Facebook would have known about Cambridge Analytica data mining earlier than expected

Facebook has learned that Cambridge Analytica had exploited its users' data months before the media reported them, according to a file filed by the Washington DC Attorney General.

The Attorney General made this allegation in a document filed by a court via Facebook, which the social network is trying to keep under seal in a lawsuit over the data scandal. Facebook contends that it should be sealed because it contains sensitive commercial information, according to the file filed Monday by the Superior Court of the Republic of Washington and spotted for the first time by the Guardian.

The document in question is "an email exchange between Facebook employees discussing how Cambridge Analytica (and others) violated Facebook's policies," according to the Attorney General's redacted file. "This also indicates that Facebook was aware of inappropriate data collection by Cambridge Analytica a few months before the news outlets reported on the issue."

The filing raises questions about when Facebook learned about Cambridge Analytica inappropriately access personal information on nearly 87 million Facebook users. This revelation sparked a reaction that raised questions about whether Facebook can be trusted to protect the personal information of its 2 billion users.

DC's attorney general sued Facebook in December, alleging that "unscrupulous surveillance and privacy settings" allowed the UK's political council to access Facebook's personal information without their permission. The consulting firm obtained data from a quiz application on the personality developed by Aleksandr Kogan, a professor at the University of Cambridge, who was presented as "a research application used by psychologists".

In one prepared testimony delivered to Congress In April, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said: "In 2015, Guardian journalists told us that Kogan had shared his application data with Cambridge Analytica."

The court record however states that "the facts contained in the document show that as early as September 2015, a Facebook employee based on the control center warned the company that Cambridge Analytica was [a quote that’s redacted in the filing] asked other employees of [redacted] and received responses indicating that Cambridge Analytica's data collection practices were [redacted] with the Facebook platform policy. "

The paper suggests that at least one Facebook employee was aware of a possible improper Cambridge Analytica activity a few months before the Guardian's December 2015 report on data collection practices.

In November, the New York Times reported that Zuckerberg and operations manager Sheryl Sandberg "ignored the warning signs" of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, according to which a political consultant was using data from millions of Facebook users .

Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment.