Information & Ethics Committee on Nov. 27th, 2012

[Robert Sherman]

When you choose to delete your information after that period, we begin this process that we call active deletion. That sends a message to the various places on Facebook that store information about you so that we can provide service to you. What happens is the content is deleted or logs that have identifying information are removed. We may keep logs that are anonymous to you beyond that time, but the idea is generally that the information will get deleted. No system is perfect, but we do everything we reasonably can to make sure we honour that commitment.

[John Carmichael, Conservative, Don Valley West, ON]

You said you start a timeline. What's the timeline?

[Robert Sherman]

The timeline is the 14 days after you submit a deletion request.

[John Carmichael, Conservative, Don Valley West, ON]

Okay, so I've done that, I've bypassed that, I've come back to you, and I've said I want out. I can push a button and effective at that point you will delete all the information I have put on your system over the course of our relationship?

[Robert Sherman]

We'll delete or anonymize that information. In some cases we're not able to find all the places and delete the content, but we can remove links to you individually, so that when we delete your account we won't know who that information is associated with, and it won't be accessible on our site.

[John Carmichael, Conservative, Don Valley West, ON]

Right. Okay, thank you.

I was just chatting with my colleague here, and we talked about the privacy and user agreement. One of the concerns we've had, as we've participated in this study, is that these user agreements seemingly are not at all user-friendly. You talk about them being layered. I understand that. It appears to me that it's simply an all-or-nothing proposition: either I accept it or I don't. If I accept it, I'm in. If I don't, I go away.

I'm wondering, with technology today, why Facebook, as the leader in this industry, wouldn't provide levels of agreement for users who want to take the time to work through an agreement with you to participate in your programs.

[Robert Sherman]

It's an important point, and it goes to one of the issues we spend a lot of time thinking about, which is user control, and making sure people have the ability to make the choices that are right for them about how their information is used.

We don't give people the choice to accept certain portions of our terms of service but not others, largely because it would be very burdensome for us. It wouldn't be efficient for us to give people those options to negotiate and to provide different versions of Facebook for different people. Given the fact that we're now at a billion users, it would be prohibitively difficult to do something like that. That said, we build robust controls into our product that allow all our users to make decisions on how they would like specific pieces of information used.

[John Carmichael, Conservative, Don Valley West, ON]

Madame Borg talked about her music. She doesn't want to share that particular interest with a particular advertiser. You have a section here that says you're going to share that data with your advertisers within....

Now, I understand that business concept. I would consider myself more of a nominal user, but I would think that younger folks today are going to have very definite preferences about what they do or don't want to share when you get into that type of agreement.

I'm wondering why, number one, you wouldn't allow that type of.... I hear you on efficiency, but technology today surely allows the agility within your architecture for an individual who says she doesn't want to be advertised to for her music; she doesn't want to share that.

So why not?

[Robert Sherman]

I should clarify that if Madame Borg decides to share her music interests publicly, then obviously anybody in the public can see it.

[John Carmichael, Conservative, Don Valley West, ON]

Then it's gone, yes.

[Robert Sherman]

If she doesn't make that decision, if she chooses to share it with friends or something more narrowly, that's not information we will give to advertisers in an identifiable way unless she separately agrees to allow us to do that.

[John Carmichael, Conservative, Don Valley West, ON]

That's within the privacy framework.

[Robert Sherman]

That's within the privacy framework. What we might do is use that information to determine that she might be more interested in seeing ads for classical music than rock music, for example.

[John Carmichael, Conservative, Don Valley West, ON]

I hear you, but—

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Mr. Carmichael, your time is up. I would ask that you wrap up quickly.

[John Carmichael, Conservative, Don Valley West, ON]

I just got started.

Thank you.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

That's the rule for everyone.

So, Ms. Borg has the floor for five minutes.

[Charmaine Borg, NDP, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Thank you very much.

I am pleased to be able to ask another question. We obviously have several, but we need to be very selective.

You have changed your data use policy frequently. The most recent change was on November 21, so quite recently. There is obviously some attempt to keep things up to date, based on the current context.

Do you think the most recent policy reflects the concerns and many complaints from users and the international community about Facebook? I'm talking about legal action, complaints to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, to the Federal Trade Commission, and others.

[Robert Sherman]

As you point out, we make efforts to update our data use policy on a regular basis. We consider it to be a guide to privacy on Facebook, so we want to provide information to people that's current and that reflects the way our site currently works.

Many of the changes that we do make to the data use policy are in response to feedback we've received from policy-makers. As an example, the most recent round of changes...right now, the one that you referred to, that's dated November, has not been adopted. It's a proposal that we've made to our users and we're seeking comment on it. But the one that's currently effective actually reflected a number of specific pieces of feedback from the Irish Data Protection Commissioner's office. There were areas where they thought they were comfortable with our practices but wanted us to be very explicit in our data use policy about how those worked, so we updated the policy specifically in response to that feedback.

[Charmaine Borg, NDP, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Thank you.

Once again, I would like to thank you for being here and agreeing to testify as part of this study.

We also had an opportunity to ask questions of a Google representative. Unfortunately, the people from Twitter have turned down our request to have them come and appear before us.

So I will take the opportunity to present the following motion:

That the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics request that the committee Chair write an official public letter inviting Twitter to testify to the committee in the scope of its study on privacy and social media at their earliest possible convenience.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Thank you, Ms. Borg.

First, I will say that the motion is in order and that it is related to what we are currently talking about. I don't know if you want to discuss this. I must also mention that Twitter was raised when we were in camera.

I am sorry for this interruption, Mr. Sherman.

I don't know if the committee members want to discuss this motion in public right away or wait until after Mr. Sherman's testimony. I think that would be most appropriate, since we have not discussed it publicly, unless we have unanimous consent to deal with it otherwise.

Mr. Angus, you have the floor.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you.

I certainly want to thank Facebook for coming. I think it's been excellent.

We've had Google here. We're almost at the end of our study, and—I don't think this is controversial—we can't really say we've done a full study unless we've heard from Twitter.

I don't think we're suggesting that Twitter isn't going to come, but I think we won't have a full sense unless we have the main players. We really appreciate the support we've had so far, so we'd just like to end by saying that we need Twitter, and then I think people will know that we have a study that's done its work. We've heard from a good variety of voices. We should be putting this study to bed.

So I'd like to hear from Twitter. I invite my colleagues to just say let's invite them. Then it's on the record that we've asked them, and we can finish our study.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

I see that no one else wants to speak. Are you ready to vote on the motion?

Mr. Warkentin, you have the floor.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

Out of respect to our witness here, I think it would be helpful if we completed the testimony. I don't think there's any disagreement generally about this, but I think we'd like to have a longer discussion about it in terms of what we'd be instructing the chair to do, at which time I think we could deal with it.

Out of respect to our witness, I think we need to finish up and then we'll move on.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Mr. Angus, please be brief.