Liberals tried pilot project with Facebook data whistleblower in 2016: source
OTTAWA — The Canadian data scientist who admitted to helping political parties score electoral wins by exploiting the private information of millions of Facebook users also oversaw a short-lived pilot project for the federal Liberals shortly after the 2015 election, The Canadian Press has learned.
Christopher Wylie came forward in recent days with accusations that a voter-profiling company improperly harvested Facebook data from some 50 million users in order to help seal victories for the Trump campaign and in the U.K.’s Brexit referendum.
Wylie has insisted in interviews that he not only played a pivotal role in developing the data-mining technique, he also helped establish Cambridge Analytica, the firm at the heart of the controversy that was first revealed by The Guardian newspaper and the New York Times.
In January 2016, months before U.S. President Donald Trump’s win, Wylie pitched his services to the Liberal caucus research office, said a Liberal parliamentary source, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss details of a private meeting.