CBI to probe Cambridge Analytica data breach, says Centre

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The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) will be probing the Cambridge Analytica data breach, IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said on Thursday. The Centre has been sending notices to Cambridge Analytica but there have been no replies, Shankar said. 

“Therefore, it is suspected that Cambridge Analytica may have been involved in illegally obtaining data of Indians which could be misused,” he added. He made the statement while addressing the Rajya Sabha on "the misuse of social media and fake news". 

This is the third time that the government is bringing up the Cambridge Analytica data breach scandal. The Centre had in April sent a notice to Facebook and Cambridge Analytica asking details on the data breach. 

It has asked Facebook to list out security architecture proposed to be created by the company "so that data concerning Indians are not pilfered or manipulated again for extraneous purposes including to influence the elections". 

In the first notice, the government questioned both the companies on the impact of the data breach, following which Facebook had admitted that nearly 5.62 lakh people in India were "potentially affected" by the incident.

US social networking giant, Facebook had drawn intense criticism from users and governments globally over the data leak scandal that hit millions of users.

Information of over 80 million Facebook users was allegedly harvested by data analytics and political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, leading to a global backlash against the American company.