Evidence of meeting #113 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was know.
A video is available from Parliament.
Chief Operating Officer, AggregateIQ
I didn't believe their investigation was closed.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
I asked you a question. Would you wonder how I came to the conclusion that you're not co-operating?
Chief Operating Officer, AggregateIQ
I would wonder why you would state that we said we wouldn't answer any questions.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
If I asked you a question and you said, “We are not subject to the jurisdiction of your office.... We consider our involvement in your office's investigation to be closed,” you would wonder why I would think you're not being “entirely” co-operative?
Chief Operating Officer, AggregateIQ
They may not have liked all of the answers—
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
There were no answers. You just told them that you're not co-operating.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
Let me be clear. You would wonder, if I got that, why I would think you're not co-operating.
Chief Operating Officer, AggregateIQ
No. I would wonder why you would say that we refused to answer questions.
Liberal
Liberal
Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Nathaniel Erskine-Smith
There will be more time.
We'll go to Mr. Kent, for seven minutes.
Conservative
Peter Kent Conservative Thornhill, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
When he appeared before us, Mr. Wylie said of the past several months of discussions, the claims and counterclaims, the contradictions, and so forth, “The way I look at it...Cambridge Analytica is the canary in the coal mine.” Would you agree with that statement by Mr. Wylie?
Conservative
Peter Kent Conservative Thornhill, ON
With respect to election manipulation and using improperly obtained data.
Chief Operating Officer, AggregateIQ
I don't know what he meant by it. I don't know.
Conservative
Peter Kent Conservative Thornhill, ON
As he went on to explain, he basically said that what has been exposed “is how easy it is to misappropriate information, take funds from mysterious sources, and then go and interfere in elections, particularly in cyberspace.” He said what it really shows “is how the Internet and the growing digitization of society have opened up vulnerabilities in our election system.”
Do you believe that vulnerabilities have been opened up by the Brexit leave campaigns and the way they were—
Chief Operating Officer, AggregateIQ
No, I don't believe so. Everything that was done with Vote Leave and BeLeave and the others was all publicly reported. In that respect, I don't think there's any problem there. They could certainly look at their electoral laws and whether they're appropriate or not, but that's for them to decide.
With respect to the use of the Internet, there are some genuine concerns. People can advertise from anywhere in the world. If the advertising platform let's them do it, they could attempt to advertise during an election without having to meet spending limits, or whatever it happens to be. However, Facebook has already put in place measures to prevent that. I imagine other advertising providers will be doing the same.
There is certainly more work that can be done. I'm hopeful that will happen.
Conservative
Peter Kent Conservative Thornhill, ON
Mr. Wylie suggested that one remedy might be if Facebook were willing to document all of the advertising placements—who placed them, and when, and the origins—as much as they can determine who made the buys.
Chief Operating Officer, AggregateIQ
I understand that's exactly what they're doing. I'm not Facebook, but I understand that they are. In the United States, for example, they're requiring people to provide some enhanced identification to show who they are. They're giving people all the information about political advertising. You can go and look at all the ads they've run, who ran them, and all of that. All of the information—by which it was chosen for a particular audience, and that sort of thing—is going to be or can already be found by people on Facebook.
Conservative
Peter Kent Conservative Thornhill, ON
One of the major areas where suspicions have been raised about motivation, means, and manipulation has been the different corporate entities in different parts of the world and different jurisdictions—the cloud, the location of servers, the storage of data, and the destruction of data at the end of certain contracts. With the European Union's general data protection regulation that has come into place.... As you know, there's discussion here in Canada. The Privacy Commissioner has said that our current minimum adequacy should be upgraded significantly in some areas—perhaps not all—to match the GDPR. Would that change the way AggregateIQ's business model operates, in terms of domestic Canadian election work?
Chief Operating Officer, AggregateIQ
No, I don't think so.
With respect to GDPR, there are some changes. For example, they assert that an IP address and a time is personal information. That would prevent you from using things like pixel to show an ad to somebody who has previously been on your website, without knowing who they are. That would certainly change, but that would be implemented by Google or Facebook, or whatever advertising platform.
With respect to the work we do with clients, the services we provide would generally be the same, other than whatever specific regulations might go around it.
Conservative
Peter Kent Conservative Thornhill, ON
In terms of the ownership of individual, personal information and the new opt-in requirement—granting permission for subsequent use in any number of ways—and given your explanation that you don't know where a lot of the data models have come from and how they were obtained, wouldn't that then create new concerns or new protocols that you would want to follow to be sure that you aren't in the future dragged into something similar to the Cambridge Analytica-SCL-Facebook scandal?