Information & Ethics Committee on May 3rd, 2018

[Damian Collins]

Yes, and they were more than discussions. We were taught by Brittany Kaiser that Steve Bannon introduced Cambridge Analytica to Arron Banks. That was the connection there. They worked up detailed plans about how Cambridge Analytica would run the referendum campaign for Leave.EU if they got a nomination.

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

So Leave.EU starts this process, a quite detailed process, to use this company. I'll call it SCL, Cambridge, or AggregateIQ. It's one company. We can say that.

They start this discussion, but Nigel Farage loses out on the official designation, and it drops to Vote Leave.

Suddenly, Vote Leave shows up at SCL, Cambridge Analytica, AggregateIQ—this one company—to request exactly the same services that have been put in place by Leave.EU. Is that correct?

[Damian Collins]

Yes, that's correct.

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

So it would be fair for me to say that Leave.EU and Vote Leave were completely coordinated in using this company to do their dirty work.

[Damian Collins]

Well, there you have an area of dispute, a quite violent dispute, between Leave.EU and Vote Leave, who have both been adamant in saying that there was no coordination between them. Indeed, Arron Banks and Dominic Cummings in particular are often trading blows on social media—

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

I'm sure they are because to my understanding, if they were coordinating, they would have broken UK law.

[Damian Collins]

That would be correct.

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

There are a series of potential, how should I say, coincidences that belie logic and are not reasonable.

We know that Leave.EU starts this process, and they get heavily into it, but they don't get the money. The money goes to Vote Leave, and suddenly, Vote Leave continues the exact same process. They can be in violent disagreement of how it happened, but we do know this has happened.

Then, they off-shore it to a small Canadian company, AggregateIQ, whose CEO was also listed as the CEO of SCL Canada, so it's the same company. Cambridge Analytica is between them, but it's the same company.

They start doing work for Vote Leave. They start doing work nominally for BeLeave, but paid for by Vote Leave, and they don't even deny that anymore. Veterans for Britain shows up; DUP shows up, all for this unknown, small Canadian company offering nothing of unique value. We asked them very clearly whether there was some special skill that would bring them across the ocean to the far end of our country. They said there was nothing special.

That one group is coordinated, and it is my belief that you have to ask a lot of questions to see how your laws were broken, but they were broken. For this group to say they didn't know, and for them to put on a public display of being at odds with each other, is nonsensical because the facts are that they showed up at the same place to request the same services, and they off-shored things. They paid for these services, though, which means to me that you laws were broken—at least in the U.K.

The same thing is true now with the Russians showing up. The Russian government's former oil minister, who's now running Lukoil, is supporting Aleksandr Kogan, and he goes in and scrapes all this data off.

The question I'd like to ask is how did Aleksandr Kogan connect with Alexander Nix, the CEO of this organization? How did the researcher who stole this data...? He he had no right to do it, but let's say what he did: He stole this data. Suddenly, it's handed over to this company that's operating for Vote Leave, BeLeave, Leave.EU, all of these; it's operating for them. Do you know how those two connected?

[Damian Collins]

My understanding of that based on Chris Wylie's testimony to us, and also Dr. Kogan's written statement, which we published on our committee's site, is that Cambridge Analytica was working with academics at Cambridge University and through the Psychometrics Centre at the University of Cambridge. That was how the connection to Dr. Kogan was made. He was working there. He was someone they took an interest in. They started working on projects together. Dr. Kogan's company, though, was set up, it would seem, specifically to work on projects with Cambridge Analytica.

I think to your earlier statement as well, we also are interested in pursuing this exact line of questioning. That's why we want to get in Dominic Cummings, Arron Banks, and Andy Wigmore. We're interested in talking to them, too, about these issues to understand the points you have raised about how these relationships started.

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

Yes. I think you would be well served to start looking at them as one group. They are going to deny that because, if I understand their denials so far, they have not broken the law. The coincidences are beyond just coincidences. They are actively coordinating. The same is true for SCL, Cambridge Analytica, AIQ, or SCL Canada; they are all one organization.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

Thank you, Mr. Baylis.

Next up is Mr. Gourde, for seven minutes.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Among the people I know, there are some survey analysts. They are seasoned analysts, people who have experience and are retired. They tell me that Canadian attitudes seem to have changed over the past ten years. In the beginning of the 2000s and until 2010, they could predict people's voting intentions during electoral campaigns relatively reliably. Things changed slowly, that is to say less than 0.25% per day and sometimes they only moved by 0.1 or 0.2% a day.

These analysts now say, however, that since 2011, things fluctuate very quickly. Sometimes, over four or five days, you can see voting intentions change by 0.5% to 0.7% or even 1%. They tell me that that is no doubt due to the quick circulation of information today, and perhaps even to the impact of fake news, especially during the last 10 days of an election campaign, when there is no time left to react to fake news that may have an impact. The authors of that fake news probably target the undecided vote, and since things are circulated on Facebook, this reaches the entire population. Those who have made up their minds probably pay no attention. However, those who have not yet made a decision will pay particular attention to the most recent news sent by a political party or a third party discussing a position or an issue that could influence their voting intentions.

Historically, the media have been somewhat ethical in their treatment of fake news and did not publish it. Traditional media such as newspapers, television and radio generally did not publish or broadcast news they had not checked. However, on Facebook, it is impossible to check the information and it is possible to put out just about any news about anyone. During an election campaign, those rumours find their way around.

Do you think it is possible to find a way of regulating this more quickly a few days before an election, if we notice that a piece of fake news may impact voters' intentions?

[Damian Collins]

This is obviously something that people are thinking about at this moment in time. Should we say there is a liability for the big tech platforms to act against known sources of fake news and disinformation, particularly during election periods?

