Victoria-based tech company AggregateIQ linked to Brexit spending-limit controversy

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      Two whistleblowers, including one from B.C., are expected to hold a news conference in London tomorrow to speak about a growing controversy over the use of Facebook data.

      The former B.C. resident who used to work for Cambridge Analytica, Christopher Wylie, will join Shahmir Sanni.

      Sanni was a campaigner with a youth-oriented group called BeLeave in the Brexit referendum.

      It was supposedly separate from a better known group called Vote Leave, which was calling for the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union.

      Wylie and Sanni, however, have provided documents to CBC News showing a much closer relationship between Vote Leave and BeLeave than was previously known.

      Both organizations turned money over to a Victoria-based digital advertising, web, and software development company called AggregateIQ.

      It's raised questions whether the efforts of BeLeave and Vote Leave were coordinated and whether the main pro-Brexit group exceeded its spending limit in the referendum.

      That's because if the two groups were linked, then they shouldn't have had separate spending caps.

      The vote to leave the EU passed with 51.9 percent voting in favour and 48.1 percent voting to remain.

      Officials in British prime minister Teresa May's office were linked to Vote Leave, and its efforts were strongly backed by Foreign Minister Boris Johnson, who was mayor of London at the time.

      B.C.'s acting information and privacy commissioner, Drew McArthur, told CBC's Wendy Mesley today that his office is investigating whether AggregateIQ has violated the Personal Information and Privacy Act in its handling of personal data.

      AggregateIQ has worked with SCL, the parent company of Cambridge Analytica, which used an app to obtain data from millions of Facebook accounts.

      "AggregateIQ works in full compliance within all legal and regulatory requirements in all jurisdictions where it operates," the company declares on its website. "It has never knowingly been involved in any illegal activity. All work AggregateIQ does for each client is kept separate from every other client."

      Meanwhile, Michael McEvoy takes over as B.C.'s information and privacy commissioner on April 1.

      He's been working with U.K. Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham (a former B.C. information and privacy commissioner), investigating how personal data from Facebook accounts could have been misappropriated for political uses.

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