Whistleblower says Victoria company AIQ worked on software to find Republican voters

A Cambridge Analytica whistleblower said on Tuesday that Canadian company AggregateIQ worked on software called Ripon which was used to identify Republican voters ahead of the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

AggregateIQ did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the remarks by Christopher Wylie, a whistleblower formerly of British political consultancy Cambridge Analytica.

Wylie has previously disclosed how users’ data from Facebook was used by Cambridge Analytica to help elect U.S. President Donald Trump.

Ripon, the town in which the Republican Party was founded in 1854, was the name given to a tool that let a campaign manage its voter database, target specific voters, conduct canvassing, manage fundraising and carry out surveys.

“There’s now tangible proof in the public domain that AIQ actually built Ripon, which is the software that utilized the algorithms from the Facebook data,” Wylie told the British Parliament’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee.

AggregateIQ told Reuters on March 24 that it had never been and is not a part of Cambridge Analytica, nor has it ever entered into a contract with Cambridge Analytica.

It said it works in full compliance within all legal and regulatory requirements and had never knowingly been involved in any illegal activity.

WATCH: It’s alleged that during Brexit referendum, the “Vote Leave” campaign paid a company in Victoria, called AggregateIQ, millions of dollars, which breaks spending rules. It’s a potential criminal offence. As Jeff Semple reports, the person who helped start AggregateIQ is Christopher Wylie, the Canadian who exposed how Cambridge Analytics used Facebook personal data.

3:28 Brexit “Vote Leave” campaign allegedly used BC firm to skirt

Cambridge Analytica said on Tuesday that it had not shared any of the Facebook profile data procured by a Cambridge academic with AggregateIQ. It said it had not had any communication with AggregateIQ since December 2015.