Ethics committee talks social media without Del Mastro

I had a few committee meetings to choose from while I was in Ottawa last week, and attending the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics meeting on Tuesday made sense. And not just because it was hearing witnesses on a study of the privacy issues around social media.

I was hoping to see Conservative ethics committee member Dean Del Mastro, who has been keeping a low profile and allowing Pierre Poilievre to speak for him. Alas, Dean was a no-show. Disapointing to those hoping for a show, but perhaps a blessing for those looking for some substantive debate on what is a rather important topic as well. And we did get that; there was none of the partisan sniping that we hear of when committee hearings actually do get coverage. Instead, everyone was asking reasonable questions designed to get useful answers, not just score points or push a message. At one point, Liberal Scott Andrews even followed-up on a line of questioning when Conservative Blaine Calkins ran out of time.

There were three witnesses invited to testify: Sara Grimes, an assistant professor in the faculty of information at the University of Toronto; Tamir Israel, a staff lawyer with the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic at the University of Ottawa; and Adam Kardash, a managing director and head of access privacy with law firm Heenan Blakie. While Kardash emphasized he was testifying on his own behalf only, it did later come out that he has represented social media giants such as Facebook.

Grimes spends her time studying social networks for children and the practices of social networking sites with regard to children, and in her introductory remarks she called for a new approach that would shift from trying to protect young people from the risks of social networking to empowering them to make better decisions. Some sites ban anyone under 13, but that's too easy to get around. Too much data is also being collected on children and their online activities and being used for marketing purposes, without the informed consent of the children or their parents. She called for the development of more kid-friendly user agreements in language they can understand, and regulation to control the collection and use of data of children collected online. She also made the point that social network creating kid-friendly walled-gardens for young people won't work; she wants to give companies guidelines that balance risk with responsibility and education.

Israel said users feel like they've lost all control of their data as more and more of it is being collected and used, raising alarm about the rise of data brokers such as Acxiom, which harvest and sell detailed profiles of individuals based on their publicly-available Internet activities, from brand preferences to medical conditions. MPs from all parties would come back to the data broker issue and express surprise and concern. Kardash cautioned these businesses are mainly in the U.S. where laws are different and they probably aren`t interested in Canada, while Israel called for regulation and the creation of a central place where you can learn what brokers have info on you, and then find out what it is. Speaking about privacy settings for social media sites, Israel called for the requirement of privacy by default, rather than open by default or whatever works best for the site's business model by default. He also called for PIPEDA and the privacy commissioner to be given some power beyond the ability to name and shame offenders, which he feels isn't sufficient deterrent.

Unsurprisingly given what we later learned about his client list, Kardash disagreed with Israel on that point. He feels PIPEDA is working just fine, thanks and is still doing a strong job of safeguarding our online privacy even as new technologies have been developed since it was drafted. He said PIPEDA needs to stay technology-neutral so you're not redrafting it every time something new is invented online or it will be obsolete before it's enacted; technology is evolving too quickly. He called for more industry self-regulation rather than supplementing PIPEDA with more regulations, and said the privacy commissioner's ability to "name and shame" offenders is more than a sufficient deterrent to would-be privacy offenders.

As we got into the rounds of questioning from the MPs, Charlie Angus from the NDP got Kardash for favouring self-regulation over tougher enforcement, and chided him for not disclosing his relationship with Facebook and other major social media companies, which he has represented with Heenan Blakie. He did insist though that he loves Facebook and his wife claims' he's addicted (Twitter, not so much). He added we're in the age of big data, and with the increase in data mining activities (companies gathering our personal data and using it to sell and market to us) there needs to be regulation.

Conservative Blaine Calkins said he used to be a data base administrator, so he understands how this information can be gathered and the prospect of data brokers such as Acxiom "frankly has me terrified." He also spoke about the long and complicated user agreements that we all agree to, usually without reading or understanding, before we use a social networking service. He wondered if it shouldn't be made possible to modify the agreement, picking some elements to accept and some to regret. I found that interesting, but it would probably have a negative impact on the business model of the service provider. There would have to be a corresponding reduction in service level.


Calkins didn't have a chance to ask about the role of parents vs. that of regulation, so Liberal Scott Andrews put that question. Grimes said we need to find  the best way to welcome young people into this social media world they've been born into; it has a ton of benefits that must be balanced with the risks. There needs to be regulation because it can't all be left to parents; there's so much to learn. Even some cyber-nanny software, she notes, is used for data collection and mining. 


