05/29/2019
On May 29, 2019 I attended the International Grand Committee on Big Data, Privacy, and Democracy meeting held by the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. Members of this committee include: Bob Zimmer, Nathaniel Erskine Smith, Charlie Angus, Frank Baylis, Mona Fortier, Jacques Gourde, Hon. Peter Kent, Michel Picard, Raj Saini, and Anita Vadenbeld. The focus of this meeting was to hold media platforms and other similar service providers accountable for their use of consumer data and privacy. The committee was particularly interested in talking to the CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg did not comply with this request and the government of Canada has now subpoenaed him. The committee was also not successful in securing the attendance of other high level players. They wanted the CEOs of Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google to be in attendance. These companies provided security and privacy experts for the event who often did not have the information that the committee needed.
The committee members focused on the following topics during their questioning of the representatives from the tech companies: competition law, user profiles, predatory pricing, antitrust practices, the transferring of private user information, sand boxing, data breaches, data portability, diversity, digital monopoly, ad exchanges, consent, and anti-union practices.
Questioning was often targeting competition law. The tech company officials did not have the expertise to answer this line of questioning. The companies were then interrogated on their management of user profiles. Amazon confirms that they track individual purchases. However, they deny this gives them an advantage over 3rd party sellers that use their platform. Amazon was accused of predatory pricing as well. The committee viewed them as a monopoly and would like to further investigate them in relation to anti-trust law. The amazon representative claimed that they have no expertise in this area and declined to answer the questions.
The next line of questioning was targeted more towards the Google and Microsoft representatives. They were asked if they transfer user information through their independent businesses. They would neither confirm nor deny if they partake in this practice.
The committee requested that these companies share their privacy practices. They questioned the representatives on why they would do business with Facebook if they knew information was being used in a corrupt manner. Apple claimed that being in business with facebook was not a choice. If they did not allow the app on their devices users could access Facebook through their website. There would not be an effective way to bar Facebook use. Relating to privacy practices, Amazon was interrogated about a recent security breach which they denied having knowledge of.
Another topic this committee looked into was foreign interference. The representative from Singapore inquired about ad transparency. During her question time, she made it clear that companies like Facebook would rather sell advertisements than protect the United States from Russian interference.
The companies were also put in the hot seat over the amount of diversity they hold. Those who program influence the algorithms with their social identity. We need people other than white young men in charge of programming otherwise the world will continue to only cater to them. Consent was another central topic. Should consent be implied, contextual or placed in the content? The companies did not have concrete answers on this.
Attending this committee meeting exposed me to the complexities of large technology companies and the freedom they currently hold in the use and misuse of our data. The representatives from these major companies did not provide sufficient evidence to convince me they have our best interests at heart. In fact, they spent most of their time dodging answers and using superfluous language to waltz around difficult topics.