Everything we need to know about AggregateIQ, a Canadian tech association with ties to Brexit and Ted Cruz

Whistleblower Christopher Wylie had some oppressive words for his former employer Cambridge Analytica before a British parliamentary cabinet on Tuesday — delivered alongside new accusations about a practices of a tiny Canadian association called AggregateIQ.

The Victoria-based organisation has been related to an purported intrigue to sidestep Brexit debate spending limits in sequence to change a outcome of a vote. But Wylie’s testimony, taken together with papers performed by CBC News, exhibit a most wider operation of domestic work for clients opposite a origination — during times, involving methods that Wylie pronounced don’t lay good with him.

Who or what is AggregateIQ?

Two Canadians, Jeff Silvester and Zack Massingham, co-founded AggregateIQ (AIQ) in 2013.

The association says it is in a business of online promotion and program development. Mostly it creates digital collection for domestic campaigns. Of course, lots of companies could tumble underneath that outline — yet it’s a methods that AggregateIQ is purported to have used, and a high-profile clients a association has worked with, that creates it no run-of-the-mill domestic consultancy.

What’s a tie with Cambridge Analytica?

According to Wylie, AggregateIQ was set adult to do work for a association called SCL, a primogenitor association of Cambridge Analytica. Wylie pitched Silvester on relocating to London to work for SCL, but Silvester wanted to stay in Victoria. And thus AggregateIQ was born.

From 2013 by 2016, a association did work for SCL — though, Silvester says, not for Cambridge Analytica.

Wylie says SCL described AggregateIQ as a Canadian office, but Silvester disputes that characterization.

What about all that Facebook user information that was common with Cambridge Analytica?

Wylie told British Parliament on Monday that AIQ grown program that relied on algorithms Cambridge Analytica had grown using a 50 million user profiles harvested in 2014 — and afterwards used those algorithms for its clients’ political campaigns to tailor a ads people saw.

However, it’s not transparent that AIQ ever had approach entrance to a tender Facebook information itself. AggregateIQ posted a matter to a website on Mar 21, saying “AggregateIQ has never managed, nor did we ever have entrance to, any Facebook information or database allegedly performed improperly by Cambridge Analytica.”

In a Mar 24 refurbish to a website, this partial of a matter was removed.

Cambridge Analytica, for a part, told Reuters it had not common any of a Facebook form information with AggregateIQ.

Then what arrange of information did AggregateIQ have entrance to?

The company’s initial agreement with SCL was in 2013, for domestic work in Trinidad and Tobago with a country’s Congress of a People party.

AIQ’s pursuit was to emanate a basic attribute government system, or CRM, that would concede a celebration to conduct and promulgate with a supporters. As partial of a job, AIQ was tasked with harvesting browsing history, amicable media data and IP addresses that could be related to home addresses or census information — in short, behavioural information that would “contribute to a growth of psychographic profiling in a region,” a duplicate of a agreement with SCL reads.

For this they got paid $200,000 US, and it laid a grounds for AIQ’s subsequent large plan with SCL: a origination of a Ripon platform.

What’s Ripon?

Named after a city in Wisconsin where a Republican celebration was founded, Wylie has described Ripon as a program that integrated Cambridge Analytica’s psychographic algorithms with online promotion platforms for domestic campaigns.

In other words, it’s what let domestic groups aim users with ads that were tailored to their sold celebrity traits.

Work on Ripon began in 2014, building on a efforts in Trinidad and Tobago. A agreement between AIQ and SCL for $575,000 Cdn obtained by CBC News outlines a origination of a complement to assistance domestic campaigns prepare canvassing activities, magnitude a opening of volunteers, and an endless overdo government complement for all from robocalls and emails to targeted ads online. 

What did they use it for?

We know that Ripon was used for Ted Cruz’s 2016 presidential campaign, and for Greg Abbott’s successful 2014 bid to spin administrator of Texas. AIQ-developed apps for both campaigns can still be found in a Apple and Google app stores. Although there is some debate as to either a program indeed worked as promised, zero about it was bootleg on a face.

