Professor Levin probably has more expertise on this than I do, but I think the important thing....
I used the phrase, when I made my submission, about there being both a front end and a back end. In terms of answering your question on where this information goes, I would first want to connect this to something that Professor Gautrais said. He had talked about, both with Facebook and Google Street View, there being some things he's just not that worried about, not that concerned about—for example, if the street view mobile is going in his neighbourhood when he's taking out his garbage. Certainly I understand and see those as comments about the front end. The back end is where these difficulties are.
Your question is a fantastic one, and it's one that I don't think any expert you could call in Canada would be able to answer with adequate precision to satisfy it, or at least as I would want to have an answer to that question. One of the reasons for that is precisely because—as I tried to sort of hint at with my actual trip to Facebook, where the first thing I was asked to do was to sign a non-disclosure agreement—much of the value of that information.... And this does not result in free transactions with Facebook, as you are paying dearly through the costs associated with that personal information. Much of the value of that information is laden with the idea that it's information about things we don't necessarily know about.
It's really important to understand here that one of the things that make that information so valuable, and it therefore gives us a sense of what's happening with it, is that this information is being utilized to create sets of what we might call “social categories”. We're all being placed in social categories, on a daily basis, on the basis of information-processing.
I know that a number of you as members of Parliament often fly to your constituencies. Air Canada, for example, will know very well if you're an elite passenger, a prestige passenger, or just a regular, everyday passenger. You will be put into a social category that, for example, in that instance will allow you to see different flights that are available on the plane, etc.
When I fly and the woman next to me says “Oh, we're so lucky we got this row with the extra legroom”, I know that she may be lucky, but I'm not that lucky: the reason I got that row with the extra legroom is that I fly a lot. Air Canada knows that, and it rewards me with the ability to choose that flight. She got the crammed-in seat in the corner, but she got a bit of extra legroom. She thought that was a matter of luck.
The point I want to make is that the information is used to put us into social categories, and those categories affect our day-to-day lives. In some cases, it's where you get to sit in an airplane, if you get a good seat or a lousy seat. In some more serious examples, choices are being made about us that could have discriminatory effects to the extent that Professor Levin was talking about.
The point is that all of these information and social media companies and other information brokers will partner with whoever they want to in order to make lucrative arrangements, the purpose of which is to do things to connect those bits of information in order to create certain kinds of profiles about us so that they can put us into categories for certain purposes that benefit us, etc.
As to how, exactly—those details would not be something that you would be privy to, or I would be privy to, unless we were to somehow summons these people and make them speak under oath about it. I signed a non-disclosure agreement. There are some things I know that I can't actually tell you without you taking greater powers to get that.
The real point is that this is so much a mystery from our end; the part that's not a mystery is the part that we know, which is that social categories are being created. Those are the things we should be concerned about.