CENTRO DE ENSEÑANZA TÉCNICA Y SUPERIOR

Project #1 Essay
Engineering Topics
Francisco Xavier Bastidas Moreno
M030646
 Mexicali, B.C., November 16th 2021.

Data mining: Cambridge Analytica scandal

This essay will address a widely known data scandal that was headed by the most social
media platform at its time; Facebook and an affiliated company called Cambridge Analytica, this
case will be taken into consideration due to its relevance and transcendence on data mining
related activities. I will reflect on how a bad practice with data handling systems can directly and
indirectly affect not only the ones involved in the misuse of data but also how this damages
affect stakeholders, users, employees and any person related to the company, I will also identify
where the lines were crossed on the ethical use of the user’s data and how can we as industrial
engineers (IE’s) can impact data integrity by translating and implementing tools used in industry
to this emerging process.

Data mining most adequate description is “The process of uncovering patterns and other
valuable information from large data sets” (IBM,2021), in this time of age in which the digital
world is handling the vast majority of our data this practice is rapidly increasing and new
platforms in which information would be captured are being created constantly.

The implications of third-party companies having access to our data must become a
common concern to all of us, usually we accept terms and agreements of every new platform just
to get into it, ignoring all the rights you are giving to use the content we create. Typically, we
think that no one would be interested in the private messages or interactions we have on a simple
social media platform but every move we make in these platforms is being tracked and people
whose interest may help can use it in an unethical or manipulative manner, a clear example will
be the one discussed below.

Facebook allows you to connect and share digital media with family and friends, it is the
world's largest social network, with more than 1 billion users worldwide, with this number of
users the amount of content uploaded to the platform is colossal, and as every post, photo,
message, etc. has data it is suitable for information extraction.
 Cambridge Analytica was a British political consulting firm which combined data
mining, data brokerage, and data analysis with strategic communication during the electoral
processes, the relationship between these two was born in 2015 when they partner to create a
personality test in which users were paid to answer some question regarding themselves that
threw a personality type depending on their answers, as inoffensive as it might sound many of
these test have the intention of gathering not only the information from your answers but also the
information on your profile.

For this particular case when you accepted to take the test it asked your for permission to
access to some information as a requirement to continues as it was discuss earlier these types of
agreements are usually overlooked and accepted without carefully reading what are we giving
permission for. This test took your answers, your profile information, your friend list and every
content you might have uploaded to the platform and created a psychological profile. This profile
was used with political interests to target certain types of personalities from people who haven’t
made their mind regarding electoral choices for political positions.

"We exploited Facebook to harvest millions of people's profiles. And built models to
exploit what we knew about them and target their inner demons." Christopher Wylie ex-
Cambridge Analytica employee

The company designed targeted ads and posts to persuade people to vote for the
candidate that was financing them and others to make the other candidate look as a bad or
incompetent one, merely by exposing flaws or emphasizing negative posts in their timeline all of
these portrayed as a regular feed so people believed this narrative and didn’t suspect it. This
method was used in 44 US political races and several other campaigns around the globe.

It took three years to punish this unethical practice which didn’t only affected Cambridge
Analytica which was severely punished and forcefully shut down but it also damaged
facebook’s reputation from top to bottom, Mark Zuckerberg integrity was spotlighted and
investigations arose around their data integrity activities, the share price closed down nearly 7
percent on March 19, the next day of trading after the scandal , and Facebook’s market value fell
by more than $36 billion (Rodriguez 2020) with many investors parting ways with the company
as they didn’t want to be related with them to keep their own partnerships at peace, however not
every company was safe as many of them were proven guilty of using this service in their favor
creating partnership losses and being portrayed as an untrustworthy organization.

It is crucial to emphasize the weight that our information can have in our daily life and
how we must be careful with whom we share it with, we have to reflect that individuals make
actions fueled by personal interests and we must be skeptical about why would someone wants
us to grant access to our personal data, if they could make people change opinions about
something as big as who is representing their country for the next presidential period how many
other beliefs or opinions might be molded for their interests.

The biggest action that must be taken falls into the companies lap, whereas users
accepted to grant access to their data companies are in no right to misuse this information even-
though they try to cover up saying that they ask for permission to access to it, here is where
engineering practices can surely help create trust between customers and companies.

In the past case the line of trust and permission of accessing to information was breached,
Cambridge excuse turned around a slanted point of view of saying that they were never
prohibited to use this information, this can be easily formalized by applying a widely used
strategy in the engineering world; standards, this will prevent many interest-based actions as
companies must follow some practices to be trusted.

Thankfully there is already a data integrity certification accredited by no other than the
most influential standard organization ISO, this certification is ISO/IEC 27001 the assurance,
confidentiality and integrity of data and information as well as the systems that process it and
other interested parties that interact with the information (ISO, 2021).

The adoption of this informations security management system will make organizations
trustworthy by ensuring stakeholders and customers that their information is safe. This is
achieved by defining different standards, the first step is a security policy in which every way in
which informational could or would be used is approached with clarity to avoid ambiguity, this
document is used as a manual in which every measure is considered such as asset management,
access control, encryption between other important topics that will assure companies that their
information is only being used for the agreed terms between both parties.

Besides the ethical implications that a data breach such as the one of cambridge analytica,
information is a significant component on every organization competitive strategy where a small
batch of data can give insights to competitors to steal an idea or strategy that in one time was the
company’s unique value proposition.

Engineers as pioneers on data mining must consider data integrity from the beginning of
the projects in IE’s case on the define phase of a DMAIC project management tool where
defining cyber security must bee on top of the priorities.

On a value stream map suspected leaks of data must be detected as threats and adequately
approached, a kaizen methodology will also be key due to the rapid increase in technology brings
different strategies to breach the already complex security systems of a company.

Encryption will be a usual practice in every site of the company as the succeed in
cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, etherum and cardano keep increasing their value and are
gaining their ground in the financial world.
References

Alvin Chang(2018) The Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal, explained with a
simple diagram retrieved from:
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/23/17151916/facebook-cambridge-analytica-
trump-diagram

Devjyot Ghoshal(2018) Mapped: The breathtaking global reach of Cambridge Analytica’s

IBM Cloud Education (2021) Data mining retrieved from:

ISO(2021) ISO/IEC 27001 INFORMATION SECURITY MANAGEMENT

Kevin Granville(2018) Facebook and Cambridge Analytica: What You Need to Know as
Fallout Widens Retrieved for
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/19/technology/facebook-cambridge-analytica-explained.html

Nada es privado (2018) Netflix Directed by Karim Amer, Jehane Noujaim Retrieved from
https://www.netflix.com/watch/80117542?
trackId=13752289&tctx=0%2C0%2C6cecee6e817a407b4f4c530f5e849192679e0e71%3A33ae6
3b1dd8a3ac037efb03cda811d8a9318ac93%2C%2C

Rodriguez, S. (2020) Here are the scandals and other incidents that have sent
Facebook’s share price tanking in 2018 https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/20/facebooks-
scandals-in-2018-effect-on-stock.html