Two hours of questioning by MPs of Aleksandr Kogan, the Cambridge University psychologist at the heart of the Cambridge Analytica/Facebook data breach scandal, revealed an academic downplaying his part in the affair, unafraid to criticise the companies he once worked with, and willing to argue that the personal information he obtained was of little value in winning elections. He made a number of key contentions in his testimony:
1. Facebook is unfairly trying to portray him as a ‘rogue agent’
The academic said the company had shared aggregate user data with him before he built his infamous survey that scooped up information on 87m people in 2014. At that time, Facebook’s gateway allowed third parties like him “to gather data on users and their friends” and that “it wasn’t a trick, it was a core feature of the system”.
Kogan observed that Facebook had not complained about his former business partner Joseph Chancellor, who now works for the US giant. He said Facebook was “trying to manage the crisis” and that “it’s convenient to point the finger at a single entity and try to paint the picture this is a rogue agent”. Kogan said he had deleted the data and models derived from the data, and had signed a non-disclosure agreement with Facebook, which he refused to discuss with MPs.
2. Alexander Nix, Cambridge Analytica’s suspended chief executive officer, had ‘fabricated’ evidence to parliament
The academic said he was introduced to Cambridge Analytica via developer, later whistleblower, Christopher Wylie in 2014, before developing the app to obtain user data for the company. The committee chair, Damian Collins, said that Nix had denied obtaining data from Kogan’s company Global Science Research. “That’s a fabrication,” Kogan replied twice. Kogan said his company was paid £230,000 to harvest data and built a model, but after expenses on developers and lawyers was left only with £8,000 in the bank, having put £9,000 in.
3. The Russian affiliations were ‘loose’
Kogan said he had a “loose affiliation” with the University of St Petersburg, where he knew some researchers and “they put my name” on an application for a grant to research into cyberbullying. The academic, who was born in Moldova and speaks Russian, said that he could “barely read” in the language and while “they might have sent me some academic papers, I didn’t read it”. He said he was not concerned that the Russian government funded the research, arguing that when it came to “governments that are most high-profile” such as the US, the UK and Russia, that he was “dubious about the moral scruples of their activities”.
4. Whatever Cambridge Analytica did with the data, it could not have had any real political impact
Kogan stressed that he believed despite the scale of data he collected, it was not very useful. He said: “If the goal is micro-targeting, using Facebook ads makes no sense”, and added: “If you want to do a project where you micro-target people using Facebook ads, you use the Facebook ad platform” to reach people via the social media site’s own service. Kogan said he knew his data was used in Ted Cruz’s election campaign, but said: “I think it would be unlikely” it was used in the Trump campaign, even though Collins told him that Cambridge Analytica had said they had used data from the Trump campaign.
5. Kogan’s decision to rename himself Dr Spectre had nothing to with James Bond villains and the choice was an ‘unfortunate coincidence’
He said he chose a new surname when he married in 2015, taking the name from a surgeon treating his father. Ian Lucas asked him whether he knew there was Bond connection. “I did not know that,” a subdued Kogan replied.
