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| Cambridge Analytica suspends CEO Alexander Nix | Cambridge Analytica suspends CEO Alexander Nix |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| Alexander Nix, the CEO of Cambridge Analytica, the firm at the heart of the data-mining scandal, has been suspended. | Alexander Nix, the CEO of Cambridge Analytica, the firm at the heart of the data-mining scandal, has been suspended. |
| Alexander James Ashburner Nix | |
| 42 | |
| Eton, then Manchester University, where he studied history of art | |
| Nix worked as a financial analyst in Mexico and the UK before joining SCL, a strategic communications firm, in 2003. From 2007 he took over the company’s elections division, and claims to have worked on more than 40 campaigns globally. Many of SCL’s projects are secret, so that may be a low estimate. He set up Cambridge Analytica to work in America, with investment from US hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer. He has been both hailed as a visionary – featuring on Wired’s list of “25 Geniuses who are creating the future of business” – and derided as a snake oil salesman. | |
| Cambridge Analytica has come under scrutiny for its role in elections on both sides of the Atlantic, working on Brexit and Donald Trump’s election team. It is a key subject in two inquiries in the UK – by the Electoral Commission, into the firm’s possible role in the EU referendum, and the Information Commissioner’s Office, into data analytics for political purposes – and one in the US, as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Trump-Russia collusion. The Observer revealed this week that the company had harvested millions of Facebook profiles of US voters, in one of the tech giant’s biggest ever data breaches, and used them to build a powerful software program to predict and influence choices at the ballot box. Emma Graham-Harrison | |
| The company said in a statement: “The board of Cambridge Analytica has announced today that it has suspended CEO Alexander Nix with immediate effect, pending a full, independent investigation. | The company said in a statement: “The board of Cambridge Analytica has announced today that it has suspended CEO Alexander Nix with immediate effect, pending a full, independent investigation. |
| “In the view of the board, Mr Nix’s recent comments secretly recorded by Channel 4 and other allegations do not represent the values or operations of the firm and his suspension reflects the seriousness with which we view this violation.” | “In the view of the board, Mr Nix’s recent comments secretly recorded by Channel 4 and other allegations do not represent the values or operations of the firm and his suspension reflects the seriousness with which we view this violation.” |
| Nix was seen leaving Cambridge Analytica’s office in central London at 6.30pm through a fire exit door and did not answer questions as he got into a waiting black Mercedes. | |
| In a series of secret recordings broadcast on Channel 4 News he claimed credit for the election of Donald Trump. | |
| He told an undercover reporter: “We did all the research, all the data, all the analytics, all the targeting, we ran all the digital campaign, the television campaign and our data informed all the strategy.” | |
| Revealing the firm’s system of erasing any digital footprint he said that they used a self-destruct email server. | |
| He added: “No one knows we have it, and secondly we set our... emails with a self-destruct timer ... So you send them and after they’ve been read, two hours later, they disappear. There’s no evidence, there’s no paper trail, there’s nothing.” | |
| He was also recorded explaining how Cambridge Analytica sets up proxy organisations to feed untraceable messages on to social media. And he mocked the investigation of the US’s House intelligence committee, to whom he gave evidence in 2017. In the footage, he claims Republican members asked just three questions. “After five minutes - done.” | |
| He added: “They’re politicians, they’re not technical. They don’t understand how it works,” and claimed that Democrats on the committee were motivated by “sour grapes”. He further boasted that the firm could avoid any US investigation into its foreign clients, saying: “I’m absolutely convinced that they have no jurisdiction ... We’ll say none of your business.” | |
| Nix added that the candidates were never told what is going on, agreeing that they were “puppets” in the hands of their campaign team. | |
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