MSNBC "The Rachel Maddow Show" - Transcript: Cambridge Analytica

Interview

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MADDOW: We started today with a deluge of reports about the Trump  campaign`s data firm. Cambridge Analytica, they got 6 million bucks from  the campaign while Donald Trump was running for president. In 2014,  Cambridge Analytica used a purported academic research scheme to harvest  complicated, extensive personal data from tens of millions of Americans who  didn`t know they were handing that kind of information over.

According to a new whistleblower who was head of research at the company,  that stolen data on 50 million Americans was basically the core of their  data business. A bipartisan pair of senators on the Judiciary Committee,  Democrat Amy Klobuchar and Republican John Kennedy, now say they want tech  CEOs, including Facebook`s Mark Zuckerberg up on Capitol Hill, answering  questions directly about this stuff.
The Republican chair of the Judiciary Committee wrote back to Senators  Klobuchar and Kennedy saying that he would take their request under  advisement, which I think means maybe. It possibly even means perhaps.
Joining us now is Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota.

Senator Klobuchar, thank you for your time tonight.

SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR (D), MINNESOTA: Thanks, Rachel.

MADDOW: So, what concerns you most in these revelations about Facebook and  Cambridge Analytica?

KLOBUCHAR: Well, of course, it`s the sanctity of our elections and our  democracy. We actually have an election less than 300 days away. We have  to make sure our election infrastructure is safe. I think we`re going to  get some money for the states in this budget. I`ve been working really  hard on that, so they can get back up paper ballots, things like that.

And the second is what you`ve been talking about so well for the first few  minutes of this show and that is this propaganda and things that are coming  into people`s Facebook pages and their data where in fact we`ve learned  now, things that they thought were safe weren`t safe. Fifty million people  in America have now had their data basically breached -- and I know they  don`t like that we`re breached, but the last time I checked, if someone  broke into my apartment with a crowbar, it would be same as if the  apartment manager give them a key and let them in and let them take stuff.

And in this case, they have taken their Facebook friends, they have taken  their addresses, things like that and then we find out that they gave it  basically, we believe, to a campaign and there are all kinds of potential  legal violations here. The first and foremost is Cambridge Analytica  itself and how that works with the Trump campaign and is that truly the  value, a couple million dollars compared to what I think someone said maybe  $100 million in value. That`s a potential major election violation.

Then you have Facebook itself in 2011 signed a consent degree with the FTC  because of privacy issues and said they paid $40,000 for each individual  violation. So, this is just the beginning of what I consider a focus on  what we need to focus on and that is the privacy of the data and that means  new rules of the road and they better be ready for it because they can`t  operate like the Wild West, and then the second thing is how we protect  elections and make sure the people that did this are held responsible.

MADDOW: Do you feel like the tech companies here are more the scene of the  crime or more the get away driver? I feel like they want to posit themselves here as sort of -- not necessarily innocent bystanders but 
people who comported themselves with -- according to the rules that they set forth for their users and certainly according with the law and if people use their platforms for nefarious purposes, that`s too bad but it 
doesn`t really have anything to do with them.

KLOBUCHAR: You know, these are some of the most brilliant companies in  America run by brilliant people with a lot of really smart things they have  done. We love putting up the clips from your shows, recipes, you name it.  But it`s gotten so much more than that.

And I think someone said they have basically built a product with no alarm  system and no locks on the windows and big surprise the bad guys got in.

So, when you have a company that`s worth like 500 billion, I think you have  to take the some of that money -- they`re going to have to put it big time  into protecting the security of the data and I think some rules have to be  set in place by Congress. We have to stop pretending that this is just  about cat videos. This got to the core of our democracy with a foreign  country actually buying ads in rubles and then also sending out propaganda  and targeting innocent Americans who didn`t know that their profiles and  their data and their friends had been stolen.

MADDOW: Senator Amy Klobuchar, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee,  I live in hope with that little note that you got from Senator Grassley  today saying he was taking this under advisement. Please let us know --

KLOBUCHAR: We want to get it then.

MADDOW: Yes, let us know. Let us know. Thank you, Senator.

KLOBUCHAR: Thank you.

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