Welcome to the second session of evidence today. We heard in the previous session and weretech companies joined by people who were leading the investigation and the search into the issues we were discussing in the first session. As the session goes on, we would certainly welcome any observations you have on the evidence we received from tech companies. I wonder if i could start first with david carol. In the session with facebook, there was a reference to the investigation the u. K. Investigation commission conducted. This is your case. I thought perhaps you could tell us something about it. My understanding is that you made an application to Cambridge Analytica for information they hold about you that is linked to the election period in america in 2016. Because at some point that data must have been in u. K. U. K. Office ishe looking into that. Area i am interesting sure will be interested in following up with the commissioner when we are back in the u. K. We welcome any insight you can give us about your case. Thank you for the opportunity to address the committee and share information about this transatlantic investigation. In february of 2017, i was advised that i could make a subject access request under the u. K. Data protection act to the company Cambridge Analytica because of reports they had been hired i various campaigns during the 2016 campaign season. That affords someone, if you have data that is being processed, that it can be provided to you. I received the data from the ofent company at the end and it was accompanied by a letter indicating they were compliant they were trying to be compliant to the u. K. Data protection act and some description of how the data was collected but nothing specific, some description of the kind of thirdparty entities that the data would be shared with but nothing specific, and an excel votersheet that contained Registration Information that tab of election returns relevant to my voting district and a panel called models which was an ideological model that tried to predict and analyze my political beliefs. It comprised 10 political topics that were ranked in order, it also try to compute my partisanship separate from my registered partitions ship and propensitympute my to participate. I decided to post this on twitter the day i received it while redacting my personal information. I soon was able to get a solicitor to represent me in the u. K. To challenge the compliance to u. K. Data protection act because we believe that the disclosure was not complete. At the same time, i was advised to file with the information commissioners office, which i did on july 4, 2017, which is a little bit poetic, and that was the ability to contribute to their Ongoing Investigation as companiesnalytics with reference to the election and the 2016 season. There is at least one u. S. Citizen who has filed with the ico and we have received updates that the investigation is far more complex than they anticipated. That hope to provide a report last fall, but as they dug deeper into it it became more and more complex. They are still working on it but we have received a followup that the investigation is coming along, it certainly has been useful to provide this information, also to the Senate Select committee on intelligence and others here in the u. S. Who are trying to figure out the companys role in 2016 election. The key idea is that u. S. Voter data appears to been processed in the United Kingdom and this is probably unprecedented. Why do you think that happened . Because of the construct of the ,ompany Cambridge Analytica the data has been processed outside america, are there any rules on the location of where data is stored and processed relating to politics in america . David it does not seem like u. S. Law was violated here. It really exposes how there are not sufficient u. S. Protections for voter data. It also exposes how u. S. Citizens do not have the same rights that u. K. Citizens and eu citizens enjoy, being able to get data controllers to disclose data held on them when they become a data subject. This experience has illuminated a lot of things, but one of the things that is most dark for us is that the u. S. Has inadequate protections in this regard. This is data that Cambridge Analytica is holding on you. Do you where the data is acquired from . David there was no indication of where they obtained the data and that is part of the insufficient disclosure, we should be able to know where did they get the data, how they process it, who did they share with, and do we have a right to opt out of it and have them delete the data and stop processing it in the future . You heard what facebook said in the earlier sessions about the right to request data and that Facebook Developers are required to give up any data they acquire from facebook users. Do you think it is as straightforward as that . I have myself downloaded my facebook data as they described and it is by no means a complete disclosure of all the data facebook has on a user. I also know that the company has pledged to try to be compliant with the general Data Protection regulations and will be launching new controls and new disclosures for users to try to be compliant with that new privacy regime. I look forward to seeing if users are able to actually get a complete profile when they download their data in the near future. , asf i could ask claire what was said in the previous panel, particularly what twitter said with regard to do you think it is irresponsible to have that attitude, if a major platform like twitter has an obligation to take down disinformation, that is an inhibitor in our efforts to try to combat issues like disinformation which we regard as being a social harm . The root of get to the question in this goes into what youre saying. It is interesting to hear american colleagues saying First Amendment, which has not come up yet in this discussion. Most of this information is not true or false and it is somewhere on a spectrum. We take specific examples and we want to say that seems