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The Current Transcript for March 20, 2018

Host: Laura Lynch

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

When you go to work right your co-workers only see one side of you. Your friends only see one side of you. But a computer sees all kinds of sides of you. And so we can get better than human level accuracy at predicting your behaviour

LAURA LYNCH: B.C. born Christopher Wylie is now infamous for his warnings about what he believes are the dark arts of data analytics and how they're being harvested and manipulated to distort politics and undermine democracy. At the heart of it according to Wiley is his old company Cambridge Analytica and its harvesting and use of millions of people's information on Facebook. Whether it's legal is one thing whether it's ethical is another. Maybe it's time for new rules, a code of conduct to guide those who create the apps and social networks so many of us use. After that, Canada's steps back perhaps gingerly into the role of peacekeeper.

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Canadians believe in peacekeeping. We believe in the international rules based order and we know that we need to back up that belief with our actions.

LL: Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland nodded to Canada's traditional role in global affairs as she announced the country will send soldiers - not yet clear how many - to the UN mission in Mali. But there seems precious little peace in the African nation and still much violence. Canadian Forces will largely fly above the conflict on the ground in helicopters. But that's not stopping us from asking whether the mission is in Canada's interests. And later on, the sound of an unmistakable voice.

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For a time at home I could communicate only by reducing my eyebrows when someone pointed to letters on the card. All thoughts of work and finishing my book grew distant.

LL: The late Stephen Hawking was given back his voice in a large measure of independence thanks to those tailored special technology that allowed him to speak, to read, and to write with only the slightest of movement. That kind of perfectly tailored computer programming and devices could make a profound difference in the lives of so many who cannot otherwise function on their own. But not everyone is Stephen Hawking and so cannot get the help they need and want nearly so easily. That though may be about to change. I'm Laura Lynch sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti and this is The Current.

Back To Top »

In wake of Facebook Cambridge Analytica scandal, does the tech sector need a code of conduct?

Guests: Casey Fiesler, Louise Matsakis

SOUNDCLIP

It allowed us to profile upwards of 50 million Americans over the span of a couple of months and understand not only their personality traits but how they think and how they would likely react to different kinds of information, and what is it exactly that we need to do in order to pick at certain mental or emotional vulnerabilities so that those people would behave in a particular way that was conducive to Steve Bannon's objective.

LL: And that was Christopher Wiley of course speaking about Steve Bannon who is the political operative whose objectives include having Donald Trump elected president of the United States. We may have a better idea now how he may have accomplished that thanks to the whistleblower we just heard. Mr. Wiley has described himself as quote "the gay Canadian vegan who somehow ended up creating Steve Bannon psychological warfare tool". He is a former employee of the data firm Cambridge Analytica. And following Mr Wylie's allegations about the firm's use of 50 million Facebook users private information, Cambridge Analytica has been banned from the social network as has Christopher Wylie. The firm has denied Mr Wylie's claims but the data scandal he's unleashed is changing the way people look at the social network and the information they've shared on it. Louise Matsakis is a staff writer at WIRED who covers security and social platforms and she is in New York. Hello.

LOUISE MATSAKIS: Hey how are you?

LL: Fine thanks. There is a lot to understand here. What exactly is Christopher Wiley alleging Cambridge Analytica did?

LOUISE MATSAKIS: So what happened is that an academic at Cambridge University created an app on Facebook that was called 'This is your Digital Life'. It was kind of like a personality quiz. We are all familiar with these quizzes on all sorts of social platforms, on sites like BuzzFeed. But when users downloaded it, they took a quiz about their personality and shared not only their own personal information but the personal information of everybody that they were friends with on Facebook and that data was supposed to be used for academic purposes. But the researcher ended up selling that data to Cambridge Analytica and that's how they were able to obtain it.

LL: Okay so give me an idea of the numbers here. How many people used 'This is your Digital Life' and how many people ended up having their information harvested through that?

LOUISE MATSAKIS: So we're not exactly sure because there are conflicting numbers but it seems like under a million people downloaded the app but because they shared not only their own information but the information of their friends it ended up collecting about 50 million Americans. They were targeting specifically American voters. They were not aiming to collect anyone else's personal information. And I think it's important to know.

