this is the w. news live from berlin masters of manipulation now mired in scandal shadowy political consultancy cambridge analytical suspends its c.e.o. after undercover reporters filmed him boasting about using dirty tricks to swing the election and facebook is also under fire over reports that consultancy illegally harvested millions of users data. also coming out boko haram militants free over seventy five girls kidnapped from their school and she nigeria but the extremists warn the girl's parents against after sending their daughters to school

again we'll go live to lagos for the latest. i'm sumi so much going to thank you for joining us a british academic who created the app that harvested data on millions of facebook users says he's being used as a scapegoat by both the social network and the political consultancy behind it that data grap facebook says aleksander kogan violated its policies by passing the data to cambridge analytic and the u.k. based firm is now in hot water after its c.e.o. was filmed by undercover reporters boasting about the dirty tricks he uses to swing an election results. the center of london home to cambridge analytical. the firm c.e.o. had a reputation for enjoying media attention but in the past few days alexander nick

seemed less happy in the media spotlight. on tuesday cambridge analytical suspended next following an undercover investigation by british broadcaster channel four he was secretly filmed by a reporter posing as a client seeking to get candidates elected alexander next outlines and dirty tricks to help things such as blackmail. be effective indeed just to get. that speech to the fullest. if it is. stupid to treat it as a sexual text video recorder. or entrapping politicians by filming them in compromising situations that get out the cat is out of the question. it shortly before being suspended next told b.b.c. he was exaggerating the company's work.

but these latest accusations on the only problems dogging can be channelised the company had previously bragged how to use facebook profiles to help get u.s. president donald trump elected now the u.k.'s data protection agency has social warrant to search cambridge analytic is headquarters and it's investigating whether the company illegally connected the facebook. this comes after a former employee spilled the beans on the company's tactics he says people were asked to download a facebook app which secretly stole private data about the user and their facebook friends i will need to engage fifty thousand one hundred thousand people a really big data really quickly and it scaled really quickly we were able to get upwards of fifty million plus facebook records in the span of a couple months and that's how one of the biggest breaches in facebook's history

came about. facebook's has been dodging the media for days british lawmakers have summoned him to appear before a committee and accuse facebook of misleading them at a previous hearing the hashtags delayed facebook and where is trending on social media and need calls for the internet giant to take responsibility for the breach. we realize how important these companies are for example to elections right across europe and i think this is the year when politicians are woken up we as the public of woke up and it's time for the tech companies to wake up because they don't get their act together they are going to face serious repercussions social networks will one celebrated as the saviors of democracy now critics are starting to ask why the social media should be more closely regulated and. more on the fallout from the scandal now we have in robertson with us an expert in cyber

security in england and here in our studio we have our social media editor jared weed with us good to have you both jared let's start with you part of the fallout of the scandal is one of the people who actually got rich off of facebook is now telling users to delete their accounts tell us about this well this is brian act and he is the co-founder of the messenger service what's out which he sold to facebook in twenty fourteen for many billions of dollars so in a tweet brian acton is urging facebook users to cut the cord simply writing it's time to delete facebook serve real stinging blood to his by mark zuckerberg and he's one of the biggest voices leading this movement on tree to hash tag the late facebook but i guess the big question is can we cut the cord to facebook of course you can but there are a number of things you can do before that you can tighten your privacy settings which is something you know it's recommended to do you can also deactivate your account so that puts it on hold and should you choose to go back in the future

you'll be getting it exactly as how you left it and you can also delete your accounts that means everything tied to your account is removed and it takes facebook about ninety days to get rid of all your right where you mention privacy so let's come to you know ian at the heart of this data scandal are the users themselves what are the lessons we've learned here about data privacy. dental privacy i suppose has become very difficult to actually if we live now and equivalent i suppose of no electronic global village where our own information is in fact widely available lawfully with our own consent. but the use of that data for purposes which we didn't expect is something which we haven't caught up with no words what i'm saying is even if your data he's used a large number of other people you didn't expect a kind of covert campaign of propaganda especially targeting used to civically

which would perhaps persuade you to vote in one direction or another that is something which sounds very suspicious ok for living in an electronic global village as you said who was controlling this village should governments need getting more involved in here i hear it regulating on social media networks. well it's clearly difficult for governments even and large governments to do things which are current and global an international scale in europe you know very well aware of the new regulations see the g.d.p. are. emphasizing amongst other things our right. right until each town takes time but clearly fantasia is held outside europe he's being used by for other purposes and i think there's a mention in the press today that data may have been used in the kenyan elections. we don't need european legislation we certainly don't need just u.k.

