A TOP official from Cambridge Analytica, the data analytics firm banned by Facebook, has boasted in a British Channel 4 expose that his company has done electioneering work in Malaysia.

Mark Turnbull, managing director of CA Political Global, told a reporter this during a series of undercover videos filmed over the last year.

The Channel 4 News team caught executives at Cambridge Analytica appear to say they could extort politicians, send women to entrap them, and help proliferate propaganda to help their clients.

The sting operation was conducted as part of an ongoing investigation into Cambridge Analytica, a data consulting firm that worked with President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign.

“If you’re collecting data on people and you’re profiling them that gives you more insight that you can use to know how to segment the population to give them messaging about issues that they care about and language, and imagery that they’re likely to engage with, and we use that in America, we use that in Africa, that’s what we do as a company. 

“We’ve done it in Mexico, we’ve done it in Malaysia and now we’re going to Brazil,” Turnbull said, proceeding to mention Australia and China.

The two executives were meeting with a Channel 4 reporter posed as a fixer for a wealthy Sri Lankan family, wanting to know how the company could help get future candidates elected in the country.

Cambridge Analytica and its affiliate, SCL, have denied Channel 4’s accusations that “Cambridge Analytica or any of its affiliates use entrapment, bribes, or so-called ‘honey traps’ for any purpose whatsoever”.

Facebook last week banned the data analytics firm after it failed to delete user data sent to it by a popular psychology test app maker.

Also suspended were the accounts of its parent organisation, Strategic Communication Laboratories, as well as those of University of Cambridge psychologist Aleksandr Kogan and Christopher Wylie, who runs Eunoia Technologies.

In 2015, Kogan was accused of violating Facebook’s platform policies by passing data from an app that was using Facebook login to SCL/Cambridge Analytica.

Kogan’s app, thisisyourdigitallife, offered a personality prediction test, describing itself on Facebook as “a research app used by psychologists” and some 270,000 people downloaded the app, allowing Kogan to access information, such as the city listed on their profile or content they liked.

According to its website, Cambridge Analytica has offices in four major cities in the world and one mysteriously in the Kota Damansara suburb outside Kuala Lumpur. 

The Malaysian Insight visited the address on Sunday and found that it led to a gated and guarded community.

The mystery has deepened as the property owner, who has been living there for four years, said the office does not exist in the address listed on the website.

The Malaysian Insight has contacted SCL’s Southeast Asia head Azrin Zizal and is awaiting a response. Cambridge Analytica is an offshoot of SCL Group, a big data company. 

Apart from Malaysia, the data company has offices in New York, Washington, London and Sao Paulo. 

AFP reported that Cambridge Analytica, the US unit of British behavioural marketing firm SCL, rose to prominence after the pro-Brexit group Leave.EU hired it for data gathering and audience-targeting.

Locally, Cambridge Analytica supported Barisan Nasional in Kedah with a targeted campaign highlighting its school improvements since 2008.

BN won Kedah back from Pakatan Rakyat in the 13th general election with wins in 21 out of 36 state seats and 10 out of the 15 parliamentary seats in the state. – March 20, 2018.