Aleksandr Kogan, the data scientist who harvested private information from more than 50 million Facebook users for the data-analysis firm Cambridge Analytica, said in an email to colleagues that he would be "more than happy" to testify before Congress about the project, CNN reports.
According to a New York Times report, 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 help Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and wage a "culture war" during the 2016 election.
"It's been honestly a surreal week," Kogan, who works for Cambridge University, wrote to his colleagues, "I've been asked quite seriously by reporters from the NY Times and the Guardian if I am a Russian spy. I really tried to explain that one seems just silly. If I am Russian spy, I am the world's dumbest spy."
"I've also seriously been asked if the FBI has reached out, if the two congressional committees in the United States have reached out, and if Parliament or any authorities in the [United Kingdom] U.K. have reached out," he added. "No one has — I suspect they realize I'm actually not a spy. Though if anyone does, I'd be more than happy to testify and speak candidly about the project."
In the email, Kogan said he initially used the app for academic purposes, then later updated its terms on Facebook to reflect the change in the terms and conditions. Facebook disputes that. Kogan also said he provided "predicted personality scores" on 30 million Americans to SCL, Cambridge Analytica’s parent company, but that the predictions were not useful for target advertising.
"[W]e found out that the predictions we gave SCL were 6 times more likely to get all 5 of a person's personality traits wrong as it was to get them all correct," he wrote.
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