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Results: 46 - 60 of 294
View Charlie Angus Profile
NDP (ON)
Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to each of our witnesses. If I cut you off, it's not that I'm being rude, but I only have six minutes and we have so much to get to.
In terms of legal obligations in Canada, in 2011 Parliament adopted an act regarding the mandatory reporting of Internet child pornography. There are two provisions in it. One is that if an online provider finds issues of child pornography, they have a legal obligation to report to police. As well, they have a legal obligation to report to the Canadian Centre for Child Protection. Madam McDonald, that is you.
We asked Pornhub about their compliance with Canadian law on this matter. Have you found that they are complying with Canadian law in reporting these multiple incidents that we've had to deal with?
Lloyd Richardson
View Lloyd Richardson Profile
Lloyd Richardson
2021-02-22 11:57
There are two pieces there.
The one side, concerning law enforcement, we couldn't really comment on. On the law enforcement angle, the legislation states that basically, if an entity has possession of that material on their system, there are preservation requirements placed upon them and they need to report to Canadian law enforcement. That could be any police officer in Canada.
The second piece is where an entity does not necessarily have possession of the CSAM. It could be an Internet service provider of some sort that has become aware of child sexual abuse material on a different service. They can report that to a designated reporting entity, which is us, the Canadian Centre for Child Protection.
Speaking on this side of things, very recently MindGeek has reached out to us to attempt to report through that means. I can't necessarily speak—
View Charlie Angus Profile
NDP (ON)
Okay.
I find it interesting, because when I read the law it says “on a service”. They provide a service. If they're made aware of it “on a service”, my understanding is that they're obligated to report in Canada.
When we asked them this, they said that they reported to NCMEC, Mr. Clark, which might be great, but to me, it's still avoiding the issue of Canadian law.
How long have they been reporting to NCMEC on allegations that are brought forward?
John F. Clark
View John F. Clark Profile
John F. Clark
2021-02-22 11:58
Their reporting to us has just been in recent times, within the last few weeks, probably.
John F. Clark
View John F. Clark Profile
John F. Clark
2021-02-22 11:58
Yes, it's been the last few weeks.
As was noted, I think, in my testimony, while they provided, I believe, around 13,000 reports, a lot of those were duplicative. We've also noted in some instances a very strong reluctance on their part to take down material that is called in from people who have been victimized. However, when we call them, they take it down.
View Charlie Angus Profile
NDP (ON)
Thank you.
I'll now go to Mr. Bernhard on the issue of Canadian law.
We have spent a lot of time at our parliamentary committee on issues of compliance by the tech giants, and Pornhub-MindGeek is a tech giant. It seems to me in my reading of Canadian law that we have very strong laws to protect against non-consensual exploitation of images. We have strong child pornography laws.
I believe there's only been one online investigation, and it wasn't against any company nearly as big as Pornhub. Safe harbour provisions have protected the tech giants, because they don't know what's on their servers. However, Pornhub officials told us that they viewed every single image. If they viewed every single image, that means they would endorse that image as being okay.
Would you think there would be an issue of responsibility there, and as well that the tags that identify “knocked-out teen” or “raped teen” would be the promotion of acts that we would consider illegal? They seem to be not sure whether “teen” is legal or illegal; however, I think under Canadian law.... Do you believe they would be protected under safe harbour provisions?
Daniel Bernhard
View Daniel Bernhard Profile
Daniel Bernhard
2021-02-22 12:02
My understanding is that they would not. My understanding is that even in the United States, there is an exception to section 230 for child sexual abuse material, so even under the safe harbour laws of the United States, they would not be protected. Ultimately, Mr. Angus, I would hope it would be a judge who would decide this, and the lack of charges here is particularly concerning to me. It appears to be in clear violation of the law, but that's not something that I am able to pronounce upon, and so, the police, law enforcement, prosecutors and judges really need to get involved here, because it does appear to be a very clear violation of the law.
View Arnold Viersen Profile
CPC (AB)
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Ms. McDonald, your organization has done fantastic work. I had the opportunity to visit your facility a number of years back and I got to see Project Arachnid in action even though there's not much to see when you're at the facility. It's a bunch of lights blinking on computers.
Nonetheless, recently the Canadian Centre for Child Protection took steps to distance itself from an international group that has received donations from MindGeek. Can you explain why you took this step, and would you consider MindGeek a partner in any way?
Lianna McDonald
View Lianna McDonald Profile
Lianna McDonald
2021-02-22 12:03
Yes, what ended up happening, we didn't realize at the time, when the organization.... The international association you're talking about is INHOPE. The organization had taken a donation from a company called MindGeek. At the time, we did not understand the business structure and what all that meant. As soon as our organization became aware that this company owned a number of adult pornography sites, we immediately made the decision to take away our sort of membership there. It was a very important decision for our organization because we deal with survivors and victims, and many of them are teens. Many of them had come in to us also talking about their victimization on these types of sites.
Also, I just have to raise—because it's not subject to the conversation that we're having right now—that we have a huge issue with the lack of age verification. We have Canadians coming in telling us that their 13-year-old or 12-year-old son was able to go straight into a really graphic web page called Pornhub. From our organization's standpoint, we could not continue with that, so we did make that difficult decision. We worked with hotlines around the world. We do in other capacities and we'll continue to do so because it's in the best interest of children. That was why we made the decision.
View Arnold Viersen Profile
CPC (AB)
Mr. Richardson, I'll ask you this seeing as you're the tech guy here.
The big trouble we've been studying here at this committee is around this, the age and the consent of folks who are depicted in these videos. We hear a lot about how long it took to take the video down and things like that, but certainly there would be methods of ensuring that these videos never show up in the first place.
I was wondering if you could comment on that. If you're bragging that you are the leading tech company in the world, surely there's technology to keep this stuff off the Internet to begin with.
Results: 46 - 60 of 294 | Page: 4 of 20

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