The suspended chief executive of political consultancy Cambridge Analytica, Alexander Nix, will appear before a British parliamentary committee, the Culture, Media and Sport Committee said on Wednesday, 28 March, Reuters reported.
Lawmakers in the United States and Europe are demanding to know more about Facebook's privacy practices after whistleblower Chris Wylie said Cambridge Analytica improperly accessed data to target US and British voters.
The session will be Nix's second appearance before the committee and is likely to take place on 17 April, Reuters added.
Cambridge's board of directors suspended Nix on 21 March after he boasted of various unsavoury services to an undercover reporter for Britain's Channel 4 News.
Channel 4 News broadcast clips on 20 March that also show Nix saying his data-mining firm played a major role in securing Donald Trump's victory in the 2016 presidential elections.
Nix said the firm handled "all the data, all the analytics, all the targeting" and said Cambridge used emails with a "self-destruct timer" to make its role more difficult to trace.
"There's no evidence, there's no paper trail, there's nothing," he said.
In a statement, Cambridge's board said Nix's comments "do not represent the values or operations of the firm and his suspension reflects the seriousness with which we view this violation." Cambridge has denied wrongdoing, and Trump's campaign has said it didn't use Cambridge's data.
Aleksandr Kogan, the Cambridge University researcher who developed the app used by Cambridge Analytica to harvest data from millions of Facebook users, claimed today he has been made a scapegoat.
He told BBC he believed all the information he provided was obtained legitimately. He said it was Cambridge Analytica that came to him.
"They approached me. In terms of the usage of Facebook data they wrote the terms of service for the app, they provided the legal advice that this was all appropriate," he said.
Facebook also drew continued criticism for its alleged inaction to protect users' privacy. Yesterday, the chairman of the UK parliamentary media committee, Damian Collins, said his group has repeatedly asked Facebook how it uses data. He said Facebook officials "have been misleading to the committee”. The committee summoned Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify.
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