Facebook-Cambridge Analytica Data Scandal: An Ethical Analysis

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Table of Contents
Executive Summary...............................................................................................................................2
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................2
Background............................................................................................................................................2
Doing Ethics Technique.........................................................................................................................3
What’s going on?...............................................................................................................................3
What are the facts?...........................................................................................................................3
What are the issues?.........................................................................................................................3
Who is affected?................................................................................................................................4
What are the ethical issues and implications?...................................................................................4
What can be done about it?..............................................................................................................5
What are the options?.......................................................................................................................5
Which option is best - and why?........................................................................................................6
ACS Code of Ethics:................................................................................................................................6
Public Interest Primacy:.....................................................................................................................6
Quality Life Enhancement:................................................................................................................6
The policy of Honesty:.......................................................................................................................6
Competence:.....................................................................................................................................7
Professional Development:................................................................................................................7
Professionalism:................................................................................................................................7
Conclusion:............................................................................................................................................8
Reference:.............................................................................................................................................9

Executive Summary
There are many cases dependent on the data activities like data analysis errors, data mining,
data breach and data scandals happen these days due to the advancement in the technologies.
In 2018, a case of data scandal happened in between Facebook and Cambridge Analytica.
Cambridge Analytica is political interest company that is working on the data mining, data
brokerage and other activities to enhance the knowledge of the public in voting while the
election was in the process. Cambridge Analytica stole the data from the user’s profile of
Facebook and used it for their own purpose. To analyse the situation of this case, in this
report, two case study methods based on the ethics is revealed which explains how the
company has worked and what it should do instead of what it has done. The first method is
the Doing Ethics Technique which will involve the points of the case study and judge the
company on that basis while another method is ACS Code of Ethics, in this method the code
of ethics like professionalism, Competence, Honesty etc. are analysed and on that basis,
company is judged. Both of the technique is analysed on this case study and in the conclusion
part, the recommendation of the best technique is explained.
Introduction
There are too many cases happening nowadays in the world where data scandal, data fraud,
data breach and data theft is the most common cases that take place these days. This report
will explain about the same case of Cambridge Analytica and Facebook. Cambridge
Analytica was working as a political consultation company that was specifically recognized
for the election process. In this way, the company had the right to work on data mining, data
analysis, data brokerage and other similar processes.
Here two methods of analysing the case is explained in this report where the first method is
the Doing Ethics Technique in which the main concentration of the ICT professional was to
discover the case scenario, the facts, the issues and the possible solution while another
technique is the ACS code of Ethics technique in which the morals and codes are used to
judge the case study of any case. Both the methods are used for the Cambridge Analytica
case and explained accordingly in this report.
Background
Cambridge Analytica collected millions of user’s private information and data for their own
purposes. Cambridge Analytica was collecting and using the data of 87 million people who
were actually got affected by this scandal not only the people but also Facebook lost its
reputation and trust of the customer in this data scandal. Cambridge Analytica a political
interest and consultation company launched to influence the knowledge and voting intentions
of the public. Cambridge Analytica started a process of quiz in which people have to go
through a quiz and they can attend that quiz only by logging in through Facebook. By
allowing Cambridge Analytica to their Facebook profile, people were allowing Cambridge
Analytica to see their personal information and their connected friend’s personal information.

An estimation of about 270k people attended this quiz and personal information got access
for about 87 million people’s Facebook account and see their personal information which is
almost a quarter of the population of USA(Cadwalladr 2018).
Doing Ethics Technique
What’s going on?
The Cambridge Analytica – Facebook data scandal was a huge political scandal that took
place in 2018. It came into the vision that without any use of political purpose, Cambridge
Analytica collected millions of user’s private information and data for their self-purposes.
Cambridge Analytica was a company that was established to influence the voting intentions
into the people that are connected to Facebook for the election process. In order to do that,
Cambridge Analytica started a process of quiz in which people have to go through a quiz and
they can attend that quiz only by logging in through Facebook. By allowing Cambridge
Analytica to their Facebook profile, people were allowing Cambridge Analytica to see their
personal information and their connected friend’s personal information. An estimation of
about 270k people attended this quiz and personal information got access for about 87 million
people’s Facebook account and see their personal information(Campos 2019).
What are the facts?
Cambridge Analytica was a political consultation company which was specially established
for the election process. In this way, the company had the right to work on data mining, data
analysis, data brokerage and other similar processes. Although the company had rights to do
these processes with public data still they had a limit of not using this data for another
purpose other than elections. But apparently, this company did the thing what it was limited
for. Cambridge Analytica used and collected the data of millions of users in the US who were
attempting an election quiz. Cambridge Analytica collected the personal information while
they could just check out the information on public data. on the 23rd march of 2018, British
High Court pursued a warrant to check out the offices of Cambridge Analytica in London.
Personal information of 87 million people was collected by Cambridge Analytica from
attempted quiz about 270k.
What are the issues?
 People casually giving access to their accounts including their personal information.
 Assurance of the company which is getting access to the personal information of the
public.
 Knowing the reason for the existence of the company.
 Information about any internal organisations of the company?
 Sources and resources of the company.
 Value of the company.
 How it has been created, recognized and enhanced.
 The structure of the organisation for better trust.
 Other intention of organisation, its goals, aims and object.
 Relationship of the particular organisation with other companies.

