Cambridge Analytica, the election consulting firm allegedly paid by a Nigerian billionaire to skew the 2015 election campaign against President Muhammadu Buhari has been suspended as investigations go on.
A report by Newsweek on Thursday also confirmed the firm worked for Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, the Brexit campaign and dozens of other political clients.
Its method was to harvest private information from more than 50 million Facebook users without their permission.
The magazine stated that In secret recordings, broadcast by Britain’s Channel 4 News on Monday, the firm’s CEO, Alexander Nix, bragged about swaying the 2016 election for President Donald Trump.
It also explained how the firm uses sex workers, bribes and misinformation to help its political clients.
Nix was suspended after the news broke.
The firm’s invasion of privacy of Facebook data was reportedly overseen by ex–White House adviser Steve Bannon.
The Trump deal was funded by billionaire Trump backer Robert Mercer, and Bannon helped the firm “exploit the private social media activity of millions of American users in an attempt to influence their behavior during the 2016 election.”
“Facebook reportedly learned about the data leak back in 2015 but did not suspend the firm from its network or inform users that their data had been harvested until the story was exposed, ” Newsweek reported.
A British whistleblower took the lid off the matter recently, indicting an Israeli espionage firm allegedly used to hack Buhari’s medical records in 2015.
The hacker has denied that, and it is ready to sue the marketing firm, rhe whistleblower, anybody that pin the crime to the IT firm.