Information & Ethics committee  Who checks on which...? Sorry?

Information & Ethics committee  It's our own internal analysis.

Information & Ethics committee  I think it's because we were convinced that having the data in one place was the best way to ensure that it was safe and secure. That was important to us. It was also important, I should add, to the Privacy Commissioner. She mentioned in her report that it was important for the data to be safe and secure and for Google to have stored it in a safe and secure manner.

Information & Ethics committee  As far as I understand it, that's the case. I should add.... We covered this last time, but I'll just give you a bit of perspective in terms of the amount of data for Canada. My understanding is that, roughly speaking, it's the amount that could be stored on a USB thumb drive that you could purchase at Best Buy for about $50 in terms of the total quantum of data.

Information & Ethics committee  I don't have a running scorecard. I don't mean to be flip, but I'm not familiar with all of the proceedings that have happened globally with respect to this. I can tell you that globally there have been, as I said before, investigations by data privacy authorities throughout the world, and various of these have different levels of authority.

Information & Ethics committee  I think that should be fine. If there's a problem with that, I'll let you know.

Information & Ethics committee  If a problem arises, give me till the seventeenth.

Information & Ethics committee  As far as I understand it, that's the case.

Information & Ethics committee  Sorry. That's.... To be clear, yes.

Information & Ethics committee  Sir, I can report back that what we said was we would “bake in the blur” one year after the publication of the imagery, and as far as I understand it, we've done that successfully.

Information & Ethics committee  No. “Baking in” is a term of art; I think maybe I invented it. I'll claim credit in any event, even if I didn't. So for a year there would be, as you say, two corpuses of data, the public data to which the blur is applied, and the data held internally. At the end of a year, post-publication, there is no longer any data that has unblurred imagery in it.

Information & Ethics committee  I did hear it, Mr. Chair, and I'd be happy to undertake to answer the member's question in writing. I should say, thought, that the process we've gone through here in Canada is being played out in other countries of the world, and as investigations conclude in those countries and a similar analysis is undertaken, the answer may change.

Information & Ethics committee  The Canadian Privacy Commissioner said that the data should be destroyed presuming that we don't have any legal obligations to otherwise preserve it.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, but I want to clarify this. The destruction, as I understand it, happened at the time that we notified data privacy commissioners globally, so it happened in the late spring.

Information & Ethics committee  The Privacy Commissioner of Canada, in her letter of findings, said that the data should be destroyed to the extent that there aren't any other legal obligations to preserve the data. She was clear about this in her report. Actually, my recollection is that when she testified before this committee, her evidence was that there might be reasons beyond the control of her or of Google that would require the data to be retained, and that an analysis has to be done to ensure that the other obligations we would have are met.