 Security policies of the organisation.
 Boundaries and limitation of the company.
 Risk of personal information.
 Significance of the information on networking websites.
 Believing the company as it is working for a real political benefit or not.
Who is affected?
By this data scandal happened in 2018, about 87 million people get affected. People were
showing off their personal information to an unknown company unintentionally. 270,000
people have attended this quiz of Trump’s presidential campaign. Although the intentions of
this campaign were to encourage the intentions of voting into public for maximum votes it
turned into this data scandal where Cambridge Analytica was collecting and using the data of
87 million people who were actually got affected by this scandal. Not only the people but
also Facebook lost its reputation and trust of the customer in this data scandal. Mark
Zuckerberg stated that he is responsible for not securing their services from this kind of data
scandal also apologized for it. All three parties are somehow affected by this data scandal.
People lost their personal information to a fraud company which can use this data for their
purpose. The company which lost any more partnership and opportunity to work for
government duties. And last Facebook who lost a trustworthy environment between public
out there and them.
What are the ethical issues and implications?
Assurance of the company which is getting access to the personal information of public:
Cambridge Analytica is an organisation that was established for the election work and to
enhance or influence the voting intentions into the public for maximum voting engaged in
favour of Donald Trump. But the company was using somehow the personal information of
people from their Facebook profile which was a large scandal of data wherein the front of
Presidential campaign, this company was using this data for either purpose. This scandal not
only broke the ethical agreement with the company but also took an illegal action against
many external stakeholders working.
Boundaries and limitation of the company:
Since the company was created under the Trump’s Presidential Campaign, it was supposed to
do the ethical and limited work that is under the limitation agreement and ethical agreement.
As it was only working for ethical work. The company was supposed to do that work but
crossing its boundaries, some of the employees or the whole company worked on another
project that led to a large data scandal (Al-Saggaf 2017).
What can be done about it?
As this was a large data scandal of 2018 and happened due to only some casual activities in
the company by the sponsors as well, here is a list of some solutions or resolutions that can be
implemented before or after for this scandal to prevent such cases.

 Brainstorming with the people and employees of the company.
 A general meeting with the company to get a hint about their working procedure.
 Tracking of data activities in the company.
 Data mining of the company’s collected data.
 Issues that are rising in the process and in what way the company is handling it.
 A necessary condition of being professional is being ethical.
 People are free to choose any option, but they have to beware about every consequence.
 Following Ethics is basically the decisions and choices.
What are the options?
Possible options for this data scandal between Facebook and Cambridge Analytica are listed
as below:
S.No. Possible Options Benefits Detriments
1 Keeping track of the
activities of the
organisation.
 The track will let
the sponsor know
the activities.
 Major issues in
progress
 Method of
verification that
the company is
using.
 Illegal activities
of the company
may not be
tracked if they
sponsor aware of
it.
2 Brainstorming with
company authorities
 The basic idea of
company
workings.
 The way of
conducting the
quiz.
 Meetings give a
hint on ideas of
the other person’s
actions.
The company might
try to cancel the
meetings if they have
other aims.
3 Data mining and data
analysis
Data mining will
show the data the
company have.
Data analysis will
work to identify
legitimate data.
Company may hide
data in case they find
out the data they
have is illegal.
Which option is best - and why?
Data Mining and Data analysis process are the best that can be engaged for such activities to
identify the actions and data that the company is using. Cambridge Analytica was created for
the voting appeal but after getting the government approval for this political consultation,

people working for this company changed their aims and objectives in the case to generate
more profit from the company. Data mining is the process where the collected data analysed
to its depth and find out the legitimacy of the data wherein data analysis process the whole
collecte4d data is analysed and found out the data that is important and necessary and other
data can be removed (Vaughn 2015).
ACS Code of Ethics:
Public Interest Primacy:
“You will place the interests of the public above those of personal, business or
sectional interests.”
According to this code of Ethics, it is explained that the Cambridge Analytica, being
professional, should have worked for the people out there primarily. Cambridge
Analytica shouldn’t have worked for their benefit. As the company was created to
influence the public knowledge, It should have to work for that only, not the other
terms like using public data from their Facebook profile for their own purpose or
benefit only. This code puts the public benefits and supply on priority.
Quality Life Enhancement:
“You will strive to enhance the quality of life of those affected by your work.”
An organisation should work to produce better quality than quantity. Quantity might
give more customers to engage with it but not satisfied customers that are engaged
with the company. Cambridge Analytica worked for the public interest and adopted a
quiz process but its main focus was into collecting the data once they get access to the
Facebook profile of other people. This is how the company collected all the data that
was mentioned in the profile of the users that attended the quiz. Organisation didn’t
focus on the quality of the quiz.
The policy of Honesty:
“You will be honest in your representation of skills, knowledge, services and
products.”
Cambridge Analytica was created considering some agreements about the knowledge,
service and purpose of the organisation aims. It should have worked for the same by
not changing the actual purpose of engaging people just to enhance their vigilance
about the voting and election but the organisation, Cambridge Analytica broke that
honesty policy and worked otherwise.
Competence:
“You will work competently and diligently for your stakeholders.”

