- Christopher Wylie said he has been a target for physical abuse since blowing the whistle on Facebook's giant data scandal in March.
- Wylie rocketed into the public consciousness and became involved in the Brexit debate in Britain, which he said made him vulnerable to attack.
- The distinctive data scientist said his life has transformed since going public, and he has had to become comfortable with attention from the media.
- Wylie is now doing consulting work for "different authorities in different jurisdictions" to help them identify blind spots on emerging technologies.
- He spoke to Business Insider after being named in the UK Tech 100, a ranking of the 100 coolest people in the UK tech industry.
Wylie
told Business Insider how his life has transformed
since going public with evidence that Cambridge
Analytica weaponised the data of 50 million
Facebook users during the 2016 US presidential
election.
Wylie
helped build what he describes as "[Trump advisor]
Steve Bannon's psychological warfare mindf--k
tool," which exploited Cambridge Analytica's haul
of Facebook data. But this was not the reason he
was targeted.
The
Canadian went on to become a vocal critic of the
UK's Brexit referendum, challenging the validity
of the vote. In March, Wylie said the UK may not
have voted to quit the EU if it had not
been for "cheating" by the Leave campaign.
Four
months later, the official
Leave campaign was found guilty of breaking
electoral law for
funnelling payments of more than £675,000 to
Aggregate IQ through another Brexit campaign
group. Aggregate IQ is a Canadian data firm with a
web of links to Cambridge Analytica.
Wylie
said it was this that made him vulnerable to
attack. Some of the abuse he has encountered has
been reported to the police, while a risk
assessment was also carried out on the
whistleblower. It all means he has to take certain
precautions when he is out in public.
"I've
been physically assaulted several times in the
street. Somebody once pushed me into traffic. I've
been followed into gay clubs, for example, where
alt-right blogs would send photographers to take
pictures of me," he said. "That has been not
necessarily the easiest to deal with but, again,
you start to actually just get used to it."
"Before
my coming out, as it were, I was very much a
private person. Almost had never done any kind of
media, anything before," he said after being named
in the UK Tech 100. "Once the story came out, and
blew up in the way that it did, I had to let go of
that old habit, and embrace the fact that people
want to talk about it, and talk to me about it."
His
"unique" look, as he describes it, was actually
discussed prior to the story going live. He
thought about stripping the pink from his hair and
removing his piercings, but decided that his
identity as a gay man should be part of his
narrative.
"It's
important that queer people get visibility,
particularly when they look, act, and speak in the
way that they're comfortable with," he continued.
"For me, that was important."
Carole
Cadwalladr, The Observer journalist who got Wylie
to talk, described
him as "the millennials' first great
whistleblower."
His
evidence thrust Facebook into a tsunami of
scandal, wiping $60 billion off the company's
value and forcing CEO Mark Zuckerberg into a media
apology tour, which has evolved into a global
advertising campaign.
It sent
shockwaves through the tech world, with other big
companies being swept up in data scandals of their
own, including Google
which was criticised for collecting location
data even when users told it not to.
Life after blowing the whistle on Facebook
Wylie is
comfortable with Cadwalladr's moniker,
particularly as he hopes to inspire a new
generation of whistleblowers to come forward and
expose corruption. "It's important that people see
that you can be a whistleblower and you can be
different," he explained.
Born in
Victoria, Canada, Wylie now lives in London. He is
coy about how he earns a living but said he does
consulting work for "different authorities in
different jurisdictions" to help them identify
blind spots on emerging technologies.
Asked if
he could see himself policing data misuse in the
future and bringing companies like Cambridge
Analytica to justice, he said: "Do I see myself
being a data cop in the future? I don't know.
Probably not. At the moment, I am helping quite a
few authorities and investigations more broadly."