Cambridge Analytica, the intelligence firm now under fire for secretly harvesting the personal data of 50 million Facebook users, is facing another public relations nightmare.
On Monday, Britain’s Channel 4 published a 19-minute video showing Cambridge chief Alexander Nix bragging about using bribes and sex workers to entrap politicians on behalf of his clients.
“Deep digging is interesting but you know equally effective can be to just go out speak to the incumbents and to offer them a deal that’s too good to be true and make sure that that’s video-recorded,” Nix told a Channel 4 mole posing as a Sri Lankan businessman. “These sorts of tactics are very effective, instantly having video evidence of corruption, putting it on the Internet, these sorts of things”
Nix elaborated further: “We’ll have a wealthy developer come in, somebody posing as a wealthy developer. They will offer a large amount of money to the candidate to finance his campaign in exchange for land, for instance. We’ll have the whole thing recorded on cameras. We’ll blank out the face of our guy and then post it on the Internet.”
When the Channel 4 mole pressed, Nix said that the company could also “send some girls around the candidate’s house,” to serve as sexual entrapment, but assured the potential client that the women would not be local Sri Lankans and suggested that Ukrainian worked very well for this sort of activity,
“I am just giving you examples of what can be done and what has been done,” said Nix.
The final publication of the footage ends a brief but furious standoff by Cambridge to block release from Channel 4, according to the Financial Times. In a statement the company furiously denied any wrongdoing saying the footage had been selectively edited.
“The report is edited and scripted to grossly misrepresent the nature of those conversations and how the company conducts its business,” said the company. “The undercover reporter later attempted to entrap Cambridge Analytica executives by initiating a conversation about unethical practices. After several meetings discussing ostensibly legitimate projects, the reporter unexpectedly and suddenly turned the conversation towards practices such as corruption and the entrapment of political figures.