Major technology companies will face a grilling in Ottawa this week as politicians from Canada and 10 other countries gather to consider how best to protect citizens' privacy and democracy.
The international grand committee on big data, privacy and democracy is meeting in Ottawa for three days, starting on Monday. It will hear from experts on how best governments can prevent the use of social media to violate individuals' privacy, spread fake news, sow dissension and manipulate election outcomes.
Committee members will question representatives from tech giants such as Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) , Alphabet's Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL), Twitter (NYSE: TWTR), Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Mozilla on what they're doing, or not doing, to prevent online abuses. The committee is made up of politicians from Canada, the United Kingdom, Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, France, Ireland, Latvia and Singapore.
This week's meeting — the second since last year's inaugural gathering in the U.K. — is being hosted by Canada’s House of Commons committee on access to information, privacy and ethics.
It is not immediately clear who from the technology companies will appear before the committee.
