Information & Ethics Committee on June 12th, 2018

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Nathaniel Erskine-Smith]

Let's begin.

Thank you, Mr. Silvester, for attending today. Before we begin with your opening statement, I do want to make it known that this committee issued a summons to your colleague, Mr. Massingham, and he has clearly refused to attend in the face of that summons.

Mr. Angus.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I am very concerned that Mr. Massingham has refused a summons by our committee. I feel that we're going to need to discuss this. We don't need to discuss it in public right now, but I think we should be referring this to the House to get instructions regarding his refusal to attend this hearing.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Nathaniel Erskine-Smith]

We have an extended meeting this morning with Mr. Silvester. I would propose that we spend some time in camera discussing how to proceed and how we might go about referring the matter of contempt to the House.

We've discussed this before, Mr. Silvester. Before your opening statement, the clerk will swear you in.

[Jeff Silvester, Chief Operating Officer, AggregateIQ]

I, Jeff Silvester, do solemnly, sincerely, and truly affirm and declare the taking of any oath is according to my religious belief unlawful; and I do also solemnly, sincerely, and truly affirm and declare that the evidence I shall give on this examination shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Nathaniel Erskine-Smith]

With that, you may begin your opening statement.

[Jeff Silvester]

Thank you.

Good morning. Thank you for inviting us back to speak with you today.

As you are already aware, due to personal health reasons, Mr. Massingham is unable to attend. He asked me to pass along his sincere regrets for not being able to join us here today. If there are any questions that I'm unable to answer, he asked that I take those back to him, so he can reply as soon as he's able.

As the chief operating officer, I can assure you, though, that I can speak for AggregateIQ on all matters.

We've been entirely co-operative with this committee. After our last appearance on April 24, we immediately followed up and provided many documents related to the questions you asked. Your chair also asked us to preserve documents in a letter dated May 3. In our response on the 10th, we told the committee that we had already preserved the documents in the context of our cooperation with the Information and Privacy Commissioner of British Columbia and the federal Privacy Commissioner. We respect the important work being done by the privacy commissioners and this committee, and wish to continue a constructive dialogue in support of that work.

With respect to our discussion with you on the 24th, we were completely accurate and truthful. I didn't get a chance to answer every question in as much detail as I would have liked, given the time constraints, but I do stand behind every answer.

I would like to raise my concerns about the wildly speculative comments that some have made about AggregateIQ. I'm even more concerned that this speculation about my company has been taken as fact by others. Speculation by third parties does not constitute fact. I ask that you not rely upon rumours, innuendo, and speculation.

Once again, I'm here to give you the facts about AggregateIQ's work. There are a few points that I would like to state again.

We are co-operating with the investigations of the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of British Columbia, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, and the U.K.'s Information Commissioner's Office or ICO. In fact, I met with the ICO, after my meeting with the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee in the U.K. I just spoke to the ICO's investigators again last week. We're in touch on an ongoing basis. I hope that the information we have provided and will continue to provide to them will be useful in their investigation.

To be totally transparent, we provided your clerk with our correspondence with the ICO. To the extent that there may have been a misunderstanding between us and the ICO, I'm confident that any misunderstanding has been cleared up.

With regard to our work on the EU referendum, some of you expressed concern last time about our receiving a donation from Vote Leave, for the work we did with BeLeave. This donation was always public. The Electoral Commission in the U.K. found that, in March of 2017, no further investigation was required into the donation by Vote Leave-BeLeave. On March 15 of this year, the U.K. High Court confirmed again that a donation, whether of cash or in kind, was entirely allowed under electoral law in the U.K.

With regard to the allegation during Brexit that AggregateIQ used the Facebook data that was allegedly improperly obtained by Dr. Kogan of Cambridge Analytica, Facebook has confirmed in their testimony and in writing to the U.K. DCMS committee that this was not the case. We have never had access or even seen the allegedly improperly obtained data, nor would we have any interest in doing so.

With respect to the allegation that BeLeave used three of the same audiences as Vote Leave during the referendum, Facebook confirmed in their letter that those groups were never used by BeLeave. When this came up before the U.K. DCMS committee, I told the committee that I would look into it right away. I immediately investigated the circumstances and provided a very clear and detailed explanation to the committee later that night, along with evidence that these audiences were not shared with anyone at BeLeave. Indeed, they were never used. I'll be happy to provide that information to this committee, when I return to my office.

