Former Cambridge Analytica boss admits getting Facebook data from researcher Aleksandr Kogan

Former Cambridge Analytica boss admits getting Facebook data from researcher Aleksandr Kogan

Cambridge Analytica scandal is getting murkier by the minute. Earlier this week, reports suggesting that a Cambridge Analytica director Brittany Kaiser reportedly met Wikileaks founder Julian Assange back in February last year to discuss what had happened during the US election. As per a Guardian report, Kaiser also claimed to have channeled cryptocurrency-based payments to Wikileaks. And now reports suggest that the company's former boss, Alexander Nix, has taken a U-turn from his previous testimony by admitting that the firm did receive Facebook data from the researcher at the centre of the scandal.

Nix was being interrogated by the Digital, Culture, Media and Sports (DCMS) Committee of the UK Parliament for second time in the year when he admitted to having received Facebook users' personal information that was harvested from an app created by Cambridge University Professor Aleksandr Kogan. "Of course, the answer to this question should have been 'yes,'" Nix told the parliamentarians.

Nix, in his testimony to the UK Parliament back in February, had said denied collecting personal information about Facebook users without their consent through the app designed by Kogan.

Interestingly, Nix, during his testimony denied receiving information of all 87 million Facebook users. He said while Kogan harvested the data from 87m Facebook users, Cambridge Analytica only received data on about 20 million people based in the US.

"What Dr Kogan made amply clear is that while he collected data from 87m people Cambridge Analytica only received data on about 20m people in the USA. The only person to receive the entire dataset, which I believe Dr Kogan said was 96 per cent more data than that which Cambridge Analytica received, was Christopher Wylie," he told the parliament adding, "I also stand by my evidence that we do not work on Facebook data and we do not have Facebook data. That data was given by GSR, and subsequently deleted at Facebook's request," The Guardian reported.

During the course of the hearing, the British lawmakers also focused on the role of Cambridge Analytica in the Brexit. However, Nix denied the firm's involvement in the referendum. "I'm sorry if members of this committee are unhappy with the results of the [Brexit] referendum. You can't make sweeping assumptions about our involvement in the campaign," he told the committee.