Watchdog tells Facebook to back off in scandal of 'stolen' data

Britain’s data watchdog today revealed she told Facebook to “back away” from searching a company suspected of hijacking personal details of 50 million users over fears for the “integrity” of vital evidence.

Elizabeth Denham, the Information Commissioner, was racing to get a court warrant to allow her own team to swoop on the offices of Cambridge Analytica in an probe into whether private data was illicitly exploited for political campaigns.

The company has refused to give her officials access to its computers where, according to a whistleblower, files of secret Facebook records were held after they were meant to have been destroyed.

Ms Denham said the watchdog had intervened to ask Facebook to withdraw a team that was searching CA’s offices.

“By Facebook going in at this point we were concerned about the integrity of our investigation,” Ms Denham told BBC Radio 4’s Today.

“We are also looking at Facebook at the same time, so our advice to Facebook was to back away, let us get in there as a regulator and do our work, and they have agreed.”

She said: “We are seeking a warrant so that, as the regulator, we can go in and get to the bottom, search the servers, do a data audit.”

Facebook shares were set to fall for a second day running, with predictions that another £3.5 billion would be wiped off the company’s value.

Ms Denham criticised Facebook which yesterday sent its own team of lawyers and analysts, who were granted access by Cambridge Analytica.

Facebook is under investigation over whether it secured and safeguarded confidential information belonging to its users. It is alleged that the data was harvested from the site by a firm that invited people to take a free personality test, which unlocked their accounts.

The social media company confirmed it had hired forensic auditors from the firm Stroz Friedberg to investigate and determine whether Cambridge Analytical still had the data.

“Auditors from Stroz Friedberg were on site at Cambridge Analytic’s London office this evening,” the company said in a statement late Monday. “At the request of the UK Information Commissioner’s™Office, which has announced it is pursuing a warrant to conduct its own on-site investigation, the Stroz Friedberg auditors stood down.”

Cambridge Analytica is being probed for whether it obtained the data and held onto it, amid fears that such data was used to sway the 2016 Brexit referendum.

MPs voiced fears that the activities of Cambridge Analytica could have swayed the EU referendum. The company pitched for a contract to send “individual” messages to voters on behalf of Leave.EU.

Damian Collins, chair of the Culture Select Committee, which is investigating CA as part of a probe into fake news, said: “We can see that there was intent from bad actors including the Russians to put misinformation out there in the referendum.

“We do not know the extent of it but our inquiry hopes to map it out.”

Nicky Morgan, chair of the Treasury Select Committee, said she was concerned that voter were sent “misleading” messages in private, where they could not be scrutinised.

“There is something very uncomfortable about people thinking they are filling in a fun survey on Facebook and their details being harvested for political campaigning,” she said.

“I think it moves away from the spirit of campaigning in this country.”

She said she had heard of some voters being bombarded with messages that claimed Turkey was about to join the EU, opening the gates to a wave of migrants. “It clearly was not true but they just kept repeating and repeating it. I would suspect that was the sort of thing that was turned into targeted messages sent to Leave voters.”

Britain’s Channel 4 used an undercover investigation to record Cambridge Analytica’s chief executive, Alexander Nix, saying that the company could use unorthodox methods to wage successful political campaigns for clients.

He said the company could “send some girls” around to a rival candidate’s house, suggesting that girls from Ukraine are beautiful and effective in this role.

He also said the company could “offer a large amount of money” to a rival candidate and have the whole exchange recorded so it could be posted on the internet to show that the candidate was corrupt.

Nix told BBC his company was being unfairly targeted: “We see this as a coordinated attack by the media that’s been going on for very, very many months in order to damage the company that had some involvement with the election of Donald Trump.”

He later denied his comments reflected reality and he was “humouring” the reporter out of politeness.

MI5 and MI6 may be called in to assist investigations if needed, a Cabinet minister told MPs in the Commons yesterday.

Culture Secretary Matt Hancock replied “yes” when asked by MP Ben Bradshaw if the security and intelligence services would be co-operating following allegations about Cambridge Analytica played a role in the referendum.

Mr Hancock said today: “I would urge Cambridge Analytica to open up their doors and co-operate fully with the ICO investigation.”