Data scientist behind Cambridge Analytica scandal slams Facebook

The scapegoat in Facebook's ongoing data privacy scandal is firing back at the social media giant.

Aleksandr Kogan, the relatively unknown scientist who was paid by Cambridge Analytica for data he harvested from more than 87 million Facebook users, is speaking out in a series of interviews, where he explains that he was not a rogue app developer as Facebook has frequently implied, and that the problem could be much bigger than most people realize.

Across several interviews over the weekend, Kogan has made a couple of things very clear: He wasn't the only developer harvesting and sharing data without the direct consent of users, and Facebook knew exactly what he was doing for years before it acted.

He also revealed another interesting twist in this ongoing saga: The partner he worked with in order to create the quiz app that has drawn so much criticism for harvesting data now works at Facebook.

In an enlightening and sprawling 60 Minutesinterview that aired on Sunday evening, Kogan explained how Facebook has misrepresented the notion that he was somehow a lone actor. At one part in the interview, Kogan explained just how large the scope of this type of behavior was:

Aleksandr Kogan:It seems crazy now. But this was a core feature of the Facebook platform for years. This was not a special permission you had to get. This was just something that was available to anybody who wanted it who was a developer.

Lesley Stahl: How many apps do you think there are, how many developers, who did what you did?

Aleksandr Kogan: Tens of thousands.

Lesley Stahl: Tens of thousands?

Aleksandr Kogan: Tens of thousands.

In the same interview, Kogan highlighted another interesting piece of information: Joseph Chancellor, who was once Kogan's co-worker, now works for Facebook. And for some very unclear reason, Joseph Chancellor has not faced the same type of scrutiny that Kogan has.

Lesley Stahl:And where is he today?

Aleksandr Kogan: He works at Facebook.

Lesley Stahl:Wait a minute. Is -- did he have anything to do with the study you did for Cambridge Analytica?

Aleksandr Kogan: Yeah. I mean, we did everything together.

Lesley Stahl:So they've come after you but not someone who did exactly what you did with you.

Aleksandr Kogan: Yes.

Lesley Stahl:And he actually works at Facebook?

Aleksandr Kogan: Correct.

Lesley Stahl:Are you on Facebook?

Aleksandr Kogan: No. They deleted my account.

Lesley Stahl:You can't be on Facebook. You're banned.

Aleksandr Kogan: I'm banned.

Lesley Stahl:And the partner works for them.

Aleksandr Kogan: Correct.

Lesley Stahl:What's wrong with this picture? I'm missing something?

Aleksandr Kogan: Yeah, I mean, this is my frustration with all this, where I had a pretty good relationship with Facebook for years.

Lesley Stahl:Really, so they knew who you were?

Aleksandr Kogan: Yeah. I visited their campus many times. They had hired my students. I even did a consulting project with Facebook in November of 2015. And what I was teaching them was lessons I learned from working with this data set that we had collected for Cambridge Analytica. So I was explaining, like, "Here's kinda what we did. And here's what we learned. And here's how you can apply it internally to help you with surveys and survey predictions and things like that."

In a separate interview with Buzzfeed News, Kogan surprisingly downplayed Cambridge Analytica's role in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and also the political consulting agency's behavior prediction capabilities, calling it "nonsense."

But perhaps even more shocking was Kogan's description of his cozy relationship with Facebook, which included several visits to the company's headquarters and public collaborations on "at least 10" research papers with Facebook’s Pete Fleming, who is now the head of research at Instagram.

Kogan's close relationship with the social media giant and the pedestrian nature of his data harvesting is light years away from what Facebook has been saying up to this point.

"If a developer who people gave their information to, in this case, Aleksandr Kogan, then goes and in violation of his agreement with us, sells the data to Cambridge Analytica, that's a big issue. People have a right to be very upset. I am upset that that happened," Zuckerberg said during his congressional hearing.

Clearly, someone in this relationship is misrepresenting the truth. It's hard to imagine it's anyone but the company whose very own executives struggle to define what it is.