Evidence of meeting #117 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 vote.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:35 p.m.
Conservative
12:35 p.m.
Conservative
Peter Kent Conservative Thornhill, ON
Thank you.
Mr. Massingham, I'd like to come back to the report of the U.K. parliamentary investigation and the piece of information that sort of widens our discussion here. The committee report says:
[W]e have also found evidence that AIQ used tools that could scrape user profile data from LinkedIn. The App acts similarly to online human behaviour, searching LinkedIn user profiles, scraping their contacts, and all accompanying information such as users' place of work, location and job title.
Is that true?
12:40 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, AggregateIQ
Could you go back to the start of that question?
12:40 p.m.
Conservative
Peter Kent Conservative Thornhill, ON
Well, the British parliamentary committee says that they have evidence—and I guess we may hear more about this as their investigation continues and they get to their final report sometime this fall—“that AIQ used tools that could scrape user profile data from LinkedIn.” Then it goes on to say that the app acted “similarly to online human behaviour, searching LinkedIn user profiles” and scraping their contacts, places of work, and other identities.
Did you develop that app?
12:40 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, AggregateIQ
I don't believe so, but Jeff would probably be the best person to speak to about what is in our AIQ repository.
I know that within our AIQ repository there were a number of items that were either in progress or open source tools that were developed, which we were looking at to experiment with, or things of that nature. I couldn't speak to the particular functionality of what it is that you're—
12:40 p.m.
Conservative
Peter Kent Conservative Thornhill, ON
But your company is working on the development of data harvesting from social media.
12:40 p.m.
Conservative
Peter Kent Conservative Thornhill, ON
That would seem to be what the U.K. parliamentary committee has concluded.
12:40 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, AggregateIQ
I think that's a mischaracterization of what might be there.
12:40 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bob Zimmer
Thank you, Mr. Kent.
Next up is our last questioner of the day, Mr. Erskine-Smith.
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
I'm not going to ask you what you read this time.
Let's take the Vote Leave campaign. When you receive information, what format do you receive that information in? You mentioned that it's not raw information from Facebook, as it were.
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
12:40 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, AggregateIQ
In Vote Leave? For the purposes of advertising?
12:40 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, AggregateIQ
Yes. I'm just trying to answer the question as best as I can.
In the instances that they might have transferred supporter information, it would have come in potentially in an Excel sheet, but that would only be for a very small number of people.
When they asked us to help with the development of their database tool, I think the transfer was done through some other mechanism. I'm not sure there was even a transfer. It might have just been allowing my guys access to servers. But I think Jeff would be able to speak to that.
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
Accessing servers doesn't tell me you have a format of the information at all. That's a brutal answer.
Okay. Do you do anything....? In the Vote Leave case, did you ask if the data that was shared with you for the purposes of your work, for your advertising, was lawfully obtained?
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
Okay, no, no. Did you ask Vote Leave officials if the information was lawfully obtained?
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
Jeff did. Okay.
Is that a standard thing, that in every instance you'll ask if the information was lawfully obtained and if they have the right to use it?
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
Okay.
I'm going to pass my time to Mr. Baylis.
