The International Grand Committee on Big Data, Privacy and Democracy met for the second time last week, in Ottawa. The committee which is comprised of elected officials from several countries – including Argentina, France, Germany, Ireland, Latvia, Singapore, the United Kingdom, Ukraine and Canada – held discussions on ways to protect citizens’ rights in the age of big data. Invitations were sent to top officials from Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Instagram, Mozilla, SnapChat, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube to attend the three-day event.
Earlier, on May 7th, Canada’s Parliamentary Ethics Committee had voted unanimously behind closed doors to subpoena Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg to testify before the committee after Canada’s Privacy Commissioner had issued a report that Facebook had violated Canada’s privacy laws by sharing the personal information of Canadian Facebook users in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. (Facebook disputes the findings of the report). Zuckerberg, who had refused to attend the committee’s first meeting in the UK, and Sandberg failed to appear in Canada’s capital city, thus prompting MPs to take the highly unusual procedure to issue an open summons for them to appear before parliament should they set foot in Canada.
In the absence of senior officials from Facebook, and the other tech giants Google and Twitter, the committee heard testimony from lower ranking officials and several experts on the influence of Artificial Intelligence on large digital platforms and its subsequent polarizing effect and impact on democracy. The tech giant representatives were largely on the defensive whilst receiving a barrage of questions from the committee on the subjects of privacy, misinformation and inflammatory information.
“It’s not just the ads that get targeted. Everything gets targeted. The entire communications environment in which we live in is now tailored by machine intelligence to hold our attention,” testified Ben Scott, a Stanford fellow at the Centre for Internet and Society, whilst adding, “The more time people spend on the platform, the more ads they see and the more money they make. It’s a beautiful business model, and it works.”
Jim Basillie, the retired co-CEO of Research in Motion (RIM) – the company that produced the BlackBerry smartphone – and chair of the Centre for International Governance Innovation also appeared before the committee, noting that his perspective on data governance was from the point of view of a capitalist and global tech entrepreneur of thirty years and counting.
Basillie observed that while most people were familiar with the iconic BlackBerry, it was really a platform business which connected tens of millions of users to thousands of consumer and enterprise applications, via 600 cellular networks in over 150 countries. He explained that RIM had understood how to leverage Metcalfe’s law of network effects to create a category-defining company which made him very familiar with multi-sided platform business model strategies, as well as a grasp of the navigation between business and public policy.
Basillie, whose fortune from tech entrepreneurship is estimated at several hundred million, offered very telling and disturbing thoughts on the problem of data governance.
“… among the many valuable insights provided by whistleblowers inside the tech industry is this quote: “the dynamics of the attention economy are structurally set up to determine the human will.” Democracy and markets work when people can make choices aligned with their interests. The online advertisement business model subverts choice and represents a foundational threat to markets, election integrity and democracy itself. “
“…technology gets its power through control of data. Data at the micro-personal level gives technology unprecedented power to influence. Data is not the new oil – it’s the new plutonium. Amazingly powerful, dangerous when it spreads, difficult to clean up and with serious consequences when improperly used.”
Basillie concluded that the current domestic [Canadian] and global institutions, rules, and regulatory are not designed to deal with any of these emerging challenges and since cyberspace has no natural borders, the effects of digital transformation cannot be sealed within national borders, international coordination is critical.
The tech entrepreneur offered several recommendations to the committee including banning personalized advertising during elections, the implementation of strict data governance regulations for political parties, whistleblower protection and the formation of an international body to deal with the challenges posed by digital transformation.
Basillie’s summation of the burgeoning crisis is worthy of further reflection, “Technology is disrupting governance and if left unchecked could render liberal democracy obsolete. By displacing the print and broadcast media in influencing public opinion, technology is becoming the new Fourth Estate. In our system of checks and balances, this makes technology co-equal with the executive, the legislature and the judiciary. When this new Fourth Estate declines to appear before this Committee – as Silicon Valley executives are currently doing it is symbolically asserting this aspirational co-equal status. But it is asserting this status and claiming its privileges without the traditions, disciplines, legitimacy or transparency that checked the power of the Fourth Estate. The work of this International Committee is a vital first step towards redress of this untenable current situation.”