legislation and we need some kind of agreement at a global level before these things can be placed properly jerry coming back to you you said that you don't have to delete your account but if you do what are the alternatives to facebook if you want the same kind of reach that facebook provides you but better privacy well what we're saying at the moment is develop is sort of taking this opportunity to try and offer alternatives to facebook they're using this crisis as sort of an opportunity to get nourishes one of them is called the open book challenge it was launched by take invest jason calacanis three authors seven teams one hundred thousand dollars to invent a base of facebook it's unclear what that means but there are alternatives none of them is nearly as popular as facebook we have to keep in mind that google plus failed my space tried to make a comeback it failed the thing with facebook it's got two billion members and they're used to connecting with each other on facebook and facebook's also convenient because it's

a personal organizer you get you get reminded where your friend's birthday is ah there's a marketplace analogy you can you know buy and sell things and i think my point is facebook's what people used to it's hard to kick the habit even if people want to you will have to say if these types of ventures are successful as alternatives to facebook ok one more question to you said we need a global agreement here will facebook be part of this global agreement what are the incentives here for facebook to go along with some sort of agreement. the incentives say as always we was companies of this size and scale purely commercial ones do you think tom a lot of social media companies to make sure that they can sustain an end to times in revenue from similar loans companies over a long period of time to do that they actually have to buy into low alright a professor ian robertson for us a cyber security expert in england and jared reed our social media editor thank you

both for your analysis thanks now to some other stories making news around the world the so-called islamic state says it is responsible for an explosion in afghanistan's capital kabul that has left at least twenty six people dead and about twenty others wounded the afghan interior ministry says a suicide bomber on foot and detonated his explosives on a road leading to a shiite shrine. police in austin texas say the suspect in a series of bombings in the city's dead she died in an explosion as police attempted to arrest him he's been identified as a twenty four year old white man two people were killed and several wounded by five explosions in austin earlier this month i mean mars first civilian president putin joy has resigned saying he wants to take a rest from his current work here's a close ally of de facto leader aung san suu kyi who is barred from the presidency under the constitution his office says a successor will be appointed within seven days.

is a journalist in yangon and monitoring developments in me in mar we spoke to him earlier and asked him what impact ten jobs resignation will have on me and mark. as far as what this means going forward well i would say two things one person appears to be the front runner to be the next president is when mia he says it was announced today that he was stepping down from his position as speaker of the lower house of parliament but he's a very different personality from ten jaw much stronger personality so it's really hard to say few would be willing to jest be the sort of puppet figure that tinge i was or when he insists on having more decision making power certainly not more than on some suchi but when you look and expect that some of that power from on some city to be decentralized so he could have some more autonomy in there and one more important thing to keep in mind so there is an acting president for perhaps

a week that is sway he is the first vice president he's a former military general and he got into the position of first vice president because of this country's complicated power sharing arrangement between the civilian government and the military and he's acting president for a week there's a lot of things he could potentially do so the question mark is during this time period until they formally pick this next president you know what if anything significant what he tried to do my journalistic gave proof for us from in my day thank you for bringing us up today. now the government in nigeria says boko haram has freed seventy six of the one hundred ten girls abducted from a boarding school in northeastern nigeria a month ago the extremists are reported to have said they freed the girls out of pity and warned parents not to send girls to school nigerian authorities say the safety of the remaining thirty four girls is not clear. now the

german chancellor angela merkel is due to lay out her government's plans for the next four years in an address to parliament today that's a few being sworn in last week for a fourth term after months of wrangling to form a government many in parliament are still deeply unhappy with the result of coalition between merkel's conservatives and the social democrats now it is up to the chancellor to win their confidence. the spec for the longest coalition negotiations in decades. warnin us chancellor for a fourth term she can look ahead to some challenges. the new government's plans for the coming term take up one hundred seventy seven pages the coalition agreement devotes its opening chapter to europe and also references the e.u. and its title that's a first never taken such priority. meanwhile he's been waiting patiently for a german partner before forging ahead with his own plans for europe french president

. the eurozone to have its own budget and finance minister germany hasn't taken a final stance but is prepared to spend more money. in the past germany and france have achieved a great deal working together family kind of doing so in the future as well. the new government is also facing challenges on the domestic front with initiatives on education pensions and digitization including a major expansion of broadband internet. one of the toughest tasks ahead is not spelled out in the coalition agreement but looms large. germany's new government is determined to prevent a trade war with the us. and we'll be covering the chancellor speech to parliament coming up in the next hour here watching the debut news still to come south

africa's wine producers are praying for rain a catastrophic drought threatens one of the leading whynot in the world. chris that story coming right up. they make a commitment. they find solutions.