Evidence of meeting #30 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was product.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Canada Policy Counsel, Google Inc.
Again, Mr. Chair, if we go through this process and determine that we can delete it asap, and that's what the commissioner wants, we'll go ahead and do that and we'll advise the committee that we've done that.
NDP
Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
The commissioner's report does say on or before February 1, so I don't think you have to wait till February 1 to do any of this, Mr. Glick.
NDP
Canada Policy Counsel, Google Inc.
I don't see any inherent problem with that. It all depends on availability. In this case in particular, for example, the committee wanted to hear from Google on very short notice, and it was important to us to appear because we wanted to be able to answer your questions.
NDP
Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
I do appreciate that you're here and I know you have limited time.
I want to ask some specific questions. For me there's the Street View, street imaging, mapping, cartography, photographic process. There's the payload data download. There's also the collection of Wi-Fi hotspots. I think the commissioner is working on the payload data issue with Google now, but I'm concerned about the Wi-Fi hotspots. Folks from the commissioner's office did identify that there could be privacy concerns around that, and you've raised several things today that I want to ask you about.
You said that many companies have done the gathering of Wi-Fi hotspot data detection; they've done that process. It's not only Google. Do you know how many companies have done that?
Canada Policy Counsel, Google Inc.
I don't know the names of all the companies globally or in Canada who do that, but there are certainly quite a number of companies operating in Canada, at least that I'm aware of. By the way, there's a way that this could be done through what's called crowd-sourced data. If you Google public Wi-Fi hotspots, one of the first sites you get is a map that people have created themselves, based on publicly available software that does I think something similar, which is that you open it up on your computer and you can drive around and create and upload it to a public database and you can make that available. That data can be licensed by other companies.
NDP
Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
The technology that Google used to collect these Wi-Fi hotspots, was that their own technology developed by Google?
Canada Policy Counsel, Google Inc.
I think it's based on well understood practices in the industry. How this is done, I don't--
NDP
Canada Policy Counsel, Google Inc.
It was a program written by a Google engineer, but I think it was based on an open-source program.
NDP
Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
Has Google shared that program with other companies, do you know? Is it something that you've commercialized in any way?
Canada Policy Counsel, Google Inc.
Well, the open-source software is publicly available and you could download it in your office later today. In terms of the specific code at issue that collected the payload data, that code was examined by third-party auditors, and their report is available on our blog. We've made that report, as I think I mentioned in my remarks, available to the commissioner as part of her investigation.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
Mr. Siksay, I'm going to interrupt you. I think the witness has to catch a plane, so we're going to—
NDP
Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
Chair, point of order.
Chair, I do have other questions for Google, so I wonder if we could arrange for Mr. Glick, or perhaps Dr. Whitten, to appear before the committee at some point.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
That's something you could bring to the steering committee.
Mr. Glick is here in Ottawa, so it won't be a large imposition for him to come back before the committee.
I understand that you have a flight to catch, so we're going to suspend this part of the meeting. We have other committee business, but on behalf of all members of the committee, I thank you very much for your attendance here today.
If you have any brief closing remarks—if you don't, it's fine—but if you have anything you want to say....
I understand the analysts may be in touch with you regarding some technical issues but non-evidentiary. They will deal directly with you, sir.
Do you have any closing comments?
Canada Policy Counsel, Google Inc.
I'll just say thank you, Mr. Chair, for having me here today, and thank you to the members of the committee for your thoughtful questions.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
Thank you very much for your appearance.
We will suspend for 30 seconds and we'll come back in camera.
[Proceedings continue in camera]