LL: Okay. So Facebook is saying that it learned in 2015 that the data was being passed on to Cambridge Analytica from this professor who had done it as part of his academic work and it was a violation apparently of Facebook rules. It asked Cambridge Analytica to destroy the data and it says it believed it had been done until Christopher Wiley came forward a few days ago. What do you make of that explanation?

LOUISE MATSAKIS: I think that this is really a problem for Facebook because it just shows a lack of regard for their users’ privacy because they kept that secret for two years. I think it's also important to note that there are reports saying that Facebook tried to pursue legal action against the journalist who wanted to come forward. And they've now erased Christopher Whylie's personal life from the Internet. They decided to delete his Instagram account, they deleted his Facebook account and I think that they really tried to keep this secret. I think the only reason that Facebook came forward on Friday is because they understood that these news reports are going to follow.

LL: So what do you think was going on then, that Facebook knew something was wrong?

LOUISE MATSAKIS: Yes absolutely. After this kind of unfolded behind the scenes Facebook close the loophole that allowed marketers like Cambridge Analytica to collect the information of your friends. So now on Facebook if you download a similar quiz they'll still be able to collect your information but they won't be able to collect information of your friends. So I think the fact that they tried to close that loophole after they realized that there was a problem shows that they knew they had made a mistake but they didn't come forward. And I think it could have changed the course how the election played out had they said something.

LL: I want to get to that but I think critical to this. Is there a suggestion that Facebook simply overlooked that this could happen, that all these friends details could be harvested or did they not know it could happen?

LOUISE MATSAKIS: Oh they totally knew that it could happen. I think that what's important to realize is that this is Facebook's entire business model as collecting as much information on you as it can and then allowing that data to be used by marketers. That is the whole reason that they become a multibillion dollar company. This is not an accident. This is exactly how their system was designed.

LL: Can you shed some light on how something as simple as clicking like on Facebook can be turned into information for marketers or politicians.

LOUISE MATSAKIS: Totally. So there was actually a study from researchers at Columbia University that came out last year that shows how this is possible they restrict themselves to one single like. And you know former studies show that you can kind of predict someone's basic personality traits based on like. You know if they like something like computers you can roughly say that they are more introverted. And if you target more introverted ads the people who will like those kinds of topics on Facebook they're much more likely to click on that.

LL: Can you give me an example what is an introverted add?

LOUISE MATSAKIS: So for example the researchers at Columbia made an ad for a crossword games a pretty innocuous like just a mobile game. And for introverted user the prompt was more like 'hey take a break you know from what you're doing and play this game'. For actual word user or it might be more like 'play in this action packed game with your friends'. You know there's a different kind of prop for different kinds of personality types.

LL: So how is what Christopher Wiley is alleging different compared to the way that information is collected from everyday online activities?

LOUISE MATSAKIS: So the only real difference here is that Cambridge Analytica was not straightforward with Facebook about how it obtained that date, because it obtained it from this researcher who it was sold to and it wasn't Facebook didn't understand and authorized Cambridge Analytica to collect this data. It authorized this researcher from Cambridge University. And that was really the only difference here is that there was deception. This is still how Facebook's system operates normally.

LL: But this was allegedly used in politics which is also unusual to use data analytics for politics.

LOUISE MATSAKIS: No because unlike on TV and radio there are no federal regulation in the United States regulating online digital advertising.

LL: There's another aspect of this and that that is the people who are using Facebook, how they have privacy settings. But I wonder how people are feeling about their own privacy on these platforms. Do they even care?

LOUISE MATSAKIS: I think that it really depends but I think that this is a really important turning moment for Facebook. I think that people are going to be more skeptical. There's a lot of people I've seen in the media talking about deleting the app entirely. I also think what's hard is that over the 10 years or so that Facebook has existed, I had a Facebook account for a decade, the privacy settings have evolved and it's hard to keep track of how your data is being used. I think that there are more controls than there used to be but it's kind of- it doesn't really matter. You know I've shared my data with dozens of apps over the years and I don't know how that data is being used now and there's little like you do about it. So I don't know if it's that people don't care but I think that they feel like there's little they can do to stop it.

