Massachusetts attorney general Maura Healey on Saturday said her office was launching an investigation into Cambridge Analytica following a New York Times report that said the data firm harvested private information from more than 50 million Facebook profiles for Donald Trump’s campaign.
"Massachusetts residents deserve answers immediately from Facebook and Cambridge Analytica. We are launching an investigation," Healey tweeted along with a link to the Times article.
Facebook suspended Cambridge Analytica on Friday after it was discovered that Cambridge University researcher Aleksandr Kogan built an app to help gather the data for the firm. Kogan told Facebook and app users that he was collecting information for academic purposes. Only 270,000 users gave him permission for their information to be harvested, but Kogan pulled data from more than 50 million users and gave it to Cambridge Analytica, which used the information to influence and wage a "culture war" during the 2016 election.
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., called the suspension "more evidence that the online political advertising market is essentially the Wild West."
"Whether it's allowing Russians to purchase political ads, or extensive micro-targeting based on ill-gotten user data, it's clear that, left unregulated, this market will continue to be prone to deception and lacking in transparency,” he said.
The UK’s Information Commissioner Office also launched an investigation into the matter, according to CNN, saying it had an “ongoing investigation into the use of data analytics for political purposes which was launched to consider how political parties and campaigns, data analytics companies and social media platforms in the UK are using and analysing people's personal information to micro target voters.”