There are so many other areas where AggregateIQ has been misrepresented, and I'll expect that I'll have the opportunity to discuss many of those here today with you, but I thought I'd provide a couple of examples.

When he was here under oath, Mr. Wylie stated that it was “true that AggregateIQ was not part of SCL. It was a separately registered company in a separate country.” While his statements seem to have changed over time, we have consistently stated the facts. We are 100% Canadian owned and operated, and we are not a part of any other company. AggregateIQ does not become part of SCL simply because we've done work for them. AggregateIQ does not become part of SCL, simply because some unknown person with SCL created a phone list or put our name on a website. AggregateIQ does not become part of Cambridge Analytica because someone makes a draft document with Cambridge Analytica in the header. Even The Guardian has had to admit that they did not intend to assert that AggregateIQ was part of SCL or Cambridge Analytica.

Mr. Vickery has appeared before this committee and the U.K. DCMS committee to float various speculative theories, based on what he's seen or what he think he's seen. Mr. Vickery's comments and tweets have made it clear that he is not an expert in the work that we do. Mr. Vickery has gained unauthorized access to our code repository. Were he simply to have made note of what he saw and let us know about the issue, that would have been fine, but he broke his own practice and downloaded the information he found there. In doing so, he may have broken the law.

As part of our investigation, we found a number of instances where Mr. Vickery's actions do not align with what he said publicly, and we'll be passing that along to the appropriate authorities.

I look forward to your questions in continuing our discussion. The work you're doing here is very important. I hope we can be of assistance.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Nathaniel Erskine-Smith]

Thank you very much, Mr. Silvester.

The first seven minutes go to Ms. Vandenbeld.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Thank you very much for being here again today.

I want to address some of the things that we have heard from other witnesses. When you came before the committee before, I asked you about the psychosocial profiles that were used on Facebook to target certain audiences. I asked if you still had any of these scores in your database. Your answer to me was, “We're not a data company so we have no interest in any of that.”

When I asked Mr. Vickery about that, he said that you have a great deal of interest in data. He said that there is data within that hard drive that he provided to us that proves that many of your statements were incorrect, and he said he was really surprised that you would state those things.

Given that the committee is now in possession of the hard drive, did you want to revise that statement?

[Jeff Silvester]

No.

The information, as I said before, was correct. We're not a data company. We don't sell data and we don't sell access to data. We provide software that uses information and data, but it's not information that we sell to clients or transfer between one party or another. It's only the information that's provided by the client for use with that client. No, I wouldn't change my statement at all.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Okay.

You never retained data and used it for one client or another?

[Jeff Silvester]

We've never taken information from one client and shared it with another client.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Who owns your intellectual property?

[Jeff Silvester]

Our intellectual property is owned by us. We also have clients who, at times, ask us to write software that they want to own at the end of the contract, in which case we will have a contract that includes them after having paid us. If they're happy with the product, we transfer the code to them, and then they own that code.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Mr. Wylie told us that you have one client, your client is SCL, and that your intellectual property is owned by SCL.

Is there any ownership arrangement in terms of your data?

[Jeff Silvester]

In terms of our which?

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Mr. Wylie told us that all your intellectual property was owned SCL.

[Jeff Silvester]

That's not accurate.

We did have a contract with SCL in 2014 for the creation of the political customer relationship management tool. At the end of that contract, they paid us and then they owned the code for that tool. With respect to other work, we have done some work with SCL where we retained the ownership of the code. We've done work for other clients where they would like to retain ownership after the code.... That's a standard process for contracts in software development.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

How many clients have you had?

[Jeff Silvester]

From when we began? We have less than 100, but—

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Are those are clients specifically of AIQ, not clients of SCL, where you were doing work through them?

[Jeff Silvester]

With SCL, for example, we did work for a number of their clients as well, but it was all through SCL. With SCL, for example, we started with Trinidad and Tobago. That was one client. Then we did some work during the mid-terms—and there were a variety of campaigns during the mid-terms in 2014—and then we worked with them on the presidential primary after that. We also have our own clients completely separate from that.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Outside of the clients that you have through SCL, how many of your own clients would you have?

[Jeff Silvester]

Right now?

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

At any point.

[Jeff Silvester]

It would range depending on the situation. When we first started out, we only had a few. More recently, we had quite a few more. Right now, we've got a small number of clients. We have less than 10 right now.