LL: You used to have a Facebook account. You don't anymore.

LOUISE MATSAKIS: No I still do. But I've had it for over a decade.

LL: And your privacy settings are what? What advice can you give to other people?

LOUISE MATSAKIS: So I think the most important thing to do is go and look into what our permissions do give in. You know over the years if you have taken a quiz, if you played a game you shared your information unwittingly with these apps. You know you may not realize how much information is being collected. It's like you know your work history, it's where you live, it's your relationship status, it's everything you've ever liked on the platform. And you can go in and you can remove those app permissions. You can't stop the data that's already been collected. But you can you know stop it from happening in the future. I went in and I deleted the app permissions for a couple of dozen apps and I think that's a really good place to start if you're kind of not ready to delete your Facebook entirely.

LL: I think there's a big learning curve coming up for a lot of people. Louise Matsakis thank you.

LOUISE MATSAKIS: Thank you for having me I appreciate it.

LL: Louise Matsakis is a staff writer at WIRED who covers security and social platform. She was in New York. We invited Facebook to be part of this conversation. It declined but sent us a statement by Paul Grewal its vice president and deputy general counsel. Here as part of it: "If these reports are true it's a serious abuse of our rules. All parties involved certified to us that they destroyed the data in question in light of new reports that it was not destroyed, we are suspending these three parties from Facebook pending further information. We will take whatever steps are required to see that the data in question is deleted once and for all and take action against all offending parties". Now for its part Cambridge Analytica issued a statement as well and here is part of it: "In 2014 we received Facebook data and derivatives of Facebook data from another company GSR that we engaged in good faith to legally supply data for research. After it subsequently became known that GSR had broken its contract with Cambridge Analytica because it hadn't adhered to Data Protection Regulation, Cambridge Analytica deleted all the Facebook data and derivatives in cooperation with Facebook. This Facebook data was not used by Cambridge Analytica as part of the services it provided to the Donald Trump presidential campaign. Personality targeted advertising wasn't carried out for this client either. The company has made this clear since 2016."

SOUNDCLIP

You know I reflected on it and I think you know I said to myself I need to speak out now because I've seen the impact those companies had. And I think people should know about how it works.

LL: That is some more of Christopher Wiley's interview on CBC's The National. He says he's speaking out now because it is the right thing to do. But what if there had been a code of ethics in place for tech workers like him in the first place. Unlike other fields with a big public impact like medicine or loss, software development and the wider tech world have no overarching code of ethics. And some say that should change. Casey Fiesler is an assistant professor in the Department of Information Science at the University of Colorado Boulder. And we have reached her now. Hello.

CASEY FIESLER: Hello.

LL: What is the most interesting thing to you about this Cambridge Analytica story?

CASEY FIESLER: You know I think it's particularly interesting here that the deception that took place misrepresented what was happening as an academic study. I think that this is really problematic because it could discourage people from trusting science, from participating in science. And I think it could have a larger impact than just the platform based ethics that people have been talking about.

LL: So you're saying that this university professor misrepresented from the beginning what he wanted the data for.

CASEY FIESLER: That was my understanding. Yes.

LL: So what questions are these revelations posing then for the field of computer programming and specifically this kind of software development?

CASEY FIESLER: You know this isn't the first scandal like this. It seems like something's happening quite frequently these days with respect to data privacy data, science, ethics. And there have been a lot of calls for more ethics education for computer scientists, for data scientists, more ethical thinking and it's a little more complicated than that actually. Christopher Wiley as far as I understand did not have any formal computer science training. The researcher at Cambridge University was a psychologist. So neither one of them necessarily would have been caught under any mandatory ethics training for example.

LL: Let's talk about this some more when people go to medical school they're required to study medical ethics. When they go to law school they also study ethics by comparison. How much training is there provided for those who are actually studying computer science formally?

CASEY FIESLER: It definitely varies from program to program. For example my undergraduate degree and graduate degree is from Georgia Tech where there is a required ethics course that all of the computer science students take which I taught. At other universities in the United States at least there is some mandatory ethics content in order for the program to be accredited but this can take place in different ways. Little pieces of classes for example but there are no tests, no licensing for software development as a profession.

