Information & Ethics Committee on May 3rd, 2018

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

You've cautioned Mr. Zuckerberg that should he come to the U.K., within your jurisdiction, you would in all probability call him. There's a possibility of a subpoena, but in more general terms, will you consider recalling Facebook as your inquiry continues? You're obviously not satisfied with the answers you've received to date.

[Damian Collins]

No, that's right, and that's why when I wrote to Mark Zuckerberg on Monday, it wasn't just to formalize the requests and to notify him that we would summon him if he didn't respond but also to set out in writing the questions that remain unanswered from the evidence session we had with Facebook. Some of them are on really serious issues, which we do want answers to.

One of the things we have not talked about so far today is this whole question of dark ads. I asked Mike Schroepfer whether, if someone sets up a Facebook page, and posts dark ads that can only be seen by the people receiving the ads and the person who put them up, and proceeds to put up thousands of these during a campaign, and as soon as the campaign stops, deletes that page and all the content with it, there is any record that it ever existed. He said he didn't know.

If the answer to that question is no, that is really serious. That is a massive breach of our rules, and it gives people massive power to impact what people see during an election campaign. They don't have to declare it and there'd be no record that it ever took place.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

To Mr. Gourde's question, if the commissioner's findings are that in fact the Brexit vote was stolen, one has the very large question of whether another vote must be held, or could be held. What's the discussion in your parliament about that?

[Damian Collins]

Well, I think then people would want to see evidence that that had happened. Ultimately it would be for Parliament to decide whether it wanted another referendum or not. There are people who are calling for that, but that's largely because they just don't like the result of the first one.

I think this would inform a bigger national debate on what to do next, but at the moment I don't think there would be a consensus in favour of a second referendum.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

Thank you, Mr. Kent.

Next up for five minutes is Monsieur Picard.

[Michel Picard, Liberal, Montarville, QC]

Merci. I have a very simple question to start. Do you require an MLAT request in order to exchange information based on my colleague's request to have access to the hard drive, or will a simple letter from our chair suffice?

[Damian Collins]

I need to take advice from the clerks on that just to see how we can share information and whether we could do that without publishing the material. It may be better for you to request that information directly from Mr. Vickery. He's certainly indicated to us that he'd be willing to share information with you, but perhaps we can continue that discussion after this session.

[Michel Picard, Liberal, Montarville, QC]

We could.

With respect to your inquiry, apparently companies had access to documents related to Google. Are you aware of any implications for Google?

[Damian Collins]

No, we've not had information about Google data, Google information, being used, but we'd certainly be interested in looking at that if there is evidence of it.

[Michel Picard, Liberal, Montarville, QC]

In a broader approach to the problem, I'll give you an anecdote. In the 1950s in Quebec, there were some priests who said in their speeches that the sky is blue and hell is red. Apparently, they were referring to political parties according to their colour. If this is not fake news, it's at least propaganda.

The issue is freedom of speech. It's not new that we are bombarded with all kinds of fake news and false information. It's a technique used in World War II, and it's been going on for centuries. Although we end up with a situation where my information is used to provide me with all kinds of false information, there's nothing much I can do about it, since anyone can say anything they want. It's for me to believe it or not and make my decision based on my own knowledge.

It might not be moral, it might not be fine to exchange and exploit information in this way, but in the end I cannot do much about it. My problem is not the fact that I'm bombarded with all kinds of false information; my challenge is that I need to find a way to better monitor what people do with my information. Consequently, should I prohibit that and therefore put at risk other companies where the business plan is based on selling information for advertising and so on?

[Damian Collins]

There are a number of important points in that. First of all, I would create a distinction between pure fake news and what you might call “hyperpartisan content”. We know, for example, that the Pope didn't endorse Donald Trump. That is clearly someone spreading a known lie, and therefore I put that in a category of bad, harmful content that we want companies like Facebook and Google to act against.

There's then the question of hyperpartisan content, which could be bias or propaganda, as you say. The question is, do people understand why they're receiving it, and can they do anything about receiving it? These problems seem to have gotten worse since Facebook allowed advertising through the newsfeed. You can advertise straight into the newsfeed. I asked Mike Schroepfer this: If you didn't want to receive political ads, can you stop them? The answer is no. You can be targeted with political messaging, and there's nothing you can do to not receive it. You could receive many of these political messages that have been targeted at you based on psychological profiling that's been done—unbeknownst to you—of your interests, fears, and concerns, and you can't stop receiving them.

You may also not know who is sending them to you. What's been exposed in the Internet Research Agency's work is that what you thought could be a community group concerned about an issue you're concerned about is actually someone in St. Petersburg targeting you with propaganda, and you have no way of knowing.

There are questions there about how people can turn off political advertising for the newsfeed if they don't want to receive it, which is a policy issue for Facebook, but also to have more transparency over who is sending you information. If someone in my constituency in the election period got a leaflet from me through the door and they weren't a Conservative voter, they would weigh up what I'd said against the fact that I'm a Conservative. They would consider whether or not to believe it, because they would know that I have a biased political opinion because I'm a politician representing a political party. They could make that judgment based on knowledge. You can't do the same thing with this message on Facebook, because you don't know who is sending it to you.

Also, I don't think enough people understand why they see what they see. They see more of the content they engage with, so what they're seeing doesn't reflect a broad sweep of opinion; they're seeing only the opinions of the people they most agree with, and that's continually reinforced.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

Thank you, Mr. Picard.

Next up for three minutes is Mr. Angus.

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

Thank you.

