Evidence of meeting #20 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was rcmp.
A recording is available from Parliament.
11:45 a.m.
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Has the technology ever been used to provide supplementary information that would have become lawful evidence for the granting of warrants? In other words, could this information be used with three degrees of separation in order to get lawful warrants?
11:45 a.m.
C/Supt Gordon Sage
No, it hasn't.
11:45 a.m.
Conservative
11:45 a.m.
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank our witnesses for appearing.
I'm a little disturbed by the lack of forthcoming answers to some of the questions committee members have put forward so far.
I'd like to ask the RCMP if they've ever sought any legal opinion, outside of the RCMP, on the use of FRT in ongoing investigations.
Can anyone answer?
Mr. Sage or Mr. Séguin, can you answer?
11:45 a.m.
Director, Strategic Services Branch, Technical Operations, Royal Canadian Mounted Police
No, the RCMP has not. The only one was from the Department of Justice and internal to the RCMP.
11:45 a.m.
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB
Just to backtrack a bit, we had the Privacy Commissioner here. His report on Clearview Technologies said the RCMP did not satisfactorily account for the vast majority of searches it made. The RCMP disagreed with the Privacy Commissioner's conclusion that they violated the Privacy Act concerning Clearview AI.
Does that position still stand today at the RCMP, after the hearings this committee has undertaken over the past month?
11:45 a.m.
C/Supt Gordon Sage
Yes, it does.
11:45 a.m.
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB
Do you believe, then, Mr. Sage, that the RCMP is more familiar with the Privacy Act than the Privacy Commissioner?
11:45 a.m.
C/Supt Gordon Sage
We presently have an employee working at the privacy commission. We've done a work exchange. As we develop our new ways forward, we have a member located within their office, and we are asking for one of their employees to be with our office in order to strengthen that knowledge and relationship. We do have a member there presently to help us.
11:45 a.m.
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB
Wouldn't having somebody from the Privacy Commissioner's office seconded to the RCMP indicate that the RCMP is quite concerned they are offside with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, who is definitely the most knowledgeable person on the Privacy Act and the protection of personal information?
11:45 a.m.
C/Supt Gordon Sage
If we can learn from another agency in any way, we do. We encourage that. That's why we encourage having a member from their office located with us, so we can be integrated and produce a much better product at the end.
11:45 a.m.
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB
The RCMP has also contracted IntelCenter to use its database and IntelCenter Check on facial recognition technology. Are you aware of that, Mr. Sage?
11:45 a.m.
C/Supt Gordon Sage
No, I'm not.
11:45 a.m.
Conservative
11:45 a.m.
Director, Strategic Services Branch, Technical Operations, Royal Canadian Mounted Police
No, I'm not.
11:45 a.m.
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB
One of the concerns I have with facial recognition technology relates to all the false positives, people who were erroneously identified and targeted, often based upon their race. If it's so bad about giving us so many false positives, shouldn't we also be concerned, then, that it's wrong and giving us false negatives? Are people who should have been identified slipping through the system, especially with respect to things like child exploitation and missing persons?
11:45 a.m.
C/Supt Gordon Sage
We always look at avenues to find better technology out there. I would encourage any technology that can assist us in making things better in the child exploitation world.
11:50 a.m.
Conservative
11:50 a.m.
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB
Okay.
When we look at Clearview's technology and their unlawful scraping of images from the Internet, shouldn't we think that potentially this would lead to more harm than good when dealing with things like child exploitation?
11:50 a.m.
C/Supt Gordon Sage
When it comes to child exploitation, we realize that Clearview AI is not always correct. That's why we have a human intervention piece in there. It is absolutely critical to have a member actually view the results to see if they are true.
We did, in fact, test it ourselves, and we did find that false negatives were coming out of the program, so we're fully aware of that. If there is a better technology, that would be fine; however, you always need that human interaction and that human review process to take place. As we propose, in the future we will always have that, and it's absolutely critical.
Facial recognition technology is simply another tool in the tool box. It cannot be operated on its own, independently of any other processes. The human process is absolutely critical. The technology simply gets us to identify the victim in a quicker fashion. Traditional ways can then take over, but it will always be used with human interaction.
11:50 a.m.
Conservative
11:50 a.m.
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB
—technology is that false positives and false negatives ultimately could undermine the ability the process in a court of law.
11:50 a.m.
Conservative
