Cambridge Analytica: search of London HQ delayed by wait for warrant

The information commissioner will have to wait until at least Friday to enter the offices of Cambridge Analytica after a high court judge adjourned the hearing into her application for a warrant.

The commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, announced on Monday that she planned to request an urgent warrant to enter the company’s London offices, after it was revealed that it had been given information from 50m Facebook profiles without users’ permission.

According to a whistleblower, Cambridge Analytica used the data to build a system that could profile individual US voters, in order to target them with personalised political advertisements.

Denham told Channel 4 News that the company had failed to comply with her request for information, and that she wanted to access files and servers as part of an ongoing investigation into the use of personal data in political campaigns.

A team of investigators who had already been sent into the building by Facebook were stood down, after the commissioner raised concerns that they could compromise her investigation.

The information commissioner’s office (ICO) began the application process on Tuesday, but on Thursday it disclosed that it still did not have a warrant. In a statement on its website, it said: “A high court judge has adjourned the ICO’s application for a warrant relating to Cambridge Analytica until Friday.

“The ICO will be in court to continue to pursue the warrant to obtain access to data and information to take forward our investigation.”

The regulator refused to give any more information about the delay.

On Thursday, the digital, culture, media and sport committee recalled Alexander Nix, ordering the Cambridge Analytica chief executive to give further testimony to the parliamentary inquiry into fake news.

“Following material published in the UK Guardian, the New York Times and Channel 4 over the past few days, the committee would like to request that you supply further evidence,” the DCMS committee chair, Damian Collins, wrote.

“There are a number of inconsistencies in your evidence to us,” Collins added, “notably your denial that your company received data from the Global Science Research company. We are also interested in asking you again about your claim that you ‘do not work with Facebook data, and … do not have Facebook data’.”

Collins warned Nix that “giving false statements to a select committee is a very serious matter” and urged him to “explain” his comments.

The London offices of Cambridge Analytica were evacuated for two hours on Thursday after reports of a suspicious package. Those based at the New Oxford Street headquarters were told to leave the offices and roads around it were closed.

Police said they were called at 1.26pm GMT on Thursday 22 March to reports of a suspicious package. They said that the building was evacuated as a precaution and that no one was injured.

On Tuesday, crates were seen being removed from the central London office that Cambridge Analytica shares with other tenants. No one on the scene would comment on the origin of the crates, and the ICO said it was not involved in their removal.

At the same time, Cambridge Analytica said it had offered to let the ICO attend its office voluntarily, “subject to our agreeing the scope of the inspection”.

The culture secretary, Matt Hancock, has hinted that the government will consider further strengthening the information commission’s powers to investigate the misuse of personal data.

Hancock was responding to a Commons question from Labour’s Liam Byrne, who said it was “ludicrous that it has taken so long for her to get a search warrant for Cambridge Analytica’s offices, and it is ludicrous that people frustrating her investigations do not face jail for that frustration”.

Hancock began by criticising Byrne for his “abrasive tone” and said “the data protection bill currently before parliament is all about strengthening this enforcement”. But he added: “If following evidence from this investigation we need to further strengthen those powers, then I am willing to consider that.”

He also repeated previous responses by the government that there were no current contracts between government and the Cambridge Analytica group.

Hancock later said “the system is not good enough” when asked if he was happy with the Cambridge Analytica stand off. He hinted that he would grant Denham additional powers by introducing amendments to the data protection bill that would give her additional powers “to go in faster” once an investigation had begun and that the commissioner should be able to force individuals to give testimony.

At present the information commissioner’s powers only extend to companies, which means that former employees of Cambridge Analytica can avoid answering questions if they have quit a company under investigation for privacy breaches.