When Facebook came to our committee, I was very surprised that for a corporation this big, we couldn't get straight answers from them either. They became aware of the effect of that Kogan app three years ago, but they proudly announced to us that three weeks ago they told Canadians that their data had been breached. That's a violation of Canadian law. They must have known it was a violation of Canadian law, yet it seemed that Facebook didn't seem to think they were bound by Canadian law until this scandal came to international attention.

In your discussions with Facebook at committee, how have you felt they've seen their role in terms of their obligations to European law, U.K. law, and domestic law?

[Damian Collins]

I think it's been a frustrating process dealing with Facebook. When we started our inquiry, we asked them for evidence of Russian interference in the referendum, and they refused to look. They said that unless we could find evidence that there had been, they wouldn't look to check for themselves. The frustration we've had is that if the Facebook ad-checking team allowed ads to be bought using foreign currency from a foreign country in elections in breach of election law—in America certainly, and to a very small extent that happened in the U.K. as well—why weren't they looking there too?

As you rightly say, there was no disclosure to the Information Commissioner in the U.K. of a data breach involving potentially up to a million U.K. citizens. If it hadn't been for the Guardian article, I don't think Facebook would have asked any questions themselves about this. All they did then was write to the people concerned and ask them to delete the data. They didn't notify the users who had been affected. Chris Wylie said that even when they were made aware of this, he wasn't contacted by Facebook for six to nine months asking if he'd still got the data and whether he should delete it. When they became aware of the fact that Cambridge Analytica was working on Ted Cruz's campaign and the Trump campaign, and yet they'd potentially have access to this dataset they shouldn't have had, there seems to have been no checking or double-checking to see whether or not they'd actually destroyed the data.

You see a pattern of behaviour that I think looks like a company seeking to turn a blind eye rather than get to the bottom of it.

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

Well, this is, I think, really concerning. Sandy Parakilas spoke to your committee. I raised some of Sandy Parakilas's concerns with Facebook Canada, and we didn't get a clear answer. He was really concerned about a growing black market in Facebook data, that black market could be used by terror gangs, corrupt people. I mean, the fact that the Kogan app has potentially had such a massive impact means that other breaches could be very serious.

Parakilas said that Facebook told him they didn't want to be looking into this because, he said, “Facebook was in a stronger legal position if it didn’t know” that the abuse was happening. Is that your experience in dealing with Facebook's response to the Kogan breach?

[Damian Collins]

Just to give a bit of background on the Kogan breach and Facebook, we took evidence in Washington from Facebook in February. We asked them about whether there had been data breaches, whether Cambridge Analytica had acquired large amounts of Facebook user data, and when there'd last been a breach. We didn't get answers on any of those issues. The company knew about this issue at the time. It didn't disclose it to us. They're not able to explain now why that was the case. With Mike Schroepfer, we asked about that at length when he gave evidence to us last week.

We find all of that deeply concerning, because I think what would have been an honest answer to those questions would have been to say, “Yes, we are aware of breaches by developers. This is what happened. This is the action we took. This is what we do to satisfy ourselves that this has been contained.”

Mark Zuckerberg was asked in Congress about other developers doing similar things. We asked Mike Schroepfer about this last week. There are still no answers from Facebook about that. I think the concern we share is that if it was so easy for Dr. Kogan to do this work, probably lots of other people could have done it too. And who else did it? Did Dr. Kogan work with other people? Did other people share those techniques? Was this practice quite widespread?

It wouldn't at all surprise me, in that regard, that there could be a black market in this sort of user data. I have not seen evidence of it yet myself, but if people like Sandy Parakalis are telling us that a huge amount of data was taken and no one knows what happened to it, then it wouldn't be at all surprising if it were being traded in that way.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

Thank you, Mr. Angus.

Mr. Collins, we did ask you originally if there was some information that we would need to go in camera for. I have talked to both vice-chairs on the committee. We still want to hold it in public, if that's possible.

Are you okay with that, or would you prefer to go in camera?

[Damian Collins]

No, that's fine by me. If at the end there are any issues you want to discuss in camera, I'd be happy to do that as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

Okay. Perfect. We'll continue on, then.

Mr. Baylis, you have seven minutes.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Collins. I'd like to continue along the line of questioning we were doing before.

First, who was in charge of Leave.EU?

[Damian Collins]

That campaign was led by Nigel Farage and supported by Arron Banks, a businessman. Andy Wigmore was the communications director of Leave.EU. There were competing forces in the U.K. seeking to get the nomination for or to be the official designated “no” campaign.

I believe the reason there ended up being these two entities is that Vote Leave seemed to be led by Euro-skeptic politicians in the Conservative Party and the Labour Party, and—

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Who was Vote Leave led by?

[Damian Collins]

Dominic Cummings was sort of the communications director, but the leading political figures in Vote Leave were Euro-sceptic members of the Conservative party and the Labour party. Boris Johnson and Michael Gove were the political figureheads of Vote Leave when the referendum was called, but the executive leadership, as it were, came from people like Matthew Elliott and Dominic Cummings.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

There are a number of names and different groups, but I really think there are three entities here. There are the Russians. There is the Brexit vote—call it Vote Leave, BeLeave, Leave.EU, Veterans for Britain, or DUP. Then you have a group called SCL, and you have Cambridge Analytica and AggregateIQ. So there are three groups.

It's my understanding that Leave.EU began the discussions with SCL and Cambridge Analytica before they won. They had already set in place a series of motions. Is it correct that they had begun these discussions?