Information & Ethics Committee on June 12th, 2018

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Okay. On the second point, there's some similar data showing that Ripon querying data called for psychographic targeting based on high openness, extroversion, high neuroticism, and high conscientiousness. What other psychographic targeting do you do, for which clients, and on what campaigns?

[Jeff Silvester]

We don't do any psychographic targeting. The information you're speaking about were scores or rankings that were provided to us by SCL for their clients.

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

This is within your Ripon....

[Jeff Silvester]

Yes, I'm just about to get to that.

We created their political CRM that they call Ripon. Within that, it had the ability to display those scores or rankings that SCL created, so the client could go and look at those values. Insofar as we wrote code to allow it to be displayed to the client....

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

But you wrote the code for these values, did you not?

[Jeff Silvester]

We wrote the code to display the values. We didn't find the values, or make the values, or anything like that—

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

I don't understand what that means.

You have in your code certain criteria, certain values. I'm a coder, but I just want to understand. You have certain codes or certain values that you've written into a program. Now you're saying that they didn't work or.... Explain it to me.

[Jeff Silvester]

Sure.

A political CRM has a database underneath it. For that database, and certainly the empty database, we wrote code for a client to look at that database. The actual data that was in that database was provided by SCL. They told us what the values were and what they would look like. For example, with respect to that psychographic scoring, it was a number between zero and one. What we got were five columns. In each column there was usually a number between zero and one, so from zero, 0.5, 0.7....

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Are you stating that for SCL, for this specific project, you had these values, but these values were not available in other projects?

[Jeff Silvester]

They were available in the projects that we worked with SCL on. They asked us to use their Ripon tool that we wrote for them. We haven't used them anywhere else.

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Okay.

You have this code, Ripon. You have used it for other campaigns and for other clients.

[Jeff Silvester]

Are you talking specifically about the Ripon code?

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Yes, Ripon.

[Jeff Silvester]

We have only used it for SCL clients.

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

You have given the Ripon code to SCL, but SCL could have used it for other people.

[Jeff Silvester]

After we've finished working with it, they could use it for....

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

You wrote the code with what SCL told you to write the code for, but you don't know where else it could have been used.

[Jeff Silvester]

Yes. I would be surprised if I used it anywhere else.

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

You would be surprised.

Why was it written in the code then. What was the purpose? Did you not have a query as to why you were writing this in the code?

[Jeff Silvester]

Well, no.

We knew they were making some type of data analytics program, and they told us what—

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

You knew there was political targeting, did you not?

[Jeff Silvester]

It was for politics, so yes.

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Didn't it sound odd to you that you're using psychographic profiling with this sort of...? If you look at the high-openness, extroversion, neuroticism factors, did you not find that odd? You weren't doing a psychology experiment; you were doing political work. Did you not find that odd that you were writing code? A client has asked you to write code for certain things. Did you not find that odd?

[Jeff Silvester]

It's certainly new, from a political perspective.

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

This code has been used for political purposes, then.