That doesn’t sound too unusual. Why is this association in prohibited water?

For that, we spin to Brexit — maybe a top form debate to engage AIQ. We know that a association helped campaigns on a Leave side of a EU referendum — quite Vote Leave and BeLeave — aim U.K. electorate with promotion on amicable media. But there are allegations that a dual campaigns worked together to sidestep debate spending rules in an bid to lean a outcome of a vote, and used AIQ to do it.

Wylie says that Vote Leave and BeLeave — nonetheless they confirmed they were separate, and had their possess apart spending caps — indeed co-ordinated to spend more than legally authorised on promotion services from AIQ. Co-ordinating campaigns are ostensible to share a singular spending cap. Whether a association was in on a purported intrigue is not clear.

In his testimony before Parliament, Wylie pronounced he believes it is “reasonable” to interpretation that financial “cheating” in a Brexit opinion might have altered a outcome.

Is that a misfortune of it?

There is another debate that Wylie discussed on Tuesday — one that Cambridge Analytica was formulation for Nigeria’s arriving presidential choosing around a time he left a organisation in 2014.

Wylie told British Parliament that AggregateIQ was given “incredibly melancholy and aroused video content” by Cambridge Analytica to discharge online as partial of a political advertising debate in support of a incumbent then-President Goodluck Jonathan.

“They were given videos from Cambridge Analytica that showed people being burnt alive, that showed people being, we know, macheted to death,” Wylie told CBC News, echoing his testimony. “And for AIQ to afterwards take a shortcoming of distributing those videos in places that would dominate electorate in Nigeria, for example, we cruise that says a lot about a lengths that a association is peaceful to go to do what their clients want.

“This is a association that unequivocally doesn’t cruise a ethics of a actions,” he said.

So what is AggregateIQ doing now?

It appears that AIQ is now operative on a 2019 Ukrainian choosing campaign. At a commencement of a year it published an app on both a Apple and Google app stores called Osnova — a Ukrainian domestic celebration — regulating a same developer criticism behind a Ted Cruz and Greg Abbott apps. The app appears to demeanour and duty likewise as well.

Chris Vickery, executive of cyber-risk investigate during a confidence organisation UpGuard, analyzed a repository of formula that AggregateIQ left unprotected online. He says a app communicates with a web domain osnova.aggregateiq.com.

An on Monday Gizmodo published a research of a repository, and found that a association also once pitched an app to Breitbart News.

Will a association face any consequences?

This stays to be seen. The association is being investigated by a both a U.K.’s Electoral Commission and a U.K. information commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, for a purpose in a EU referendum.

“AggregateIQ has not been generally associated with a investigation,” Denham told a Guardian. “We are holding serve stairs in that matter.”

British Columbia’s Information and Privacy Commissioner is also questioning a company.

“We are endangered that people’s personal information is being used for functions that they’re not wakeful of, but their consent,” behaving commissioner Drew McArthur told CBC News final week.

What does AggregateIQ have to contend about all this?

The association didn’t respond to a ask for criticism on Tuesday. But it has pronounced formerly that “AggregateIQ works in full correspondence within all authorised and regulatory mandate in all jurisdictions where it operates” and “has never intentionally been concerned in any bootleg activity.”

Silvester pronounced a association is “co-operating fully” with a B.C.’s information and remoteness commissioner’s investigation, and, in a apart matter to a Times Colonist, pronounced they are co-operating with a U.K. information commissioner as well.

​If we have a tip, we can hit this contributor firmly regulating Signal or WhatsApp at +1 416 316 4872, or around email during matthew.braga@cbc.ca. For quite supportive messages or documents, consider regulating Secure Drop, an anonymous, trusted complement for pity encrypted information with CBC News.

Article source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/aggregateiq-brexit-ted-cruz-aiq-scl-cambridge-analytica-1.4596292?cmp=rss