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.
Liberal
Anita Vandenbeld Liberal Ottawa West—Nepean, ON
You've never taken data that you gathered through one client and transferred it and used it for another client?
Liberal
Anita Vandenbeld Liberal Ottawa West—Nepean, ON
You told us the last time that you have access to turnout scores or ranking scores that you had received through SCL, and that you used that to determine who to target on Facebook.
One of the things that we've heard is that, rather than just using Facebook's tools of demographics and age groups that you've mentioned to us, you've actually uploaded custom lists to Facebook. Is it true that you've taken custom lists? If you did, where did you get those lists from?
Chief Operating Officer, AggregateIQ
Yes. We have used custom lists.
The majority of the advertising we do is through the demographic type of group-based advertising that we're speaking about. We have taken lists from clients and uploaded them to Facebook or Google in order to advertise to those lists. Those lists might be things like volunteers. If you're trying to advertise to people who might have come and said that they would be a volunteer, you might send that message to remind them how important it is to volunteer. You might also use that in Facebook to expand your audience, so that when you upload that first audience and start advertising to it you can then.... It's called a “lookalike audience”. It makes the audience look bigger, based on what Facebook believes is connected to all that. We'll do that as well.
Liberal
Anita Vandenbeld Liberal Ottawa West—Nepean, ON
Have you ever used the same custom list for more than one client?
Chief Operating Officer, AggregateIQ
During our work with SCL, I can't be certain they didn't provide us the same list for two different clients, but because we did a considerable amount of advertising with them, I'd have to double-check, and I don't have access to Facebook right now to be able to do that. But when I do, I'll look into it. That wouldn't have been at the same time. It would have been perfectly allowed if.... I'm not certain if it did or didn't with respect Brexit or anything.... No, we've never used the same list.
Liberal
Anita Vandenbeld Liberal Ottawa West—Nepean, ON
You would not have used the same custom list for two clients during the Brexit campaign, for instance.
Chief Operating Officer, AggregateIQ
Yes, we did custom audiences like that for Vote Leave, but we didn't use them for any of the other clients.
Liberal
Anita Vandenbeld Liberal Ottawa West—Nepean, ON
Were those custom lists based on psychosocial profiles with data that was gathered by SCL?
Chief Operating Officer, AggregateIQ
No, none of the information that SCL ever used or provided to us was used in anything to do with Brexit.
Liberal
Anita Vandenbeld Liberal Ottawa West—Nepean, ON
You're maintaining that the way you targeted people was largely through Facebook's own tools, which you could go through, or through lists that were provided by volunteers or others from SCL.
Liberal
Chief Operating Officer, AggregateIQ
The information that we used in providing advertising services to SCL's clients would only have been from information provided by those clients or by SCL for those clients. All the advertising we did on behalf of either Vote Leave or BeLeave or veterans or DUP was only to be used in information that was provided by those specific clients.
Liberal
Anita Vandenbeld Liberal Ottawa West—Nepean, ON
If SCL was giving you the same data for more than one of their clients, that means SCL themselves were keeping data from client to client.
Chief Operating Officer, AggregateIQ
In the United States, for example, in one election you might use information that is required to be kept separate for that particular election but they theoretically could have used that list again in another election later on. It is possible.
Liberal
Anita Vandenbeld Liberal Ottawa West—Nepean, ON
You were using data. You were targeting people on Facebook. You were given data through SCL and you knew that SCL was using the same data for multiple clients, and you never questioned where that data came from or whether there was some link between them or whether they were maintaining data they shouldn't have maintained from all clients?
Chief Operating Officer, AggregateIQ
All of the information that we received from SCL was in the form of a list that was consistent with what a regular voter list would look like. For example, they would give us a list of names and email addresses for a campaign—the people who live in the area where that campaign was going on—which they were legally entitled to do, just as you get a list from Elections Canada. They would have created a smaller version of that and given it to us.
Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Nathaniel Erskine-Smith
We've got to go to Mr. Kent for the next seven minutes.
Conservative
Peter Kent Conservative Thornhill, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Silvester, for appearing before us again today.
To continue the line of questioning by Ms. Vandenbeld, when Christopher Wylie appeared before us he said:
You can't build a targeting platform that doesn't have access to data, because then what are you targeting, right? One of the things I provided to the DCMS committee here in Britain is an email from AIQ that specifically references searching the SCL databases on the Ripon project.
He said,
Frankly, I'm surprised and really disappointed that Jeff Silvester and Zack Massingham have decided to try to obfuscate or hide what happened. You'll have to ask them why they are taking this line, but in my view, that's just not true. What value would they offer, then, if they did not use any of the data?
How would you respond?
Chief Operating Officer, AggregateIQ
First, we're not trying to obfuscate or hide anything. We've spoken to this committee, to the U.K. DCMS committee, and to the Information Commissioner of the U.K. The U.K. Electoral Commission, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, and the Information and the Privacy Commissioner of British Columbia have asked us questions. We've provided all the information we could provide to each of them. They're looking for still more information that we're working on getting, and we'll continue to do that.
With respect to the idea that you need to have some huge dataset to launch a national advertising campaign, no, you do not need that. The tools that Facebook and Google provide are all you need to get started. Campaigns will use data, as I described to Ms. Vandenbeld, about your supporters or the people who have signed up on your website or whatever that happens to be. Yes, depending on the situation, we'll use that as the campaign's direction.
Conservative
Peter Kent Conservative Thornhill, ON
How would you explain Mr. Wylie's allegation? He is presumably fully aware of what you need and how it works.
Chief Operating Officer, AggregateIQ
I'm not aware of Mr. Wylie's experience when it comes to advertising. He has asked us in the past if we could help with advertising for projects he was working with. His questions at the time seemed to suggest he was not fully aware of how these platforms work. He may have educated himself since. The assertion on his part that you need some huge database and information is not correct.