Cambridge Analytica Scandal Is The Watergate Of Our Time: Jon Snow

21 March 2018, 09:44 | Updated: 22 March 2018, 15:05

The scandal engulfing Facebook and Cambridge Analytica will be as big as Watergate, according to presenter Jon Snow.

- Cambridge Analytica: Everything You Need To Know About The Scandal

The Channel 4 broadcaster has been fronting their coverage of the story, which accuses Cambridge Analytica of illegally harvesting the personal data of 50 million Facebook users and interfering in elections around the world.

CEO Alexander Nix has been suspended, pending an investigation, while $36billion has been wiped off the value of Facebook.

Mr Snow says the scandal will reverberate around the world.

Speaking to Nick Ferrari on LBC, he said: "This huge story, which has exploded like a volcano, may be the Watergate of our time.

"It will get bigger and bigger and bigger. And who knows whose heads will roll, who knows where it will end."

Summing up the story so far, he stated: "They look at what's been going on on your Facebook account and they detect what sort of a person you are.

"You might be someone who loves Hillary Clinton. Their job is to make sure you don't think that much of her after all.

"The way they do that is to blanket the areas of the internet that intersect with you and much else in your life with posters, TV ads, the rest of it. You link a set of handcuffs with the words 'Lock Her Up' and 'Defeat Crooked Hillary'. That message was everywhere.

"The idea is to erode people's confidence in the candidate they support. And it works.

"There is a theme to everything they said. And it was about perverting the democratic process. I don't think that's putting it too strongly."

Mr Snow explained how this will change the way people think about their data on social media, saying: "If you're online, nothing is private. Ever.

"This story ensures that anyone who is on Facebook, they know that anything they've ever said to anyone, any love letter, whatever else, they might have thought they've done it in a discreet way, but it's been harvested or is in danger of being harvested.

"This questions the entire roll of these strategic political companies, who dot the landscape across the western democracies, and what they do to your vote.

"They live and trade on fear, that's what we've discovered and Cambridge Analytica is at the heart of this particular story."

More to follow...