Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society. It sounds like the stuff of spy novels. A secretive company backed by an eccentric billionaire taps into sensitive data gathered by a University of Cambridge researcher. The company then works to help elect an ultranationalist presidential candidate who admires Russian President Vladimir Putin. Oh, and that Cambridge researcher, Aleksandr Kogan, worked briefly for St. Petersburg State University.

All eyes are on Facebook as more and more information rolls out regarding Cambridge Analytica, its involvement in recent elections and forums and how it came to obtain 50 million Facebook users' profile information. Now, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is joining those demanding more information from the social network giant. "Consumers have a right to know how their information is used -- and companies like Facebook have a fundamental responsibility to protect their users' personal information," Schneiderman said in a statement. "Today, along with Massachusetts Attorney General Healey, we sent a demand letter to Facebook -- the first step in our joint investigation to get to the bottom of what happened."

With revelations emerging since last Friday that political data company Cambridge Analytica obtained private info from more than 50 million Facebook accounts beginning in 2014 and later used it to boost the Trump presidential campaign, Facebook's data collection and use has again come under scrutiny. For many users, it's been an abrupt wakeup call about how much data they've been sharing with the company and the third-party apps that it hosts. Cambridge Analytica, for example, reportedly had access to users' locations, "likes," and other personal details and used it to develop psychographic profiles of voters' behavioral traits. The recent news should give users pause about the privacy configurations of their own accounts. If you are one such user, here's a quick tutorial on how to minimize the amount of data available on your Facebook account.

LONDON – Britain is investigating whether Facebook did enough to protect data after a whistleblower said a London-based political consultancy hired by Donald Trump improperly accessed information on 50 million Facebook users to sway public opinion. Facebook shares closed down nearly 7 percent on Monday, wiping nearly $40 billion off its market value as investors worried that damage to the reputation of the world's largest social media network would deter users and advertisers. Elizabeth Denham, the head of Britain's Information Commission, is seeking a warrant to search the offices of consultancy Cambridge Analytica after a whistleblower revealed it had harvested the private information of millions of people to support Trump's 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. U.S. and European lawmakers have demanded an explanation of how the consulting firm gained access to the data in 2014 and why Facebook failed to inform its users, raising broader industry questions about consumer privacy. "We are looking at whether or not Facebook secured and safeguarded personal information on the platform and whether when they found out about the loss of the data they acted robustly and whether or not people were informed," Denham told BBC Radio.

British data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica is at the centre of controversy in the US and UK after two newspapers reported the company harvested personal data about Facebook users beginning in 2014. Best known for assisting the 2016 presidential campaign of US President Donald Trump, Cambridge Analytica is now facing a government search of its London office, questions from US state authorities, and a demand by Facebook that it submit to a forensic audit. The UK's Information Commissioner has announced she is seeking a warrant to probe the company's servers – and also that she was forced to tell Facebook to "stand down" its own enquiries after its auditors and lawyers visited Cambridge Analytica's offices. "Such a search would potentially compromise a regulatory investigation," Elizabeth Denham said. Here is some of what is known about Cambridge Analytica.

Hundreds of millions of Facebook users are likely to have had their private information harvested by companies that exploited the same terms as the firm that collected data and passed it on to Cambridge Analytica, according to a new whistleblower. Sandy Parakilas, the platform operations manager at Facebook responsible for policing data breaches by third-party software developers between 2011 and 2012, told the Guardian he warned senior executives at the company that its lax approach to data protection risked a major breach. "My concerns were that all of the data that left Facebook servers to developers could not be monitored by Facebook, so we had no idea what developers were doing with the data," he said. Parakilas said Facebook had terms of service and settings that "people didn't read or understand" and the company did not use its enforcement mechanisms, including audits of external developers, to ensure data was not being misused. Parakilas, whose job it was to investigate data breaches by developers similar to the one later suspected of Global Science Research, which harvested tens of millions of Facebook profiles and provided the data to Cambridge Analytica, said the slew of recent disclosures had left him disappointed with his superiors for not heeding his warnings.

Britain's Information Commissioner will seek a warrant to search computers and servers used by the London-based political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica (CA), which is accused of using the personal data of tens-of-millions of Facebook members to influence 2016's US presidential election. Elizabeth Denham said the company had failed to cooperate after she issued a Demand for Access to records and data it held on 7 March. "Cambridge Analytica has not responded to the commissioner by the deadline provided. Therefore, the Information Commissioner is seeking a warrant to obtain information and access to systems and evidence related to her investigation," her office said in a statement. A whistleblower, Christopher Wylie, who worked with CA, claimed the company had amassed the data of some 50 million people through a personality quiz on Facebook called This is Your Digital Life, created by academic Aleksandr Kogan, of Global Science Research.

On Friday night, Facebook released a statement banning Cambridge Analytica, a data operations team that worked on the Donald Trump campaign for breaking the social network's terms of service regarding data collection about users. It's not a typical breach--in fact, Facebook is careful to point out that it's not technically a breach at all--but reports say information about likes, locations, and names are compromised for up to 50 million users. Check out The Intercept's reporting on the subject here.

NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro about his office's intent to look into how the data of 50 million Facebook users got into the hands of the political data-mining firm, Cambridge Analytica.

The Facebook logo is displayed on an iPad. WASHINGTON -- Revelations that a political data firm may have gained access to the personal information of as many as 50 million Facebook users drew new calls on Capitol Hill on Monday for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and the heads of other social media companies to testify before Congress about the possible privacy breach. Two members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Democrat Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Republican John Kennedy of Louisiana, asked Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa., to hold a hearing so senators can publicly grill the CEOs. "Facebook, Google, and Twitter have amassed unprecedented amounts of personal data and use this data when selling advertising, including political advertisements," the senators wrote in a letter to Grassley. "The lack of oversight on how data is stored and how political advertisements are sold raises concerns about the integrity of American elections as well as privacy rights." The congressional calls for additional scrutiny come after Facebook on Friday confirmed that it had suspended a data analytics firm, Cambridge Analytica, from operating on its platforms as it investigated whether the firm failed to delete information that Cambridge Analytica had received through an academic researcher.