Information & Ethics committee  What you've rightly discovered and highlighted is that this is what the people who worked in this company thought AIQ was. It's not just the view of one person who might have got it wrong; this seems to be a consistent view about what this entity is.

Information & Ethics committee  To be clear, we have looked at issues connected with the referendum because they have been relevant to our inquiry, but we're not investigating the referendum itself. The Electoral Commission is investigating these issues, and the Electoral Commission will be the body that will determine whether it believes laws were broken and, indeed, will recommend what should be done next.

Information & Ethics committee  Indeed.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, I do. There obviously will be different countries that have different rules in place, but I certainly think that rules on transparency would be much effective if they could be enforced across the board. I think there are the same or similar rules in all countries relating to how they use services like Facebook.

Information & Ethics committee  Absolutely. Thank you.

Information & Ethics committee  I think we have a similar area of concern, which is that when complaints are made to Facebook about content on their site that is misleading or wrong or that might be harmful, the company doesn't always take it down at all, or quickly enough. That would suggest to me that they don't have the resources in place to do that effectively.

Information & Ethics committee  I think it's really important that that they have the ability, not just to request documents and information, but to go and take them if the company refuses to provide them. The powers to fine should be significant. I think we should also discuss whether it should go beyond that, as well.

Information & Ethics committee  If that had been paid by Vote Leave? Yes, that—

Information & Ethics committee  I was surprised by that, too. I thought it was one of the most interesting and significant moments in that testimony. To me, it seems to be a pretty clear violation.

Information & Ethics committee  At this moment in time, I think people need to see it laid out in front of them. They need to see the proof and the evidence of what took place, the scale of it, and how many people that may have impacted upon directly. That would then inform a debate about what we should do about it, and the consequences that are clearly greater than just taking action against individuals for breaking the law.

Information & Ethics committee  I think you've got strong grounds to call AIQ back in your own right, obviously, because of the concerns about the testimony they gave. I had hoped we would be able to agree to hear them very soon. I hope that we'd be in a position to announce that next week and they would give evidence to us before the end of this month.

Information & Ethics committee  We know that he said there were links in the dataset to advertising networks that would therefore be engaged in commercial work. The way he describes the way the dataset is collected, it would certainly have that application. You effectively have a store of information about people that's linked to their profiles.

Information & Ethics committee  I think we have to recognize this for what it is, which is a new kind of threat. My concern sometimes is that the work our governments do looking at cybersecurity is to defend institutions and infrastructure from direct cyber-attack. Have we been looking for this more subtle approach of undermining democracy and public confidence in institutions through, not a direct cyber-attack, but by using data information to try to influence the outcome of elections?

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, I do. We're in a similar position with Alexander Nix. We want him to come back, because we believe there are serious questions about the honesty of his testimony to the committee, and we want to challenge him on that. I watched the session that you had with AIQ. Obviously, my dark concern there was with the answers they gave about their co-operation with the Information Commissioner.

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you.