Christopher Wylie

Chris Wylie
Christopher Wylie at Chatham House in 2018
Wylie at Chatham House in 2018
Born (1989-06-19) 19 June 1989
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
Education London School of Economics (LLB)
George Washington University (MA)

Christopher Wylie (born 19 June 1989) is a Canadian man who was previously the director of research at Cambridge Analytica. In 2018, he became a whistleblower in the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal.[1]

In 2018, Wylie became a whistleblower, giving The Guardian documents that described the secret workings behind Cambridge Analytica.[2] The documents center around Cambridge Analytica's alleged unauthorized possession of personal private data from some 87 million Facebook user accounts,[3] obtained for the purpose of creating targeted political campaigns for the 2016 US presidential elections. These campaigns were based on psychological and personality profiles mined from the Facebook data.

On March 27, 2018, Wylie gave evidence to the UK's Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee which contained further revelations about the practices at Cambridge Analytica and its associated companies.[4]

Wylie's revelations triggered government investigations on both sides of the Atlantic and pushed long-simmering privacy concerns.[5][6]

Life

Wylie was born to parents Kevin Wylie and Joan Carruthers,[1] who were both physicians. He was raised in Victoria, British Columbia.[1] As a child he was diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD.[2]

He left school at 16 without a qualification and when asked about his "probable destiny" on his school leavers yearbook page he stated "just another dissociative smear merchant peddling backroom hackery in its purest Machiavellian form"[7]. At 17, he was working for the Canadian opposition leader Michael Ignatieff. He taught himself to code at age 19. At 20, he began studying law at the London School of Economics.

In 2013, he was introduced to SCL Group which would later create Cambridge Analytica. In 2014, Wylie co-founded Eunoia Technologies[7][8] along with Tadas Jucikas[8]. Eunoia pitched ad microtargeting and psychographic modeling services to fashion, corporate and political clients [9], including Corey Lewandowski, a Republican political operative of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign[10]. Although the startup was unsuccessful in finding long-term clients, the Canadian Liberal Research Bureau awarded a "$100,000 contract in 2016 to Christopher Wylie"[11], for the purposes of a "short-lived pilot project"[11]. Eunoia Technologies has been criticized for the similar psychographic profiling tactics used by Cambridge Analytica[7][8], using the same dataset shared by Alexander Kogan[7][8][12][13]. In describing his ambitions for developing Eunoia, Wylie stated, "I want to build the NSA’s wet dream" [8]. Eunoia formally dissolved in December 2016.

Personal life

Wylie is self-described as gay[14] and vegan.[15]

In an interview with The Guardian, Wylie stated that Rebekah Mercer "loved the gays, and so did Steve Bannon. He figured if you could get the gays on board, everyone else will follow...(like the) Milo Yiannopoulos thing".[16]

References

  1. 1 2 3 Larsen, Karin (20 March 2018). "Who is Christopher Wylie? How a B.C. high school dropout set out on path to political data harvesting". CBC News. Retrieved 21 March 2018.
  2. 1 2 "Christopher Wylie: The whistleblower in the Cambridge Analytica scandal". Sources: Reuters, NYTimes, The Guardian, Washington Post. Straits Times. 21 March 2018.
  3. ↑ Schroepfer, Mike (4 April 2018). "An Update on Our Plans to Restrict Data Access on Facebook".
  4. ↑ Kharpal, Arjun (27 March 2018). "Facebook and Cambridge Analytica whistleblower: Donald Trump's election made me speak out".
  5. ↑ washingtonpost.com March 21, 2018: How Cambridge Analytica’s whistleblower became Facebook’s unlikely foe
  6. ↑ see also politico.com 20 March 2018: Congress to Facebook: Send us Zuckerberg
  7. 1 2 3 4 "Business plan hatched by Christopher Wylie sheds light on whistle-blower's ambitions, anxieties about Big Data". Retrieved 2018-09-30.
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 "Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower Said He Wanted To Create "NSA's Wet Dream"". BuzzFeed News. Retrieved 2018-09-30.
  9. ↑ "The Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower Wanted His New Company To Work With Trump Campaign's Manager". BuzzFeed News. Retrieved 2018-09-30.
  10. ↑ "The Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower Wanted His New Company To Work With Trump Campaign's Manager". BuzzFeed News. Retrieved 2018-09-30.
  11. 1 2 "Liberals' $100,000 contract with Christopher Wylie one of several interactions between party, researcher". Retrieved 2018-09-30.
  12. ↑ "Here are all the questions Mark Zuckerberg couldn't answer during this week's Congressional hearings". nordic.businessinsider.com. Retrieved 2018-09-30.
  13. ↑ Lee, Dave (2018-03-17). "Facebook suspends Trump campaign data firm". BBC News. Retrieved 2018-09-30.
  14. ↑ Jackman, Josh (20 March 2018). "Gay Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie: Why does Facebook want to see my dick pics?". Pink News. Retrieved 21 March 2018.
  15. ↑ Cadwalladr, Carole (18 March 2018). "'I made Steve Bannon's psychological warfare tool': meet the data war whistleblower". The Guardian. Retrieved 21 March 2018.
  16. ↑ Signorile, Michelangelo (20 March 2018). "It Matters That A Gay Man Helped Trump Backers Exploit Facebook Data". HuffPost. Retrieved 22 March 2018.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.