It seems BJP’s allegations against Congress turns out to be true. Cambridge Analytica (CA) whistleblower Christopher Wylie revealed that the controversial data analytics firm “worked extensively” in India.
Wylie also named that Congress as its client while testifying before the UK Parliament on Tuesday.
Wylie on Tuesday appeared in the House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sports Committee and confirmed that the UK-based CA has offices and employees in India and offered to hand over relevant “documentation” to the Parliamentary committee investigating the matter.
“They (Cambridge Analytica) worked extensively in India. They have an office in India… I believe their client was Congress but I know that they have done all kinds of projects. I don’t remember a national project but I know regionally. India’s so big that one state can be as big as Britain. But they do have offices there, they do have staff,” Wylie told lawmakers under oath.
Wylie, a data analytics expert and formerly an employee at Cambridge Analytica, has alleged that the political consultancy firm used personal information harvested from more than 50 million Facebook users to influence elections.
Wylie claims the data was sold to CA, which then used it to psychologically profile people and deliver material in favour of Donald Trump during the 2016 US presidential elections. He also criticised CA for running campaigns in “struggling democracies”, which he called “an example of what modern-day colonialism looks like”.
“You have a wealthy company from a developed nation going into an economy or democracy that’s still struggling to get its feet on the ground – and taking advantage of that to profit from that,” he told MPs.
Also, Personal data protection expert Paul-Olivier Dehaye, deposed before the committee, revealed that an Indian billionaire paid SCL Group, CA’s parent company, to ensure that Congress lost the elections.
However, Congress has strongly refuted using the services of CA, rather accused the ruling BJP of hiring the firm to orchestrate its poll campaigns in several states in 2010 and during the Lok Sabha election in 2014. BJP countered the allegations and said the firm in question was founded in 2013 and could not have worked with either party in 2010.
Senior BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad had earlier alleged that the Congress party committed data theft and manipulated data to win elections, a charge the Congress refuted as “fake news”.