Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I thought I would just set out the nature of the work we're doing in the United Kingdom at the moment.
Our inquiry is slightly different in scope from yours. It's looking at the use of fake news and disinformation and the disruptive impact they have on elections and democracy. A particular focus in recent weeks has been the use of data in targeting voters with particular pieces of information, the lack of transparency of that and how it's done and, in particular, the legality of some of those practices, particularly if information about people's political views is being held by private companies and consultantcies and being used in campaigns directed toward them.
We are conducting our inquiry as a parliamentary committee, and therefore as a consequence of that work, there's been a particular interest for us in the work of Cambridge Analytica, SCL, and AggregateIQ, particularly because of AIQ's work in the European referendum, the Brexit referendum in the U.K. We have particular interests in that area.
We're also working quite closely with the U.K. Information Commissioner. She is conducting an investigation into these matters, as you know. In particular, she is looking at the use of data in elections. She'll be producing a policy report on that later this month, as well as conducting what are now criminal investigations of certain individuals involved in this work. The U.K. Electoral Commission is also conducting an inquiry into some of the questions around the way in which the leave campaigns were run and whether there was coordination between them in the U.K. during that same referendum as well.
We have three separate inquiries going on. They overlap in places but will report separately.
Certainly for my committee, our main interest at the moment, as part of our disinformation campaign, is looking at the way data is used to target the information of people on social media.