Cambridge Analytica, the London-headquartered data mining firm responsible for the latest Facebook privacy scandal, has reportedly been working on launching its own initial coin offering (ICO) in recent months. The company has also been linked to helping other shady players market their tokens.
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Privacy Dystopia
Cambridge Analytica was planning an ICO in order to fund a system for storing and selling personal data to advertisers. Ironically, the system was presented as an online privacy solution that could help prevent exactly what the company specializes in doing. The effort seems to have been put on hold now that the global spotlight has been put on Cambridge Analytica and its tactics.
“Who knows more about the usage of personal data than Cambridge Analytica?” Brittany Kaiser, a former employee of the company told the New York Times. “So why not build a platform that reconstructs the way that works?”
Jill Carlson, a consultant who attended meetings where Cambridge Analytica pitched its services, noticed that the company was in sharp contrast with the ideals of openness and transparency which attracted her to bitcoin. “The way that Cambridge Analytica was talking about it, they were viewing it as a means of being able to basically inflict government control and private corporate control over individuals, which just takes the whole initial premise of this technology and turns it on its head in this very dystopian way,” she explained.
Helping ‘Broken Tooth’ Gangster?
Besides planning its own ICO, Cambridge Analytica was also reportedly trying to get promoters of other tokens to sign up to its personal data mining services. The company was marketing itself based on how it was able to
