Britain’s data privacy watchdog issued an order Friday requiring SCL Elections, the British affiliate of the controversial data-mining firm Cambridge Analytica, to turn over all of the data it collected about a United States-based academic named David Carroll, confirming the right of people abroad to seek data held by a UK firm. Carroll filed a request for this data in January of 2017 under British data protection law, and received a response in March of that year that the Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham describes in the order as "wholly inadequate." The Information Commissioner’s Office served notice to SCL Elections, Cambridge Analytica’s parent, to provide the information it holds on David Carroll, saying failure to do so would be a criminal offense punishable by an unlimited fine. Data privacy activists say that it sets a precedent that would enable millions of other US voters to request information that the company had collected on them. The order comes days after both firms filed for insolvency after reports that Cambridge Analytica had improperly obtained data on tens of millions of Facebook users without their knowledge or consent. Cambridge Analytica advised US President Donald Trump’s election campaign, building psychographic profiles of the electorate to help micro-target voters with advertising in key swing states. Its managers have denied, however, using data harvested by Cambridge University psychologist Alexandr Kogan through a personality quiz on Facebook, in the 2016 US election. The case rests on the principle that, because a British company processed his data, Carroll is entitled under UK data protection law to receive the data a company holds on him even though he is a US resident. “The ICO’s decision will provide us all with answers about what Cambridge Analytica did with people’s data, how it was used and who it was given to,” said Carroll’s UK lawyer Ravi Naik.