REUTERS/Henry Nicholls
Mark Turnbull, Managing Director of SCL Elections/Cambridge Analytica arrives at the offices of Cambridge Analytica in central London.
- Britain is backing an American professor's effort to obtain personal data from Cambridge Analytica's parent.
- SCL Elections will face criminal action if it does not hand over the data within 30 days.
- The ruling could set a precedent for millions of other American voters to request their information back from Cambridge Analytica under British data protection laws.
(Reuters) - Britain's data privacy watchdog is backing an American professor's effort to obtain his personal information from SCL Elections, Cambridge Analytica's parent.
The Information Commissioner's Office, or ICO, issued an order on Friday that SCL must provide data it holds on New York's Parsons School of Design associate professor David Caroll, within 30 days, or face criminal action.
The ruling is significant because it confirms the right of people abroad to seek data held by a British firm, according to data privacy activists.
The case rests on the principle that, because a British company processed his data, Carroll is entitled under British data protection law to receive the data a company holds on him even though he is a US resident.
Therefore, it sets a precedent that would enable millions of other American voters to request information that Cambridge Analytica had collected on them.
"The company has consistently refused to cooperate with our investigation into this case and has refused to answer our specific enquiries in relation to the complainant's personal data," Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham said.
"The right to request personal data that an organization holds about you is a cornerstone right in data protection law and it is important that Professor Carroll, and other members of the public, understand what personal data Cambridge Analytica held and how they analyzed it," Denham added.
The order comes days after both firms filed for insolvency after reports that Cambridge Analytica had improperly obtained data on tens of millions of Facebook users without their knowledge or consent.
Cambridge Analytica advised US President Donald Trump's election campaign, building psychographic profiles of the electorate to help micro-target voters with advertising in key swing states.
Its managers have denied, however, using data harvested by Cambridge University psychologist Alexandr Kogan through a personality quiz on Facebook, in the 2016 US election.
"The ICO's decision will provide us all with answers about what Cambridge Analytica did with people's data, how it was used and who it was given to," said Carroll's British lawyer Ravi Naik.
Cambridge Analytica and its insolvency administrators did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment on Sunday.
(Reporting by Douglas Busvine; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle)