Jolly good —

Cambridge Analytica’s London offices raided by British investigators

CEO: "Data had been obtained in line with Facebook’s terms of service."

The offices of Cambridge Analytica in central London. Facebook expressed outrage over the misuse of its data as Cambridge Analytica, the British firm at the center of a major scandal rocking the social media giant, suspended its chief executive.
Enlarge / The offices of Cambridge Analytica in central London. Facebook expressed outrage over the misuse of its data as Cambridge Analytica, the British firm at the center of a major scandal rocking the social media giant, suspended its chief executive.
Brais G. Rouco/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

British enforcement officers have entered the London headquarters of Cambridge Analytica, according to The Guardian and the BBC.

The raid appears to have come after Wednesday's formal approval for a search warrant by a local judge.

"We are pleased with the decision of the Judge, and the warrant is now being executed," said an unnamed spokesperson for the Information Commissioner’s Office, the United Kingdom’s data privacy watchdog, in a Friday statement. "This is just one part of a larger investigation into the use of personal data and analytics for political purposes. As you will expect, we will now need to collect, assess and consider the evidence before coming to any conclusions."

It has now been a week since it became known that the British data analytics contractor, which worked with Donald Trump's presidential campaign, retained private data from 50 million Facebook users despite claiming to have deleted it. The scandal has spawned numerous lawsuits, and it has put significant pressure on Cambridge Analytica and Facebook.

Thus far, Cambridge Analytica and its affiliate companies have claimed that they did nothing wrong.

The company’s acting CEO, Alexander Tayler, wrote in a Friday statement that he was "sorry that in 2014 SCL Elections (an affiliate of Cambridge Analytica) licensed Facebook data and derivatives from a research company (GSR) that had not received consent from most respondents. The company believed that the data had been obtained in line with Facebook’s terms of service and data protection laws."

He continued, noting that "we did not use any GSR data in the work we did in the 2016 US presidential election."

Tayler dismissed the revelations brought by a former employee, Christopher Wylie, who kicked off this entire saga.

"The recent media frenzy has been distressing," the CEO wrote. "The source of allegations against the company is not a whistleblower or a founder of the company. Christopher Wylie was a part-time contractor who left in July 2014 and has no direct knowledge of our work or practices since that date. He was at the company for less than a year, after which he was made the subject of restraining undertakings to prevent his misuse of the company's intellectual property while attempting to set up his own rival firm."

Cambridge Analytica did not immediately respond to Ars' request for comment.

Channel Ars Technica