company generates substantially all of its revenue by selling advertisement placements to marketers.
Julian David Wheatland is a British businessman and Conservative Party (UK) politician known for his involvement with the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal. He was chairman of SCL Group, a self-described "behavioral research and strategic communication company" and was the last CEO of Cambridge Analytica, having previously been its COO and CFO, Wheatland took over as CEO in April 2018, in order to wind it down and place the company into bankruptcy. He was also CEO of Hatton International, a technology and finance advisory business. He was featured in the Netflix documentary The Great Hack. Wheatland was mentioned in Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons as an example of ties between Cambridge Analytica and the Conservative Party (UK); he is a former chairman of the Oxford West and Abingdon Conservative Association Wheatland was also a director of related firms following the downfall of Cambridge Analytica, including a director of Emerdata, the parent company of Cambridge Analytica prior to its collapse. The Times reported in 2020 that Wheatland was returning to the city as chief executive of Cornerstone FS Plc which acquired FXPress Payment Services Ltd, a foreign exchange and payment services company, in September 2020.
References
- ↑ O'Sullivan, Donie. "Internal documents Facebook has fought to keep private obtained by UK Parliament". CNN.
- ↑ "Facebook Says Cambridge Analytica Harvested Data of Up to 87 Million Users".
- ↑ Cadwalladr, Carole (24 November 2018). "Parliament seizes cache of Facebook internal papers". the Guardian.