Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower Joins Retailer H&M

Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie has joined Swedish fashion group Hennes & Mauritz (H&M) as a Consulting Director of Research, to help the company use data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) to better understand its customers.

Last year, Wylie (pictured) gave the Observer newspaper documents that described the workings behind CA; the firm hired by Donald Trump's election team, and previously headed by Trump adviser Steve Bannon. This exposure led to the company declaring bankruptcy, amid claims that it illegally harvested data from more than 87 million Facebook profiles to target users with political ad campaigns. In October, the ICO issued the maximum £500k fine to Facebook, for failing to protect users' personal information in the CA data breach.

Wylie joins the company behind H&M, COS and Arket, among other brands, to help the business obtain better insights on customers, products and markets, as well as support work on 'sustainable and ethical' AI. Spokesperson Helena Ohansson added: 'We are very excited about the expertise within these areas that Christopher Wylie brings to the company'.

Back in 2008, Wylie volunteered on the presidential campaign to elect Barack Obama, where he learned about microtargeting; and while studying law at the LSE, he worked as a microtargeting and digital campaigns strategist for the UK's Liberal Democrat party. He started working for SCL Elections (later re-named Cambridge Analytica) in 2013, and worked with academic Aleksandr Kogan to illegally gather the personal data of 87 million people from their Facebook profiles, and used the data to develop new forms of psychographic microtargeting. He left SCL a year later, to set up his own business intelligence services company Eunoia Technologies, which he was voluntarily wound up in 2017.

Web site: www.hm.com .