Aggregate IQ

Aggregate IQ (AIQ) is a spin off company of SCL Group, a British communications company that also runs data firm Cambridge Analytica. AggregateIQ is under investigation in the U.K. for its involvement in the Brexit referendum. It’s alleged that the firm took money from different pro-Brexit groups who legally should have disclosed the payment. British Columbia’s privacy watchdog is also investigating. AggregateIQ, based in Victoria, British Columbia, is alleged by former Cambridge Analytica employee-turned-whistleblower Christopher Wylie to be the technology behind Cambridge Analytica’s work in using social media data to help win elections. AggregateIQ firmly denies it’s owned or directed by Cambridge Analytica. AggregateIQ is a small data analytics firm with about a dozen employees listed on LinkedIn. It was founded by two western Canadian political staffers, Jeff Silvester and Zackary Massingham. Silvester worked for a federal member of parliament from the Victoria area, while Massingham campaigned for Mike de Jong, a former provincial minister who earlier this year was running to lead British Columbia’s opposition Liberal party. According to Wylie, who has spoken publicly to various media organizations, he wanted to hire Silvester and Massingham to work for SCL Elections, a subsidiary of Cambridge Analytica’s parent company SCL Group, in London. But the two didn’t want to move, according to Wylie, who said he then encouraged them to set up AggregateIQ as a separate company to which SCL could contract work. Cambridge Analytica said it subcontracted some digital marketing and software development to AggregateIQ in 2014 and 2015. Wylie essentially describes AggregateIQ as the software back-office for Cambridge Analytica. Vote Leave, the movement that led the successful Brexit campaign, spent 3.9 million pounds ($5.5 million) on AggregateIQ, a significant portion of its digital budget, according to the Guardian. Vote Leave also allegedly funneled 625,000 pounds through another pro-Brexit group, BeLeave, to pay for additional services from AggregateIQ. Lawyers working for Wylie have alleged that Vote Leave did this to illegally avoid election spending caps. A cybersecurity researcher found a depository of AggregateIQ’s software on code-sharing website GitHub, Gizmodo reported. There appear to be links between AggregateIQ and Cambridge Analytica in those files, including references to Cambridge Analytica’s "Ripon" political campaign platform and text relating to Ted Cruz’s Republican presidential campaign, which was also a Cambridge Analytica customer.