wrong. Thisruth is the scale of and the issues around where many people believe there is not an obvious truth, it makes it much harder. The issue of where we know something is 100 inaccurate, how to we talk about that . At the moment it gets to this question of definitions when we are talking about this huge ctrum, we cannot talking we cannot stop talking about regulations and interventions if it is not clear what we mean. What is misleading and this question of hyper partisanship, in the british press, much of the content of our press is misleading in some way. It is hard to hear twitter say what they are saying, because from a particular example, that seems wrong, we would be in dangerous territory to start saying this is something that needs to be taken down and who does that . I wish we do not live in that world, we go to the pub and we all say Different Things and we gossip but that is part of what makes humans humans. I cannot imagine where we would start to say we live in a world where we can make those decisions. There are times when there are demonstrable lies, and in the debate looking at ,isinformation and fake use urinalysis and Academic Work demonstrates the different scales of fake news your analysis and Academic Work them in straits the different scales of fake news. For it to be spread anonymously as well. Been facingple have legal address because of tweets their shared on twitter because we know who they are. When even more concerning people use protection of anonymity to spread lies about other people. It makes us feel uncomfortable in that way. Because twitter does not have a real name policy it makes its feel uncomfortable. There are people who they have good reasons for not using their real name. Itself as as about selfcleaning oven because they would argue that many journalists would would correct lies quickly. There is not a way to attack that correction to the original piece of content. Journalists and Fact Checkers work on that, not just flag it, but have a way to connect alternative pieces of information to that. If we have a healthy debate about what is true or false, that is around the original content. That is something we need to look at from a technical point of view. To ive clarity on one point you just made. I try to think of where we may start on this. Where we start is where we already are. There are already established so whatd i am saying is, is there a sustainable argument which explains why people who run an Online Platform consider themselves to be at a different place legally than those who run an offline platform i. E. Newspaper. This is we havent heard it yet. I agree with your frustration. They say we are a publisher. No, youre a platform. The truth is they are in the middle, theyre a hybrid form of communication and what i would like to say and i did hear that this morning that we would like to be part of a conversation around what new form of regulation might look like. Because i dont think we can take the broadcast model and thelate speech on twitter way we do the bbc. I dont think we should say theres nothing in that space. My frustration is all of these conversations were not actually getting to what does this new hybrid form of regulation look like and thats where we need to get and we need to quite quickly, i would argue. I think some of the evidence this week from Tech Professionals and academics is that the moment for some regulation is passed. The social media platform will be taking it seriously. Certainly not as seriously as they take that commercial objectives therefore only option left is some kind of state intervention maybe like touch and gotten on to the fact that this act is now arranged around them . I sit on the european fake news the conversations in europe are different to the conversations the u. S. , but i dont think we should have state intervention that potentially is kneejerk and a reaction to the realities and challenges that come from this platform and scale, i want them to be a part of the conversation so we can have on this look at it. We should be the ones making the decisions. I agree, but we didnt see much evidence of it this morning. But the ideal opportunity for at least an indication that, that thought process is going on was surely going to be this morning. They wanted to be part of the conversation, but i didnt see them coming up. My question is relating to the line on electoral issues and regulation. I was very interested in what facebook in particular was saying about the different rules that they are beginning to introduce. I think they conceded that the past elections have shown that the capacity for the law to be broken because of failing to disclose information. What was your reaction to those proposals that they made and how does it fit with u. S. Electoral law . My concern is definition. If we talk specifically about elections, are we talking about what candidates and campaign they push out . If we look at the russian around the russian interference, it was about nothing to do with obvious political issues. They were cultural and social issues. At all the stuff actually causing problems. My fear is we create boundaries, which do nothing. At all the stuff actually causing problems. If we are talking about elections and physical content, you look at interest pinterest. It is not just about politics. Thats something we need to be careful about. That peoplesed werent looking for what they should be looking for. People can lie about their location. But people can buy advertising, but cant verify their location but we cant verify their location. That is obvious with twitter, because they dont have an address. In terms of volume and reach of twitter, that can have an impact. In the u. K. As well as National Rules the importance of local spenders is important. This makes it even more difficult. Even at a most basic level i i could post to facebook and say i am in antarctica. Up,fact that i can make it there are basic location issues on the platform we should think more carefully about. What about the question of