This rule of ACS code of ethics states that Cambridge Analytica should have worked
considering both the internal and external stakeholders of the company so that they
can work competing with other organisation and providing best consultation regarding
the elections to the people against the rivals. But forgetting this ACS code or
principle, the company worked otherwise, considering that this is the company which
will work only to provide benefits to the public for elections only. To get other
importance, the company collected data of public for future use only.
Professional Development:
“You will enhance your own professional development, and that of your colleagues
and staff.”
As a professional company, Cambridge Analytica should have worked to increase the
development related to development so that the professional growth of the
organisation can be elaborated through their work. Also, it consists that the
organisation Cambridge Analytica will continuingly upgrade the skills and knowledge
of the company to produce a better product at last. Also, Cambridge Analytica will
find out the issues that are hampering the company’s quality and profession and
provide encouragements to colleagues and employees to maintain an ethical
environment.
Professionalism:
“You will enhance the integrity of the ACS and the respect of its members for each
other.
An organisation is considered under this ACS code to improve the basic knowledge of
professionalism and provide quality work to the people and work accordingly.
Following ethics is a sign of professionalism. Ethics is basically related to the choices
that one choose when they have. But choosing the right choice according to the time
and understanding its consequences is the most important thing while following the
ethics. Also, Cambridge Analytica will take actions against any person who is
involved in activities against the main aims and objectives of the company. Company
is created to create pride in their work and won’t promote professionalism (Leicester
2016).

Conclusion:
This report is generated to find out the case study of the case happened in 2018 and which
states that the company Cambridge Analytica a political interest and consultation company
launched to influence the knowledge and voting intentions of the public. To follow this aim
the company although conducted a quiz for the verification, the company asked the attendees
to give access to their Facebook profile and view their data. Hence, by changing its aims, the
company broke the ethical agreement with Facebook and stole 87 million of data of public.
To start a study on the ethics and working, in this study two methods of analysing the case
are represented. The first method is the Doing Ethics Technique which involves the explained
points and judges the company on that basis while another method is ACS Code of Ethics, in
this method the code of ethics like professionalism, Competence, Honesty etc. are analysed
and on that basis, company is judged.
Here the best suitable method is Doing Ethics Technique which clearly explains the main
case of Cambridge Analytica. It explains the case scenario, includes the fact-finding, the
affected people, ethical issues and possible action that can be taken to prevents such
circumstances. This methodology is recommended in this report for this Facebook-
Cambridge Analytica case study.

Reference:
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views of ICT professionals’, Australasian Journal of Information Systems, vol. 21.
Cadwalladr, C & Graham-Harrison, E 2018, ‘The Cambridge analytica files’, The
Guardian, vol. 21, pp. 6-7.
Campos, M 2019, ‘Cambridge Analytica, Microtargeting, and Power:“A Full-Service
Propaganda Machine” in the Information Age’, TRAIL SIX, p. 24.
Chaykowski, K 2018, ‘Mark Zuckerberg Addresses 'Breach Of Trust' In Facebook User Data
Crisis’, viewed 2 May 2019,
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kathleenchaykowski/2018/03/21/mark-zuckerberg-
addresses-breach-of-trust-in-facebook-user-data-crisis/#47060b723e36
Isaak, J. & Hanna, MJ 2018, ‘User Data Privacy: Facebook, Cambridge Analytica, and
Privacy Protection’, Computer, vol. 51, no. 8, pp. 56-59.
Leicester, N 2016, ‘Ethics in the IT Profession: Does a Code of Ethics have an Effect on
Professional Behaviour?’.
Meredith, S 2018, ‘Here’s everything you need to know about the Cambridge Analytica
scandal , viewed 2 May 2019, https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/21/facebook-cambridge-
analytica-scandal-everything-you-need-to-know.html
Vaughn, L 2015, Doing ethics: Moral reasoning and contemporary issues. WW Norton &
Company.
Warren, M. & Burmeister, OK 2017, ‘Research on Applied Ethics involving emerging ICT
technologies’, Australasian Journal of Information Systems, vol. 21.
Wieder, B & Kumar, A 2018, ‘Bannon sold Cambridge Analytica stake, fined for late ethics
report’, viewed 2 May 2019,
https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/white-house/article200917134.h
tml