Andrews followed-up by asking if we have ages at which you're allowed to drink and smoke, should there be an age limit for social media? Grimes noted its a tricky comparison, as drinking has a proven negative developmental impact on youth. She likened the web to a city, with much of it as public space. We don't ban kids from the public park, but we don't let them into bars. 


The NDP's Charmaine Borg asked if the privacy commissioner should have the power to impose sanctions when organizations routinely change the privacy settings users have agreed to, and don't do a good job of informing them, or change the user interface to avoid existing regulations. Israel said this is definitely a problem to address, but noted social media is also rapidly evolving. He called for a process that allows the privacy commissioner to adapt the principles of the privacy law to the evolving reality on the ground. Kardash again downplayed the problem, noting most companies usually work out deals with the privacy commissioner to avoid the prospect of public naming.


I found the back and forth interesting, even if it seemed to do not too much more than scratch the surface of some of these issues. And it was refreshing to see a complete lack of partisanship as MPs seemed genuinely interested in learning more about the issues at hand. Of course, that could also be because this is an opposition-backed study of little interest to the Prime Minister's Office. And any amendments to PIPEDA are likely to be written by the government without regard to this testimony. So interesting information, but unlikely to impact policy. Which may explain the lack of partisanship.

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Vikileaks and the death of the journalist as news gatekeeper

I was in Las Vegas for a work trip and tuned-out of all news from back in Canada, so it was only Friday that I returned and caught myself up on the “Vikileaks” drama, and it was fascinating to read some of the commentary and follow the tweets on the topic, particularly those from hill journalists and political sorts.

I won’t pass judgment on whether or not the information about Vic Toews should have been published or not, except to say it’s not how I would chose to do politics. Which I guess is passing judgment, so there you go. This sort of thing is par the course in modern politics though, and for the Conservatives, who have taken it to new levels, to now wring their hands is silly. And, for the record, it is only an ethical question, and we are talking about publicly available information and documents.

What really interests me though is the reaction of the proverbial “main-stream media” to the Vikileaks story, with an Ottawa Citizen piece attempting to trace the IP address of the “@Vikileaks30 leaker” spurring endless speculation and demands to identify the person or persons responsible. It should be noted that had @Vikileaks30 given their documents to a journalist who chose to publish a story based on them, then the media would be reminding us how important it is to protect the confidentiality of their sources. Even competing outlets wouldn’t try to unmask another journalist’s confidential source. That’s just not cricket, old boy.

What the media reaction to @Vikileaks30 really shows though is how angry, and perhaps frightened, they are about losing their traditional role as the gatekeepers of news, the people that get to decide what we, the unwashed masses, need to know and what we don’t need to know. Journalists are used to being in the know, to having the inside details, the scoop. It helps make up for the low pay, long hours and heavy drinking.

Journalists made judgment calls every day on what is news and what isn’t, what people have a right to know, and what isn’t relevant. It's part of the job in one sense; there's always more news than column inches or air time. And they see it as a public service. But no one elected them as the arbiters of good taste. They’re accountable to no one but their publisher and the shareholders. It’s a lot of trust, and a lot of responsibility.

The internet, blogging and social media are changing all that however. Now you no longer need a printing press or a television or radio station to publish information to the masses. Anyone with an Internet connection can publish anything they want, and potentially find an audience. And the market will, in a way, make its own judgment on its news worthiness. If people find it relevant, they’ll share or re-tweet it and the news finds a wider audience; if they deem it inappropriate it will wither and fade away, perhaps after first being soundly condemned.

What it means, though, is that the role of the traditional media as gatekeeper is drying, if it’s not already dead. With their breadth of reach and size of audience, the regular media is still the fastest way for news to be disseminated to the wider public. But thanks to social media, even if the press deems something “un-newsworthy,” if it gets enough traction online they eventually have no choice but to cover it anyway.

Whether or not you think publishing details of Vic Toews’ divorce as a form of protest against privacy-invading Internet snooping legislation is appropriate, what this drama shows about the eroding power of the media gatekeeper is very much a positive, in my opinion.

But back to the moral media tut-tutting around this story. Here’s the National Post editorial board weighing-in, for example, with a reflex attack on the always handy partisan scarecrow:

… their partisan opponents wouldn’t care. Rightly or wrongly, to embrace, promote or even acknowledge Vilikeaks — as a remarkable number of opposition MPs have done — is to accept yet further debasement of the Canadian political conversation. There is no way around it. The ends may justify the means in some people’s minds, but all politicians’ private lives are less private today than they were on Monday.

The media’s role in this is more tricky. The content of the Vikileaks tweets has been widely known in Ottawa since the events occurred. Yet not a word of it was breathed in the mainstream press, in accordance with the basic Canadian understanding described above.
But now it is all over the news — if not the particulars of Mr. Toews’ situation, then the fact that someone is publishing those particulars at a Twitter account called @Vikileaks30.

