Information & Ethics Committee on Oct. 23rd, 2018

[Michel Picard, Liberal, Montarville, QC]

Google can do nothing with my information, because it's private.

[Colin McKay]

From our point of view, there needs to be a certain delivery of advertising to support the services. That's what makes the services available to all Canadians, not just to people who can pay subscriptions.

What we try to do is be as transparent as possible. That's why you're seeing so much information that may cause you concern. It is because we're trying to be transparent about what we know about you, as an individual—the information that you shared with us—and then, with regard to an earlier question, be transparent about when and if we share it with anyone else. We don't share it with advertisers, and in the case of law enforcement, we share it under certain conditions. We still behave in our users' interests to protect that information.

The reality is that you can operate using Chrome, Google Maps and most of our services without being identified as an individual and without having a Google account. It will just be a lot simpler, with a lot less detail that's relevant to you as an individual.

[Michel Picard, Liberal, Montarville, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

Thank you, Mr. Picard.

Next up, for another five minutes, is Mr. Kent.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Thanks very much, Mr. Chair.

Mr. McKay, not long ago the National Research Council warned the Government of Canada that Canada was at risk of becoming a nation of “data cows”, basically leaking or giving away some of our most valuable national resources to companies like yours.

I know that you've separated Google from your sibling company under the Alphabet umbrella with a lack of knowledge. However, surely when people like Ann Cavoukian criticize the mystery, the lack of information and the contradictions of things like de-identifying data or of privacy by design or by consent, you must be concerned—Google must be concerned—on how that reflects on your company and the very similar concerns mirrored by what we're seeing with the Sidewalk Labs controversy.

[Colin McKay]

I think I can answer to two separate points. You mentioned the NRC's observation about the use of data. I think that observation points to the wrong point in the process of innovation and creation, because data is not scarce and data is not a resource to be conserved; data is in fact readily generated by all sorts of activities and is available in many ways.

The true process of innovation is developing the tools and the services to be able to translate that into products and services. In that observation from that particular document, what's overlooked is how we at Google create tools and services that allow Canadian companies—and others around the world, in the case of TensorFlow—to use the insight from artificial intelligence research to drive product development based on their own datasets. Our artificial intelligence researchers also make available testing sets so that Canadian companies working in that field can evaluate the data available to them and use it more effectively, without involvement or possession or any benefit accruing to us other than using our tools.

On the other element about Sidewalk Labs and privacy, I joined Google from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner because there was already a path of deep introspection and product development on data protection and privacy. That has continued, and it's continuing apace. Through the changes I told you about this morning and in more to come, we're focusing on improving privacy and data protection for our users.

We've been in healthy conversations with Dr. Cavoukian in the past on these elements. As a company, we see ourselves pursuing a strong conversation around data protection and its evolution, whether within the context of civil society or commercial use. Sidewalk Labs is following one path, and we're following another. We have the resources available to put in place the protections I've described today.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Has the Privacy Commissioner of Canada been in contact with you or with Google as part of his investigation of the Cambridge Analytica-Facebook-AggregateIQ scandal?

[Colin McKay]

Not that I know of.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

All right.

How do you respond to reports such as the one from the Associated Press, which I think said that despite Google's statements, such as your statements here today about not following users when they request that Google make the break, in fact Google does continue to track users even when they don't consent to being tracked?

Is it a splitting of hairs that when people give the blind consent that we know many of them give when they accept conditions, they don't realize that this consent includes being tracked and having their data accumulated?

[Colin McKay]

I think I run the risk of your accusing me of splitting hairs, but realistically, we provide a control within your account on location tracking.

The reality of using mobile phones within a mobile network is that your mobile phone is constantly sending a signal about its location to the network. That data is available in a separate track, and we can only speak to how location data is being used within our network, within our constraints. If others are using the data that's being shared with the cellphone network, then that's something that I can't speak to, but there is a reality there.

As we discussed in May and again today, for the user, the interaction is often complex and the clarity is not evident. In that case, it needs to be further clarified.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Kent.

