Alexander Nix
Photo: Twitter
Report: Israeli hackers offered Cambridge Analytica information on politicians
According to the Guardian, representatives of an Israeli cyber security firm provided Cambridge Analytica staffers with USB they suspected contained illegally obtained emails and were reportedly instructed to examine the material for incriminating information rival to former Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan.
Israeli hacks have allegedly offered information about two politicians now serving as heads of states to the company Cambridge Analytica,
which worked on US President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign, according to a report in the Guardian earlier this week.
The Guardian cited multiple sources as saying senior directors in the data analytics firm, including its chief executive Alexander Nix, instructed staff to analyze materials from the Israeli hackers on the election campaigns in Nigeria and the Caribbean island of St Kitts and Nevis.
However, two incidents in 2015 led Cambridge Analytica employees to refuse to handle the data, suspecting it might have been obtained illegally, according to the Guardian.
Cambridge Analytica chief executive Alexander Nix (Photo: Twitter)
SCL Elections, Cambridge Analytica’s parent company, has denied obtaining or using hacked or stolen information for any purpose.
Cambridge Analytica is being investigated by Special Counsel Robert Mueller as part of his probe into possible Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election, as well as by four US congressional committees.
Russia has denied meddling in the election, and Trump has said there was no collusion between Moscow and his campaign.
Trump’s campaign hired Cambridge Analytica in June 2016 and paid it more than $6.2 million through last December, according to Federal Election Commission records.
The month after his firm was hired, Nix emailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for help tracking down some 33,000 emails that Clinton supposedly had deleted from her private server, the Daily Beast and The Wall Street Journal reported in October.
US President Donald Trump (Photo: EPA)
Nix wanted to convert the missing and potentially damaging emails into a searchable database for use by the Trump campaign or a pro-Trump political action committee, the Journal reported.
WikiLeaks confirmed to Reuters that it was approached by Nix, but a representative said it turned down his request.
In a more recent development, Cambridge Analytica is now under mounting pressure to explain how it received access and collected personal data on 50 million Facebook users.
This follows allegations by a whistleblower that the British political consultancy firm improperly accessed users’ information to build profiles on American voters that were later used to help elect Trump.
Cambridge Analytica staffers who worked on the 2015 re-election campaign for then-Nigeria president Goodluck Jonathan, told the Guardian that they met with representatives of an Israeli cyber security company in London in early 2015. They were told the meeting was arranged by a senior Cambridge Analytica director, Brittany Kaiser.
Goodluck Jonathan and his rival Muhammadu Buhari (Photo: AP)
According to these staffers, the Israelis gave them a USB stick containing what they believed were personal hacked emails.
"It made everyone feel really uncomfortable," one source told the Guardian. "They wanted people to load it into their email programs."
But the staffers "freaked out," according to another employee. "They wanted to have nothing to do with it," he told the Guardian.
According to these sources, Nix, who was suspended earlier this week, as well as other senior officials in the company, instructed employees to search the emails for incriminating material on Jonathan's opposition, Muhammadu Buhari, who eventually won the elections.
Reuters contributed to this report.
