Cambridge Analytica, a London-based data firm that sold its services to political campaigns, has been thrust into the spotlight this week thanks to a number of startling exposés. Undercover footage, along with testimony and evidence provided by a former employee-turned-whistleblower, offered a glimpse of the company’s shadowy dealings around the world. It secretly harvested the data of tens of millions of Facebook users and may have engaged in all sorts of offline skulduggery, including bribes and sexual blackmail, to help clients win elections.
Much of the American media has focused on Cambridge Analytica’s connections to the Trump campaign and prominent figures in the American far right, including father-and-daughter financiers Robert Mercer and Rebekah Mercer and ultranationalist gadfly Steve Bannon.