Telus, Blue Dot stress Health Canada never received personal data

It would be impossible for the government to re-identify mobility data of Canadians because personal information was never released to it, the House of Commons Ethics committee heard Thursday. Representatives of Telus Corp. and Blue Dot Corp. appeared before the MPs who are looking at the use of such data by the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC). Telus and Blue Dot had the contracts to provide the information to PHAC. Telus’ vice president, chief data and trust officer Pamela Snively told the panel that the telecom established its Data for Good section in April 2020 to provide data in beneficial ways. To that end, it has been giving de-identified aggregated information to the federal government to fight COVID. “We didn’t share personal information with the government,” she stated. “Not one iota.” What PHAC did get was supervised and guided access to the scrubbed data. Before initiating the process, Telus consulted with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien, a courtesy PHAC did not extend to the bureaucrat. The office provided feedback which the telecom used to tweak its program. The revised regime resulted in Telus being recognized with a Privacy by Design citation for excellence, she said. The Privacy by Design standards were set up by a group which included former Ontario Privacy Commissioner Ann Cavoukian, who testified earlier this month. In her appearance Cavoukian praised Telus while lambasting PHAC for lapses in its procedures. Several witnesses have called for updating of Canadian privacy laws and used the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) as an illustration of where the country could proceed. The Telus executive expressed admiration for the European legislation but preferred homegrown regulations. "I think there are some terrific aspects of the GDPR. I also think there are some terrific aspects to our existing legislation, it's been very principle-based although old it has served us quite well because it is principle-based. So it has not been technology specific, and has allowed us to be nimble and agile in the way it has assessed privacy. Do I think there can be tweaks? Yes," she said. Under questioning from Conservative MP Damien Kurek, Snively reported that PHAC developed queries about mobility and that Telus facilitated answers to those questions. The data in question was national rather than regional and nothing was done in real time. She told LIberal MP Ya’ara Saks that the Data for Good program took years to develop and that the firm had consulted with several de-identification experts. Telus set up rules around the PHAC queries and maintained administrative control of the information. The agency was not privy to all uses of the data, a process which was lauded by Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam. Tam appeared as a witness at an earlier session of the committee. Bloc Québécois MP René Villemure kept coming back to the topic of consent. Telus has an opt-out system of consent for consumers to allow their information to be used by the telecom. Snively said she was very proud of how focused Telus is on personal privacy of its customers’ data. Not only is there plenty of information on the company website, she noted, but the firm produced op-eds and cooperated with journalists on stories about the data mining. “We were very publicly transparent,” she said. New Democrat Matthew Green questioned Snively about Telus’ takeover of Babylon Health, and criticism of its privacy policies by the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta. She said that Babylon was brought under Telus’s privacy regime when it was purchased in January of 2021. Conservative MP Jeremy Patzer, an associate member of the committee, wondered why Telus didn’t send text messages to its customers informing them of the use of mobility data. Snively said she didn’t think that was necessary. “We were pretty loud about it,” she remarked, harking back to her earlier statements about the website, the op-eds and the media coverage. When Villemure picked up that line of questioning, the VP pointed out that the company warns consumers not to respond to texts purporting to be from it that the users are not expecting. Earlier in the day Blue Dot founder and CEO Kamran Khan and Director of Data Science Alex Demarsh appeared before the committee. They stressed that the company does not collect data but merely analyzes it. It gathers material from other players. Khan would not name its sources but said Telus was not one. The CEO, who is also an infectious diseases physician, said he would check with the two companies it has been using and would see if they would consent to having their names released to the Parliamentarians. “The information is de-identified before it ever reaches our organization,” Khan stated. He maintained Blue Dot placed its data suppliers under close scrutiny to ensure they followed proper practices when it came to keeping personal data private. “We’ve done our due diligence,” he asserted. Khan told Kurek about five million people were part of the data sample that Blue Dot used. Demarsh told the MP that all that PHAC was provided with was approximate location and time stamps. The number of people who had access to the information was limited, he added. Asked by Liberal MP Lisa Hepfner if the material could be re-identified, Demarsh emphatically replied, “Absolutely not.” He said he did not think there is any other way to get the information than through the process currently underway. Green attempted to make hay over the fact that Demarsh is a former employee of PHAC. The witness conceded that but said he never had dealings with Blue Dot while working for the health agency. Khan said Blue Dot’s methods help public health agencies everywhere anticipate public health outbreaks, The eight-year-old company provides its data to local, provincial, federal and international bodies. “A global problem requires global review.” PHAC currently has a request for proposal (RFP) out calling for public tenders to continue to provide data to it. Demarsh said Blue Dot would not be bidding on the contract since it requires firms to have access to cell towers, a stipulation that makes Blue Dot ineligible. –Reporting by Paul Park at ppark@thewirereport.ca and editing by Michael Lee-Murphy at mleemurphy@thewirereport.ca

Telus, Blue Dot stress Health Canada never received personal data

News | February 18, 2022

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Telus, Blue Dot stress Health Canada never received personal data

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