We know that Facebook track their users activity, not just on the site, but on other sites too. I think they have the capability to identify people who are potential sources of fake news and disinformation, and to bar them from the site or to disrupt what they are doing. I think that would be an important step for us to take.

In France, they are discussing having a judge 24-7 that you can go to during an election who will give a ruling on whether something is fake news or not, and whether it should be taken down or not. We could, of course, go the German route, which they use for hate speech, in particular, where there could be heavy fines for organizations involved in the dissemination of disinformation.

I think this is going to be an increasingly important debate. In western countries I think we have been late to the party on this. If you talk to people in eastern European countries and the Baltic states and Ukraine, this has been an issue they have been dealing with for many years—and certainly Russian interference in their politics through disinformation.

We know with the new technologies and the power of augmented reality to create videos of your giving a speech that you have never given in a place that you have never been to, people are going to need trusted new sources. Also, we're going to need to do more, I think, to make it clear to people the trusted sources, the ones that don't have a reputation for spreading disinformation, and to identify and call up those that do.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

Thank you very much. Please know that you have the backing and full co-operation of all parties here in Canada if we can assist the United Kingdom. Perhaps we could innovate and develop a common approach or joint legislation to deal with this problem, and may even inspire other countries to follow suit.

I thank you very much.

[Damian Collins]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

Next up, for seven minutes, Mr. Angus.

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

Thank you very much.

UpGuard, in their analysis of the AIQ datasets, said that AIQ used Amazon web servers.

Have your officials looked into any possible use by Cambridge Analytica or Aggregate of third-party service providers such as Amazon web servers, where maybe unexamined information may still exist?

[Damian Collins]

That's not something we've done as a committee. I don't know whether the Information Commissioner has done that either and whether she has made a request of Amazon.

I think you're right to suggest that the third-party hosting platform companies may well be holding important data that could be relevant to those inquiries.

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

Yes.

UpGuard had identified GitHub, Amazon Web Services, and also Facebook as maybe having relevant data that may need to be be gathered, caught, and preserved in order to be able to find out what's going on, particularly with SCL closing up shop.

Would you have the powers within your committee to order access to that data, or do you go through your privacy commissioner?

[Damian Collins]

It depends. We got the GitHub and GitLab data from Chris Vickery. If we want to go in camera at the end of the session, I could probably tell you a little more about the discussion we had with Chris Vickery about that.

We can order papers, documents, records to be supplied to us within the jurisdiction of the U.K. The issue we would have would be seeking to order the production of materials that are being hosted outside the U.K.

The Information Commissioner is probably better placed to do that, as she has the power to work with other law enforcement agencies in other territories, and to work through them in the normal way. I know that the Information Commissioner has been discussing requests for information with Facebook. I don't know whether they've had this conversation with Amazon as well.

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

One of the things that was surprising was to read in Chris Wylie's comments and testimony about SCL his claim that his predecessor had been killed in, I think, Kenya. He said that people are afraid and intimidated. He said that they work internationally on some very suspect campaigns in order to influence governments and that that's where the real money was.

We found Mr. Massingham to be very reluctant to say anything. Do you think there is any credibility in Mr. Wylie's claims about SCL, that people are afraid of them?

[Damian Collins]

Well, I can understand that.

When we spoke with Brittany Kaiser about SCL's work in Nigeria, for example.... Now we know from information that Chris Wylie provided to us that there were very violent films made for that campaign. They seem to have employed a group of consultants to work on the ground who were ex-secret service agents from Israel. We don't know, and no one seems to know very much about, their background or what they were doing, but certainly looking at some of the materials from that campaign, it looked particularly unpleasant.

This is an area that, whilst it gets away from the core bit of our inquiry, I think there are lots of concern that have been raised about the ethics of the work that was being done. Indeed with Cambridge Analytica, Alexander Nix, and the investigation done by Channel 4 News in the U.K., the undercover filming where they were talking about hiring sex workers to compromise politicians in different countries to try to influence the results of an election campaign, says a lot about the ethics and practices of a company like that.

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

Well I'm looking at this Emerdata spreadsheet of their corporate structure, and you say that apparently nobody is at the address. Almost all the SCL main directors are now at Emerdata.

Johnson Chun Shun Ko, who is also a director, is apparently tied with companies connected to the Chinese government, and is also a business partner with Erik Prince, who is well known for international mercenary work.

What do you think the potential is for maintaining quaint little things like democratic elections in our countries when we have very, very powerful companies that are starting to move into this data control? We saw it with SCL; we saw the effects in Brexit. If we see these new companies being formed with connections, whether to the Russians or the Chinese state, or to international mercenaries, what do we have to do to ensure the integrity of our domestic electoral systems?

[Damian Collins]

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?

There could be different motivations for people doing that. Is the motivation of the company doing that—using, as we've been told, what would be considered weapons-grade information warfare in other countries and our own country—just to make money, or is it about political influence?

For the Russian state, it seems that their modus operandi is to create discord, to turn communities against each other. They may not necessarily have a direct political interest in the outcome, but they want to create as much disruption as possible to undermine people's confidence in democracy.

It could be that these actors may have common but separate interests. I think they've recognized that you can use these tools, particularly on social media, to support these campaigns and also to polarize political debate and opinion. The consequence of that has been, in many countries, particularly in Europe, the collapse of the centre in politics, people pushed increasingly to the margins, and political debate and discourse being increasingly aggressive. I think we have to recognize this as a major threat to democracy.

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

Thank you.

Finally, if you've read the transcripts of our testimony with Mr. Massingham, I would say that in my 14 years here, I've never seen someone refuse to treat our parliamentary committees with respect and give straight answers.

Do you think it would be worth our while to invite Mr. Massingham back to answer some more questions?