Just before we finish the round, we're going to let it go again. If there are any questions, they can be asked. We have until one o'clock. We also have some committee business at the very end for about 10 minutes.

Mr. Angus, you have three minutes.

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

Thank you very much.

I had the pleasure a number years back of meeting with employees at Google in New York. I have to say that in terms of a corporate structure, you have hired the best of the best, people I think are brilliant, people with a sense of a vision of where they need to go. I just want to have on the record how much I respect the employees at Google.

We saw recently that it has been employees at Google who have been challenging certain corporate decisions that are being made—for example, in Project Maven, which was the facial recognition project with the Pentagon for drones. People were not willing to participate in that project because they didn't feel it reflected the culture that Google was founded in.

Recently 1,400 Google employees signed a letter to raise deep concerns about Project Dragonfly in China, regarding the question of capitulating to the censorship and surveillance demands in exchange for access to the Chinese market. The letter says that it's a forfeiture of our values to go along with this project.

In the United States, we've been told that Google management has ordered that memo to be taken down. Have there been any steps in Google Canada to stop employees from speaking up about Project Dragonfly?

[Colin McKay]

I will address that with a general observation first.

I take great pride in the fact that I work at a company, as you've observed, in which employees are allowed to voice their opinions, including opinions about product strategy and company strategy. As you pointed out, product decisions are made by the senior leadership of the organization.

You mentioned Project Maven earlier. Project Maven, as it applies to the implementation of artificial intelligence, was part of the conversation around the development of our principles for the use of artificial intelligence, which was a collaborative effort across our engineering and product teams and leadership to clearly communicate how we were going to approach the development and implementation of AI.

With respect to the specific question you asked, there hasn't been direction like that in Canada.

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

I'm looking at the letter that was signed by Google employees. They were very concerned about capitulating to China in terms of setting up a search engine that would allow dissidents to be tracked. They said, “...we have not made clear what our red lines are in this area internationally.”

I raise this because one of the things that made Google such an exciting company when it was formed was that it had a policy of doing no evil, and it decided to drop that model. Now we see these deals with the Pentagon and the Government of China.

From a regulatory point of view, it's rather disturbing that a company with as much power as Google can make these decisions in the face of its own corporate culture, about which its employees are speaking up.

What do you think we should be looking at in terms of regulator oversight to make sure Google is not doing evil?

[Colin McKay]

We demonstrate through action, whether through the principles on AI or our transparency report, what our interactions are in a concrete and demonstrable way with those governments and what our intent is with products. We've moved on from a world where we had a very simple suite of products into one where we're pushing innovation and service delivery across a number of areas. That communication becomes more complex, but we continue to have that internal dialogue.

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

When you came here in May, we asked if there had been any data breaches, and you said you were not aware of any, yet in response to Cambridge Analytica, you said you had done this analysis of Google Chrome's data breach, and that had been flagged. The Wall Street Journal said that the decision had been made not to disclose this breach last spring partly because of fears that it would draw regulatory scrutiny.

Here we are, a parliamentary committee, and you came to tell us there had been no data breaches. Were you aware of that, or did Google's head office just not tell you there was a data breach that should have been disclosed to our committee when we invited you the first time?

[Colin McKay]

I think you're referring to the Google+ item that we discussed.

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

Yes.

[Colin McKay]

That was not a data breach. That was bug.

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

I'm not a tech guy, but I can read. Google said it was worried it would draw regulatory scrutiny. You came to our committee and told us everything was fine. Google knew things weren't fine. The question was about regulatory scrutiny. Were you made aware of that when you came here, or were you just splitting hairs and weren't telling us that?

[Colin McKay]

I was not aware of it when I appeared, and our evaluation determined that it was not a breach; it was a bug.

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

But you were worried about regulatory scrutiny.

[Colin McKay]

I can't speak for the authors of that memo.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

It looks like we have one more question from each party, so we'll start off with Ms. Vandenbeld and then go to Mr. Kent and Mr. Angus. We should be done then, but we'll see where the time goes.

Goahead, Ms. Vandenbeld.