Information & Ethics Committee on Feb. 5th, 2021

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

Gentlemen, I have a number of questions for you. I have taken a breath and I am fully aware, as a legislator, that we have a huge responsibility when it comes to protecting personal information.

Bill C-11, which seeks to protect digital privacy, will be before the House shortly. While we have good intentions, fraud is on the rise. In the Internet age, there is clearly a loss of control. This is our job. I'm going to stop lecturing and I'm going to ask you some questions.

Here's what I understand. An individual who wants to do business can use your system and share content using Viewshare mode. The more views there are, the more revenue they will get. So they can upload content to the site, but that content can be removed quickly, at least that's the way it used to work. In the meantime, some individuals may have already downloaded the content, and may be able to edit it under a false name. For some reason, your high-tech Safeguard system cannot identify those individuals. If that content has been viewed a number of times, it could end up on the platform, even if it has been removed, for any reason that does not comply with the conditions.

Am I to understand that uploading and downloading is a big problem with your model?

[David Tassillo]

Thank you, Ms. Gaudreau.

I'll try to answer as quickly as possible, because there were a couple of questions.

For the first part, you made reference to our Viewshare, which basically would allow people who had put content on the site to actually partake in it. A person whose identification we do not have or who is not part of the model program actually cannot partake in that. It's not like a random person can upload something to the site and get paid for it. The system doesn't work like that. You'd actually have to be part of the model program or part of the content partner program, in which case we'd either have signed contracts, the 2257, or have the identification of the individuals who actually uploaded it.

I wanted to ensure that at least that was understood. You can't just put it up and get a cheque randomly for anything you put up on the site. The system doesn't work that way. It would just be too open to fraud.

To your other concern, about the upload, removal and then re-upload, as we said before, we were dealing with a third party vendor for many years, and we are still dealing with that third party vendor. What we saw is that over a long period of time, with many variables in the video exchange—which could happen when you re-encode it or basically reprocess the video—it could be harder. When we created SafeGuard, we had that in mind.

We actually do a frame-by-frame analysis. Basically, in one second you have 30 frames. We actually analyze the frames, so if we have to reconstitute the image.... Now, obviously there are algorithms and stuff like that, to enhance it. We saw it as an issue, and that's why we started developing this two years ago. We're finally ready to get it out. We're using it on photos already. It will be made available for videos within this month. Then we're going to make it available to any other website on the Internet that wants to use it. We not only saw an issue with that, but there also wasn't a centralized—

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Thank you.

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

I have one last question before I run out of time.

I would like to hear what you have to say about the conditions—

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

I know. I do apologize. We've gone over time by a considerable amount now.

We have to go to Mr. Angus for his turn.

Mr. Angus, go ahead.

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

Thank you so much, gentlemen. I'm very pleased to hear you talk about how one of these horrific child abuse videos is too many and how you share our concern, but in October 2020, Pornhub was asked by a respected Canadian journalist about the allegations of child pornography on your site, and Pornhub's position was that they were “conspiracy theories”. That was repeated again, I believe, in December.

It was when MasterCard and Visa threatened to pull out their support and you had to flush 80% of your content that we started to see these changes.

To say that this was conspiracy theory, I think, is a real disrespect for the families who have gone through this, because your link searches before the changes included “13-year-old”; “12-year-old”; multiple variations of “middle school”—and in Canada, middle school is grades 7 to 9—“assault”; “drugs”; “exploited black teen”; “drugged teen”; “runaway teen”; “homeless teen”; “abused teen”; “teen destroyed”; “teen manipulated”; “stolen teen sex tape”; and “crying teen”. Each of these videos would have been viewed by your team of experts and given the flag to go ahead.

I want to go back to the question I asked earlier on subsection 163.1(3) of the Criminal Code, which says that it is an offence to transmit, make available, distribute, advertise or sell child pornography in any of these forms, and it is a 14-year sentence. At any point when you were promoting these links of 12-year-olds and runaway teens, was there a conversation that you were actually breaking Canadian law?

[David Tassillo]

Thank you, Mr. Angus.

We're just going off the textual nature of what you've given examples of. If there was anything with “12-year-old” in the title, that would be immediately prohibited out of the gate, irrespective of what was actually depicted in the content.

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

You're not saying that was what was being promoted on the site and—

[David Tassillo]

I'm saying there would not be a video with “12-year-old” in the title.

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

Okay. So then when we have—

[David Tassillo]

That would be irrespective of—

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

—examples of “teen destroyed”, “stolen teen sex tape” or “crying teen”.... I'm not making this up, sir. This is what—

[David Tassillo]

I'm not insinuating that.

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

—has been given to us from people who've actually documented your site.

[David Tassillo]

I'm not insinuating that you're making it up.

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

You told us that people view this and document it. There should be a system in place, because what is being promoted—or at least was, up until December—was criminal activity that you would be culpable for. Are you saying that there was—

[David Tassillo]

I respectfully disagree that it's criminal activity—

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

Okay. You're saying that it's not criminal activity to have “12-year-old” or “middle school”—

[David Tassillo]

I'm not saying it's.... That's not what I said at all.

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

I only have a second here, so—

[David Tassillo]

I said using the word “teen” is not criminal activity. That's what I'm insinuating.

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

Okay. Well, in Canada, under 18 is child pornography, so based on the links I showed you—

[David Tassillo]

As I attempted to explain before, the word “teen” is actually—

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

Based on the links I've shown you—