Attacking evil partisans is always easy for journalists, or in this case anonymous editorial writers, but the fact is the Post’s statement that “not a word of it was breathed in the mainstream press” is easily and demonstrably wrong, as a simple search of any newspaper archive service shows.

* May 17, 2008, Mia Rabson in Winnipeg Free Press

Sources suggest Prime Minister Stephen Harper wants Toews to step down because of concerns about issues in his personal life -- he's currently in the midst of a divorce. An appointment to the bench makes sense because of Toews' background as a former Crown prosecutor in Brandon and lawyer for the Manitoba government.

* May 17, 2008, Don Martin in Calgary Herald

But the 55-year-old Toews' public face of self-righteous morality is now clashing with his troubled private life. An MP dubbed the "minister of family values" by Liberals is embroiled in a messy divorce after fathering a child last fall with a much younger woman.

That's his business, frankly, yet it might explain why Mr. Toews was demoted to the Treasury Board and immediately cloaked by invisibility, stewing in question period silence while his junior parliamentary secretary juggles tough questions on election financing irregularities.

* May 23, 2008, Joan Bryden in Waterloo Region Record

As well, Tories have been whispering that Treasury Board President Vic Toews, embroiled in a messy divorce, has fallen into disfavour with Harper.

In June of 2009, Vancouver Sun columnist Barbara Yaffe even wrote a column headlined “U.S. 'affairs' so much more interesting.”

And last year, then-Justice Minister Vic Toews split with his wife of 33 years after having fathered a child with a political staffer. A Winnipeg newspaper called it "messy personal stuff.

Toews since has been re-elected and appointed Treasury Board president. His website features nothing personal beyond "Vic enjoys roller blading and jogging. He resides in Steinbach.

In fact, here’s a May 21, 2008 story from the National Post with Toews reacting to a story about his divorce proceedings, in, you guessed it, the National Post (I guess the op/ed writers missed this one):

Mr. Toews, appearing at a news conference for a joint federal-provincial program for aboriginal youth sport, was also asked about a report in Saturday's National Post indicating he is currently involved in a messy divorce after fathering a child last fall with a much younger woman.

"I don't talk about my personal life," Mr. Toews replied.

Perhaps Vic, but the media sure does an awful lot. It seems obvious that the media tut-tutting has nothing to do with publishing such personal details; it’s just the feeble protests of the dying news gatekeepers.


UPDATE: An earlier post along these lines that has relevance to this one: On Adam Giambrone, morality vs. privacy, and the media as gatekeeper.

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In the fight for democracy, social media is far from irrelevant

In November of 2009 I was invited to attend an event called the World Blogging Forum in Bucharest, Romania organized by Romanian foreign language students with support from the Romanian government. I was one of only two North American bloggers (the other was from the U.S.) with bloggers from all around the world gathering to discuss blogging and social media in their countries.

It was a fascinating perspective as the conference proceeded and the discussions occurred, both in the formal hall and in the corridors. There was a very different perspective and views on social media from the bloggers in the democratic/more developed countries, such as Western Europe, and those countries still struggling for democracy and without media freedom, such as the Caucasus, the Middle East and China.

In the democratic world, it was about telling our personal stories, commenting on issues important to us, advocating for causes and, in many cases, sharing ideas on how to monetize on our blogs.

In the countries where they don’t have the democratic freedom we take for granted, where they don’t have the free press we enjoy, where they live daily under oppressive and dictatorial governments, their perspective on social media was very different. For them, social media is a vital tool of empowerment and democracy promotion.

For countries without a free press, blogs are their free press, with actual citizen journalists reporting on events the government wants censored, and that wouldn’t be reported otherwise. And Twitter is their rapid response and organizational tool. Small handheld cameras and video sharing tools like YouTube add another layer, bringing video that would never be shown on state television.

On the first day of the conference, after the Romanian president made an opening address, the first session was on blogging and citizen journalism. I was the last of three presenters on the topic, giving a survey of the Canadian political blogging scene, and how parties, citizens, journalists and politicians are using social media tools.

But I felt incredibly out of place following two speakers from the other side of the equation. Zhou Shuguang is a widely-known Chinese blogger and techie who has been a thorn in the side of the Chinese government, and has spent much of his time burrowing holes in the Great Firewall of China the government has erected to try to censor the Internet. His is a truly impressive story.