LL: So do you think there are ways it could be improved?

CASEY FIESLER: I do think that for fordable computer science programs there are some ways that that could be improved. Even I think for programs that have a single class usually at the end that sometimes the ethics training is divorced from the actual technological context. So that as opposed to learning this all in a vacuum at the end perhaps when a student takes a data science class, a machine learning class, an AI class they learn about the ethics of that content as they're doing it.

LL: All right that's education. Then we move right into the world, the professional world. What kind of professional ethical guidelines are in place in the tech industry?

CASEY FIESLER: So there are different codes of ethics. The Association for Computing Machinery which is the professional organization for computer science has a code of ethics which is actually being revised right now. There are several initiatives in place to create codes of ethics for Data Scientists for example though it's unclear how much teeth any of these codes have because of the lack of a licensing program. Though, even licensing would be challenging because so many technologists are self-taught - may not have formal jobs in the area. So that makes it a lot more complicated and say the medical profession where in order to be a doctor you need to work at a hospital and you need to be licensed.

LL: The world of journalism faces the same thing. You don't license journalists. You don't license software developers. So what about the idea of bringing in an overarching code of ethics then for the tech industry is there any point in doing that?

CASEY FIESLER: I think there's always a point in doing it because even if everyone isn't going to abide by it, you don't always have good actors, there's something to be said for having a formalized social norms about how we act. And one thing that I think is really important is for us to change our ideas of what it means to be a technologist, to be a software developer to understand that thinking about the ethics of what you're doing is part of that profession. It's part of what it means to be a good computer scientist.

LL: But are there other people in the tech world who would push back against the idea of a code of ethics?

CASEY FIESLER: I imagine there are. Yes. One problem with ethical guidelines is that ethics need to be highly contextual and for something like technology that's changing very quickly it can sometimes be difficult to have a formal guidelines.

LL: How much debate is there right now in the tech community around this?

CASEY FIESLER: I mean I would say even within my research community where a lot of people are thinking about this - people who study online platforms social computing - there are disagreements about some very basic things like how we research public data, whether it's okay to violate terms of service in the course of research. Because there are arguments you can make on either side for things that are kind of grey.

LL: Oh yes that's actually that's what leads into what I want to talk about next which is academic research and using data. You say there is a debate going on within it. Can you give us some examples of the kind of social media data that gets used in academic research and why?

CASEY FIESLER: Sure. Facebook data is actually less prevalent than many other kinds of data because so much of Facebook's data is private. That's why in the Cambridge Analytica situation they had to get people to install an app in order to get access to their friends’ only data. Whereas other platforms like Twitter are completely public. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of research papers based on Twitter data from everything for tracking flu trends on Twitter to looking at people's television habits. And for the most part no one ever knows that their tweet was included in a data set that was used for science.

LL: You co-wrote a piece for Slate.com arguing that Facebook could prevent the next Cambridge Analytica by giving researchers more access to data not less. Can you explain that?

CASEY FIESLER: So right now again because Facebook data is not open, there aren't any real formal process for an ethics review outside of Facebook for researchers who want to get access to Facebook data. The only way to do that is to do something like create an app that will let people give it to you.

LL: And then they're open to having it reviewed.

CASEY FIESLER: Exactly. And what are the issues that people have been talking about recently with respect to Facebook is that it would be good if researchers could almost do an actual audit of the ways that Facebook is impacting society etcetera. So right now there is research on Facebook. There are researchers at Facebook who right papers for example but generally they're the only ones who have access to Facebook data from the inside.

LL: We're running out of time. This is interesting there's so much more to talk about but thank you.

CASEY FIESLER: Yes you're very welcome.

LL: Casey Fiesler is an assistant professor in the Department of Information Science at the University of Colorado Boulder. The CBC News is next. Then there are plenty of questions about the newly announced Canadian peacekeeping initiative in Mali. We'll hear what guests including Romeo Dallaire have to say. In our next half hour. I'm Laura Lynch and you're listening to The Current.

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Back To Top »

Should Canada risk soldiers' lives in its peacekeeping mission in Mali?

