Information & Ethics Committee on Feb. 5th, 2021

[David Tassillo]

Thank you, Madame Gaudreau.

At a personal level, I am obviously horrified by even one instance of it going wrong. It's why we put so much effort into constantly upgrading our systems. If you took a snapshot of the evolution of our policies at any even given time, compared to 12 months later, it would be like, wow, we've come so far.

That's why we've worked so hard over the last year to sign up all these different organizations and trusted flaggers. We're the first adult company to break into that barrier to create partnerships with NCMEC and Internet Watch Foundation. It's something we pride ourselves on.

Personally, I can't tell you how much—

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

You are speaking to me as a businessman, but if your child's life was over because everyone had seen content—

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Madame Gaudreau, I apologize, but you are out of time by a measure here, so we'll turn to Mr. Angus.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

We'll continue this later. I have another two and a half minutes left.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

You'll have a chance, I'm sure, to ask additional questions.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Mr. Angus, go ahead.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, gentlemen, for coming today.

Mr. Antoon, I want to follow up on my colleague, Mr. Erskine-Smith, to clarify how you deal with criminal content. You say you have no record of Serena Fleites, who was a 13-year-old girl trying to get content taken down from your site. She says she tried to pretend she was her mother because she didn't want her family to know, and that your organization insisted she provide photographs and evidence of who she was.

Don't you have that?

[Feras Antoon]

Again, with the limited information we have.... It is very surprising for me that she had to act like somebody else. Our procedure is exactly the same—

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

Okay, but you should have it on record.

This is the thing. Either you're suggesting Ms. Fleites lied...and I would say that would be a really dangerous thing to do because, in 17 years of hearing testimony, I found her to be a very strong witness. I would assume it would be fairly straightforward in your records...because we're talking about criminal activity.

I'll ask you this. Under your legal obligations in Canada, a company that becomes aware of content that is hosted on its servers must report that to the police. Do you have a record of reporting anything from that time to the police about a 13-year-old girl who said her images were being used on your site? You would have a police record, wouldn't you?

[David Tassillo]

Mr. Angus, if I can just jump in, I just—

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

That's—

[David Tassillo]

I just wanted to answer, as I had a little more information about this. That's all.

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

Well—

[David Tassillo]

If that's okay...or I can wait.

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

Did you report it to the police?

[David Tassillo]

I can take a step back and explain it. There's an insinuation that the information isn't available. The information.... We might have records of this. We have never said that she's lying. We just don't know. What Feras was trying to explain is that with the limited information, a first name and a last name, she might have—

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

She said that she was forced to give her photograph and information to prove who she was.

[David Tassillo]

That is contrary to any of our policies and procedures—

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

You're saying that's not true. Okay, but then—

[David Tassillo]

I'm not saying it's not true—

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

Okay. I'm going to ask—

[David Tassillo]

I would.... Can I answer—

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

No, because I don't have much time here. It's a question of whether or not you reported it to the police, because those are your legal obligations.

Let's talk about 14-year-old Rose Kalemba, who was kidnapped and tortured and raped. Her video was on your site, and she begged you to take it down. Do you have a record of Rose Kalemba begging you over a six-month period, trying to get the rape and torture video of her taken down off your site?

[David Tassillo]

If she sent any email it will be.... Well, we do have an email retention time, but if there is a record.... We have basically knowledge of the video, when it was live and when it was disabled, so we could go backwards and reconstitute the time from when the video was up to when the video was taken down and we do keep all the take-down notices, so we could reconstruct that. That's what I was trying to reference the—