SOURCE: INDIAN EXPRESS
India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has registered a case against British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica for “illegal harvesting of personal data from Facebook users in India” for commercial purpose.
The premier investigating agency listed both Cambridge Analytica and the Global Science Research Ltd (GSRL), as accused in its registered report under various sections of the Information Technology Act and also accused them of criminal conspiracy under the Indian Penal Code.
Based on a complaint from Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), the CBI had registered a preliminary enquiry against Cambridge Analytica in July, 2018.
According to the CBI, its enquiry revealed that Dr Aleksandr Kogan, founder and director of GSRL, UK, had created an App “thisisyourdigitallife”. As per the platform policy of Facebook, the app was authorised to collect certain specific data of the users for academic and research purposes. The app, however, illegally collected additional unauthorised data of the user as well as of their friend’s network on Facebook.
The case was referred to CBI by the government after a series of media reports suggested Cambridge Analytica and GSRL had illegally harvested Facebook users data in India.
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