Guests: Jocelyn Coulon, Martin Woods, Romeo Dallaire

LL: Hello I'm Laura Lynch and you're listening to The Current.

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LL: Still to come, the legacy of the late Stephen King leaves behind goes far beyond his work as a physicist. He became the face and voice of assistive technology as he spoke to the world with a computer's aid. Coming up in about half an hour we'll hear more about the development of assistive technologies and why some might stand to benefit from them finds the technology a hindrance today. But first, mission to Mali.

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VOICE 1: Today's announcement of the air task force to Mali is yet another example of our government's commitment to engaging the world.

VOICE 2: Every comedian life of every brave Canadian women and men in uniform is absolutely precious. We are grateful for their service and our government will do everything in our power to ensure Canadians can make a real contribution.

LL: Harjit Sajjan and Chrystia Freeland, the ministers of national defence and foreign affairs respectively, making a much anticipated announcement in Ottawa yesterday. This summer Canada will be sending helicopters and troops to Mali to join the United Nations peacekeeping mission. They'll be committed to the troubled West African country for 12 months. Conflict in Mali has led to the displacement of more than 140,000 refugees and 50,000 internally displaced people. Canada's Chief of Defence Staff describes the country as extremely dangerous. The conservative opposition wants a full parliamentary debate about the deployment but it's a mission that my next guest advised the government to join months ago. Jocelyn Coulon was senior policy adviser to the previous Minister of Foreign Affairs Stephane Dion until 2017. Now he works as a researcher at the University of Montreal and next month his book about Justin Trudeau's foreign policy will be published. Jocelyn Coulon is in Montreal. Hello.

JOCELYN COULON: Hello.

LL: What do you think about the government's peacekeeping announcement?

JOCELYN COULON: Well I think you have to put this in the context of Justin Trudeau's foreign police. You remember that in 2015 the Liberal Party were saying to the Canadian electorate that if you elect the Liberal Party Canada we'll be back on the international scene. Now two years and a half later some people were questioning where Canada was exactly. They saw their prime minister all around the world but in Canada exactly doing something in the world. I mean today you had a decision that goes in that direction. It is a modest announcement but at least it is a first step.

LL: In 2016 Justin Trudeau committed to spend four hundred and fifty million dollars to deploy up to 600 Canadian troops to - as then unnamed U.N. mission in Africa. Tell me what happened after that.

JOCELYN COULON: During the autumn of 2016 we start looking at some peace operation in Africa where we could deploy Canadian troops. Now there was a country under consideration in Africa: Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, the Central African Republic and Mali. We then focus on Mali because we thought it was a country that Canada know very well, have a lot of engagement in terms of aid, in terms of investment. We have allies in this country who were already working in the peace operation. And therefore in December 2016 in their prime minister was brief on the different option and that was about to take a decision. But you remember what happened in January 2017 minister Dion was fired, new president was elected in the United States and the government to focused on Canada U.S. relation.

LL: And now though, that the focus is back on, what about the timing? What what is it about right now? You alluded to the fact that maybe Trudeau just wants to have Canada have more of a place in the world. Is that what it is?

JOCELYN COULON: Well I think during 2017 the prime minister was dithering about his promise to send back peacekeeping operations. And I think that starting at the beginning of this year, there was pressure from Germany, Netherlands and other countries who have who in Mali pressured on the prime minister to be frank and make sure that Canada could participate in the peace operation in Mali. Obviously the decision was taken last week because two ministers show up at the house. They are now on the mission but there's not a lot of detail which mean that the decision must have been taken very lately.

LL: We do know though that there is going to involve helicopter. It doesn't look like troops on the ground trying to keep the peace. Does this mission go far enough to your mind?

JOCELYN COULON: Well it's a very modest contribution. At least we have answer a request from the U.N. to replace Germany because Germany will withdraw their helicopters during this year and we're participating. But at the same time what the ministers said the participation will last only one year and it's mainly focused on technical and military aspect. We are not yet involved in the peace process in Mali which has been our tradition in the past when we participate in peace operations.

LL: But the peace process has been criticized recently. It seems to be falling apart. The mission there is called one of the most dangerous missions, if not the most dangerous U.N. mission there is there. Is it is it wise for Canada to go into something like this?

