Cambridge Analytica Chief Defiant At Parliament Hearing

Alexander Nix, CEO of Cambridge Analytica until his suspension in March, reacted aggressively to accusations from British lawmakers that he and his company abused information pulled from Facebook, or acted unethically. Appearing before Parliament’s media committee, Nix said Cambridge Analytica was a convenient target for those angry about Donald Trump’s victory and the Brexit result. The hearing was British authorities first chance to question Nix since reports that Cambridge Analytica had taken the personal information of tens of millions of Facebook users without their consent. He has also been questioned about a TV report in which he is recorded suggesting methods to entrap a political client’s opponent, like sending an attractive woman to seduce the rival candidate and secretly videotaping the encounter. Nix apologized for that at the hearing, and said he was the victim of an “entrapment sting” by the television network. He said he’d misspoken earlier when he denied possessing the Facebook data, and admitted that Cambridge Analytica did at one point have data on millions of the social media site’s users. But, he claimed, his company didn’t find the information useful and deleted it after a request from Facebook. The lawmakers did not press him about work with the Trump campaign.