This story was updated at 8:04 p.m.
Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie says he will testify before U.S. Congress and the United Kingdom’s Parliament.
“Accepting invitation to testify before US House Intelligence Committee, US House Judiciary Committee & UK Parliament Digital Committee. It’s time for our democratic institutions to take control,” Wylie said in a tweet Wednesday evening, tagging a number of lawmakers, including Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee and House Intelligence Committee.
Accepting invitation to testify before US House Intelligence Committee, US House Judiciary Committee & UK Parliament Digital Committee. It’s time for our democratic institutions to take control @HouseJudDems @AdamSchiffCA @CommonsCMS @DamianCollins
— Christopher Wylie (@chrisinsilico) March 21, 2018
Wylie, a former employee of Cambridge Analytica, revealed to the media how the data analysis firm, connected to the Trump campaign, mined information of 50 million users from Facebook during the 2016 election cycle, spurring investigations into the matter.
A lawyer for Wylie previously told the Washington Post that he planned to accept an invitation from the House Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., to interview with the panel.
The announcement from Wylie, who is Canadian, comes as members of Congress and the U.K. parliament have clamored for testimony from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on how companies obtain and keep data from the social media platform.
“The Committee has repeatedly asked Facebook about how companies acquire and hold on to user data from their site, and in particular about whether data had been taken without their consent. Your officials’ answers have consistently understated this risk, and have been misleading to the Committee,” Damian Collins, a member of parliament, said in a letter to Zuckerberg Thursday.
Zuckerberg broke his silence on the controversy Wednesday afternoon. Among his promises to make amends to Facebook users, Zuckerberg said the company would cooperate with a forensic audit to determine if Cambridge Analytica had deleted the information if previously certified to Facebook it had deleted.
“This was a breach of trust between Kogan, Cambridge Analytica and Facebook,” Zuckerberg said. “But it was also a breach of trust between Facebook and the people who share their data with us and expect us to protect it. We need to fix that.”
Facebook announced last Friday that Cambridge Analytica, it’s parent company Strategic Communication Laboratories, Wylie, and others would be suspended from Facebook in response to the reports that not all data that had been obtained had been properly deleted.
Cambridge Analytica has denied that it did anything improper with Facebook data.
