Education key to combating foreign interference on social media, ETHI hears

Canadians need to be educated about the dangers posed by foreign actors utilizing social media to harvest data, a House of Commons committee was told Monday. The standing committee on access to information, privacy and ethics is looking at social media and unethical or illegal sharing of information. The Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) names the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Russia, North Korea and Iran as the leading culprits in cyberattacks. Too often computer users are unaware of who they are dealing with. “Canadians should therefore be aware of the privacy considerations at play when choosing to share their personal information online, especially when it is with foreign owned companies that are based outside of Canada or our allied countries,” Cherie Henderson CSIS’s assistant director for requirements told the MPs. “It is imperative that Canada builds resilience against foreign interference,” she continued. “This includes bolstering awareness of the PRC’s ability to harvest and use Canadians’ information obtained through social media to conduct the foreign interference.” The damage can be enormous, Sami Khoury, head of the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security at the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), told the panel. “We assessed that foreign states are using social media to target Canadian individuals,” he asserted. “Public reporting by the University of Toronto's Citizens Lab detailed how cyberthreat activity has targeted activists in Canada through disinformation or intimidation on social media, denial of service attacks against their organizations and compromise of their personal devices.” It is not enough to hope users read privacy policies on websites, the witnesses agreed. Too often those policies are lengthy and legalistic and are skipped over by people accessing information. Governments and industry must actively educate Canadians about the perils found on social media. Another witness, Sharon Polsky, president of the Privacy and Access Council of Canada, told Conservative MP Damien Kurek that she had managed to determine the birthdays of almost all the members of the committee in a half-hour Google search. She then wished him early happy returns on his birthday next week. She used the example of gmail when Google first introduced it. Users had to be invited to get an address. The scarcity and the fear of missing out led to a deluge of applications for the email addresses. Gmail is now less exclusive and very popular. “Social media continues to leverage human nature and the lucrative data broker industry is the biggest beneficiary other than those who would manipulate us for their own benefit whether companies, political parties or governments,” she stated. “With recent geopolitical events it’s easy to think that what people post to social media might be used to coerce, extort or manipulate. But crediting social media alone or social media from one country or another is shortsighted.” The witnesses had mixed reviews of government actions to combat social media data dives. Khoury and Henderson praised the recent decisions by the chief information officer to ban TikTok and WeChat from government-issued devices. But Polsky was critical of bill C-27, currently before the industry committee, which would update privacy legislation. It will not do what it sets out to achieve, she remarked. Polsky previously testified against the bill. She, too, warned about the proliferation of users’ data. “We have no choice whether the labeling is done by someone in Alberta or Albania,” the privacy expert warned. “There is no control over it and there is nothing stopping a company or a government from purchasing information because it is available largely through the data broker system.” Tuesday reporters pressed cabinet ministers about the government’s long-promised online harms legislation. Justice Minister Arif Virani has taken over the file from Canadian Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge. Before cabinet met, he was asked if the bill would be ready by Christmas. “My hope is that it is tabled soon,because I’m hearing that from stakeholders, I’m hearing that from concerned Canadians,” he told a scrum according to a transcript. “I can’t give you a definitive time.” Virani stipulated that the issue is complex, having effects on the Canadian Human Rights Act and on the Criminal Code. Former heritage minister Pablo Rodriguez, who spearheaded an earlier version of the bill, was asked for his impressions of the topic. “It’s a very important legislation because I always said online harm is real harm, right?,” he said in a transcript. “Online hate doesn’t stay online; it goes on the street.” The Quebec MP said he was optimistic the bill will be introduced shortly. –Reporting by Paul Park at ppark@thewirereport.ca and editing by Jenna Cocullo at jcocullo@thewirereport.ca

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Education key to combating foreign interference on social media, ETHI hears

News | November 21, 2023

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