Cambridge Analytica Under CBI Radar; Case Booked For Illegally Harvesting 5 Lakh Indians' Facebook Data

The case was registered after the CBI registered a Preliminary Enquiry in July 2018 on the Centre’s recommendation. This after Union Law and Justice and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad told the Rajya Sabha that the probe would be handed over to the central agency.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has registered a case against UK-based Cambridge Analytica and Global Science Research Limited in a case of alleged “illegal harvest” of personal data of 5.62 lakh Indian Facebook users.

“The agency registered the case on January 19 against Cambridge Analytica represented by Alexander Nix and Global Science Research Limited represented by Aleksandr Kogen under the Information Technology Act,” IANS quoted a CBI official as saying.

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The case was registered after the CBI registered a Preliminary Enquiry in July 2018 on the Centre’s recommendation.

The Electronics and Information Technology Ministry had sought details from Facebook and Cambridge Analytica for the alleged violations and its possible misuse by Cambridge Analytica for profiling and influencing elections in India.

The CBI had examined a set of details shared by Cambridge Analytica and Facebook as part of its ongoing probe into alleged data harvesting of Indians from the social media platform.

The investigating agency had sought the data from Cambridge Analytica and Facebook, based in Britain and the US respectively. This was done in order to know the method of data collection by Cambridge Analytica.

The political consulting firm combined data mining, data brokerage and data analysis with strategic communication during the electoral processes to help out their clientele.

Facebook reported that the data of potentially 5.62 lakh Indians users might have been illegally harvested. 

As per IANS reports, it was revealed in the Preliminary Enquiry that an application named "thisisyourdigitallife" was created to seek data of Facebook users. The CBI alleged that as per the platform policy for Facebook, the application was authorised to collect certain specific data of the users for academic and research purposes.

“The application, however, illegally collected additional unauthorised data of the user as well as their friends' network on Facebook," the investigating agency added.

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The Preliminary Enquiry also revealed that data was collected "without the knowledge and the consent" of the application users.

The CBI said that Facebook communicated to the agency that 335 users in India had installed this application. 

The CBI said that the Inquiry Officer contacted 335 application users during the investigation, out of which six responded.

It further said that Facebook had collected written certificates from Global science Research Limited and Cambridge Analytica during 2016-2017, declaring that all such data obtained by them through the app "thisisyourdigitallife" was accounted for and destroyed.

The Cambridge Analytica had earlier faced allegations that it used personal information harvested from 87 million Facebook accounts to help Donald Trump win the 2016 US presidential election.