access to the data that the platforms have . They seem to think that fact that they were looking at it, they would put the information up, it would be quite sufficient. Do we know they are complying with their own roles own rules . I would hope they recognize they need independent auditing of not just what is on the platform now but the steps they are taking. So the new fact check picks up what is tagged. There should be independent auditing of the data around that. There are ways they can make that data anonymous, so they should have ways where we can sample data and content. The same with public broadcasting in europe, to audit the output, there should be a way we should do exactly the same thing on social platforms and that seems , to be the low hanging fruit. At the moment, all the conversations we are having is because of excellent journalists. Examples you gave today are about journalists going to the platform and searching and have limited , access to the data. Imagine what we could find if they had true access. Theywhy we dont dont want to give it up. We are past the point that theyre going to give us that information. We have to have access to that data i would , argue. I would like to go back to the points this morning about algorithm secrecy and inherent biases. And looking at that against transparency and trust and user understanding of what is happening when they go on platforms. What do you think is the solution, where is the balance that could be found between those two competing interests . Is there an obvious or simple solution . X at most, users dont understand the space. Even if we are talking about use and Media Literacy curricular, that has to include teaching how to evaluate algorithms and how to understand what you see on amazon or netflix or facebook has been decided by an algorithm and how does an of a rhythm get how does an algorithm get developed and created by a search person . Has been excellent work on a logarithmic transparency. Algorithmic transparency. The town center in columbia, in 2014, talked about transparency and with the framework, what are the metrics for that algorithm, and how we can have more insight into the algorithm and think about frameworks of actually looking at algorithms irrespective of the platform. How can we set up that framework to be transparent across these particular aspects and elements, and that is the key. We keep talking about algorithms as black boxes. How do we get into those black boxes in a consistent way . The Business Model is based on secrecy, isnt it . They would talk about the secret source, but when it impacts people with the information they receive, they come up with a framework which i believe isnt about them sharing a competitive edge. It is saying can we talk about , the algorithm and why was why it was designed in the first place and what the metrics are and if this is the highest quality of information as quickly as possible . Yes, they are commercial companies and we have to understand that, but the influence of how they have become the dominant source of information globally means they have to be held to understand that responsibility. Said, we seepanies this as our responsibility. Thank you. What do you think the likes why do you think the likes of google, facebook, twitter, fear policymakers . What do you think consumers fear and what is the course of action to the key problem of disinformation, to keep it more under control . They fear they will not be what they profess to be which is technology companies, not Media Companies. Be heldr they will accountable for the content that they are merely facilitating and not producing. And they should be and must be to their own inadequate levels, accept some responsibility for promulgating. What they fear the most is regulation, the fear of the requirement to turn over their data, that there will be government regulators overseeing their businesses. They will not be able to be independent mega corporations with the mega revenue that they now generate. What do you think is most effective . Conversations like this are very effective. They are feeling the heat in a very powerful way. They are also feeling the heat in a very powerful way from the journalistic community, from the publishing community. I thought it was interesting to hear them talk about how theyre working with publishers to help them generate revenue. What is very powerful and very prevalent now is to make this conversation as stark as it is, to put online what is on the line, which is whether we are going to have an informed or deformed public discourse. And public process. And whether these companies are contributing to or subtracting from the Democratic Health that we value. I dont think that we can paint this in stark enough terms, and we have to bring them to the table and invite them to the table in ways theyre going to lead a conversation and not just be dragged through it. Do you think they understand that they have skin in the game . Some. They are all going to extraordinary lengths to hire new people, take a hard look at their social responsibility. Ive heard from people i know who have gone to work there in the Journalism Community who say wow. It is a culture of engineers and technocrats. The idea of larger editorial social concerns is a sort of Foreign Language in many cases. And that is more than a minor point. I will open this to any panelist. In much of the First Amendment, there is no First Amendment in other countries, these are American Companies which are acting on a global scale and have their impact. From my british and european perspective, what we see is Large Companies which produce large profits for large numbers of people impacting the very fabric of our society and potentially in a deeply negative way, particularly in the relationship when you have russia on your borders of europe in that regard. Do think, therefore, that dichotomy is it therefore the situation that effectively if there is to be any form of regulation or stepping up of requirements for consumer data in europe