Cambridge Analytica ran voter suppression campaigns, whistleblower claims

Source: CNN

Washington (CNN)The whistleblower whose disclosures about Cambridge Analytica shook the tech world over questions about users' data privacy told Congress on Wednesday that the company engaged in efforts to discourage or suppress voting.

Christopher Wylie, a former Cambridge Analytica employee who blew the whistle on its alleged misuse of Facebook data, told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the company offered services to discourage voting from targeted sections of the American population.

"Mr. Bannon sees cultural warfare as the means to create enduring change in American politics. It was for this reason Mr. Bannon engaged SCL (Cambridge Analytica's parent company), a foreign military contractor, to build an arsenal of informational weapons he could deploy on the American population," Wylie claimed, referring to Trump's former top political adviser Steve Bannon.

Wylie did not provide specific evidence of voter suppression campaigns taking place in the US. But when asked by Sen. Chris Coons, D-Delaware, if one of Bannon's "goals was to suppress voting or discourage certain individuals in the US from voting," Wylie replied, "That was my understanding, yes."

<more>

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/16/politics/cambridge-analytica-congress-wylie/index.html