But as I read about the amazing events in Tunisia and Egypt, and as I watch the gripping live coverage from Egypt on Al Jazerra English, the speaker I keep thinking back to is Egypt’s Wael Abbas. Before Abbas’ presentation, like many in the West I didn’t know much about Egypt, but I though it was a fairly friendly, free country, particularly compared to many of its neighbours.

His perspective (here's his blog), and his story, was eye-opening. And he also provided examples of how social media then was already playing an important role in the fight for democracy in Egypt, and played a key role in a tug of war between activists and the government that has continued to today, and has now boiled over.

Here’s my report on his presentation. In light of current events, it’s quite prescient:

I had read about the Chinese Great Firewall and its attempts at censoring the Web, often aided and abetted by Western companies looking to stay on the good side of the Chinese government to get access to the lucrative market, but I’m sad to admit the situation in Egypt described by the next speaker, Wael Abbas, was completely new and shocking to me. Abbas is a blogger and human rights activist who was named Middle East person of the year by CNN in 2007.

In Egypt, said Abbas, there’s no protection for journalism, there’s censorship on supposed security grounds, copies of papers are often confiscated and presses delayed or closed, tapes confiscated from videographers, TV stations raided by security officials and tapes seized, all leading to an environment of self-censorship by the media to avoid confrontation with the government.

As a result, he said there was a dire need in Egypt for an alternative form of media to support civil society and provide real, uncensored news to the Egyptian people. The government had been blocking the Web but ended that practice when it wanted to encourage telecom investment. Instead, said Abbas, the government doesn’t censor blogs, but instead harasses, detains and arrests bloggers within the country instead in an attempt to intimidate then into ceasing their activities.

Blogging and citizen journalism first came into its own in Egypt when the mainstream media weren’t covering protests against President Mubarak, election rigging and police violence. Bloggers stepped in to fill that gap and while sometimes the barrier between blogging and activism blurred, the objective approach bloggers tried to take found public support. They presented video and pictures of what was happening and asked people to draw their own conclusions. The media were actually spurred-on by the bloggers, being encouraged to report more of what was actually happening, and publishing blogger content. Opposition parties also reached out to the new media.

Abbas himself drew negative government attention when he published photos of hired thugs that arrested female protestors, and exposed paid pro-Mubarak protesters, and posted controversial video. He has had his Facebook, YouTube and Yahoo accounts shut down under government pressure for his activities, and the government has accused him of being a criminal, a homosexual and having converted to Christianity in attempts to discredit him.

While at its peak around 2005, Abbas said bloggers helped push the envelope for press freedom and political freedom by the opposition, its still under attack and the government’s counter-attacks are working, causing him to lose optimism that real change will happen in Egypt.

It’s hard to see change without international support and that’s hard to get for the situation in Egypt, said Abbas, because there’s not much awareness of the situation internationally. Mubarak is viewed as a moderate friend of the West but people don’t know that Egypt has fake press freedom, fake opposition parties and fake elections, it’s all a mirage.

Despite the Egyptian government's attempts to cut off the Internet in the country to deny this vital tool to the protesters, Abbas is still blogging and posting video on his blog of the protests, arrests and beatings. It's amazing, important, compelling work.

I hope he stays safe.

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Politicians and the people, minus the media

Certainly there are issues to be raised with many of the answers Stephen Harper gave when his YouTube video "conservation with Canadians" last night. I'm sure others will raise those issues; perhaps I will too later.

One thing that occurred to me though, as I read the Harper interview transcript, and reflect back on the online town halls that Michael Ignatieff did with Canadians earlier this year, and that's the one glaring thing that was missing from all of them.

What we got in each of those forums were questions from Canadians on a wide-range of policy issues. Foreign affairs, the role of parliament and prorogation, drug policy, climate change, child care, post secondary education, the list goes on.

What didn't we get? Questions on the horse race. On polling. On electoral gamesmanship. No "will you force an election" or political "whose is bigger" questions. To judge by nearly every press conference I've seen with Harper and Ignatieff, with nearly every pundit panel on the political talk shows, with most analysis pieces from the columnists, you'd think electoral chicken and the horse race is the issue of most concern to Canadians.

When Canadians get the chance to question their political leaders directly though, that's not what we get. We get questions on issues of policy that are important to them for a rainbow of reasons.

Both the Facebook townhall and the YouTube Q&A formats are obviously imperfect. No opportunity for follow-up, to follow a line of questioning, to really question an answer. Obviously such experiments, while well intentioned and useful, are never going to replace the role of the traditional media.

The media would be wise, though, to take a lesson from the questions that Canadians put to the leaders in these forums. After all, the Canadians asking those questions are their readers, viewers and listeners as well. And they should be just as interested in what they're concerned about as the leaders are.

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