JOCELYN COULON: Well first of all peace process take a long time. Remember that the U.N. is in Cyprus since 1964. The U.N. is also in the south of Lebanon since 1978 and we are still waiting for a solution. Peace processes take a long time.

LL: But I don't think we're talking about time here sir. What I was referring to is the risk for Canadians going in there. Because I think a lot of people in Canada when they think about Canada's peacekeeping missions work comes to mind most recently is Somalia or Rwanda.

JOCELYN COULON: Well Mali is not Somalia and it is not Rwanda and it's not even Afghanistan. Because there's a lot of people who link the two. Some are saying you know if you go to Mali you will end up in a situation that look like Afghanistan. It is not the same environment

LL: To be clear Afghanistan was not a peacekeeping mission. It was a combat mission.

JOCELYN COULON: No no you're right about that. But the new peace operation involves some time - I say sometime - some combat because that's the new environment.

LL: How much reluctance do you see from the Canadian public and policy makers to engage in Africa?

JOCELYN COULON: I don't think there's a lot of reluctance from people, perhaps from some politicians. But a professor of political science at University of Ottawa published a study in 2014 where he look at different polls and saw that Canadians were willing not only to send peacekeepers in a peace operation, but also to sustain some fatalities if it was necessary to keep the peace. Then I think the Canadian public is aware of a certain kind of danger when you get involved in these kind of operations.

LL: And you think they accept that risk.

JOCELYN COULON: Oh yes. They accept this risk.

LL: Mr. Coulon, thank you very much for your time.

JOCELYN COULON: Well thank you very much.

LL: Bye bye.

JOCELYN COULON: Bye.

LL: Jocelyn Coulon is a researcher and former senior policy adviser to the previous minister of foreign affairs defence Stephane Dion. He is in Montreal. Now not everyone is convinced that sending Canadian troops to Mali is the best way to re-engage in peacekeeping. Martin Woods why was a Canadian peacekeeper in the former Yugoslavia in 1993. He is also a veteran of the Afghanistan war. He's retired now and we have reached Martin Woods in Strathmore, Alberta. Hello.

MARTIN WOODS: Hello.

LL: As someone who has been in the field yourself what is your reaction to what you've just heard?

MARTIN WOODS: Well my biggest concern is with the buzz words that used to surround the mission in Mali, referring to these peacekeeping which for Canadians I think gives us a throwback in our minds to old school Peacekeeping where two sides had made an agreement to not fight anymore and the United Nations would set themselves up in the middle to help maintain that while they put their agreements in place and deescalate it.

LL: Are you saying that that's not what's happening in Mali?

MARTIN WOODS: It doesn't appear to me at least as an outsider. It doesn't appear that way at all. This to me looks more like peace making.

LL: What concerns you about peacemaking?

MARTIN WOODS: There is definitely a higher level of risk, is number one. Number two is when we use words like peacekeeping it can possibly mislead the public into the risk with our military personnel will face. I think for missions like this for any time we are going to risk our personal lives, we should make sure the public is well aware of exactly what risks are being put on the table.

LL: Well speak to me from your experience in the former Yugoslavia. You were there on a peacekeeping mission. Was it truly a peacekeeping mission?

MARTIN WOODS: To a degree. I mean there were certainly a lot of deaths. We did put ourselves in the middle of two sides. I would say for the most part that was incredibly successful, where the Canadians were. Even peacekeeping, it is dangerous by nature. But I did do that as a successful mission. I was lucky enough to go back in 2003 and see the progress that the country had made over 10 years. It made me feel good that we had set the conditions for them can succeed in the end.

LL: Given that experience what questions would you like to have answered before Canadian peacekeepers go to Mali?

MARTIN WOODS: Well I'd certainly like to see a debate in parliament and that way it is on the record exactly what the government's expectations are of our personnel. And also puts it in a public forum, commitments by the government to the public of what it is that we're going to do.

LL: Okay. When you say where are we going to do, can you give me some specifics of what you would like to know to answer that question?

MARTIN WOODS: As you alluded to in the interview with Mr. Coulon, it is the most dangerous U.N. mission and the U.N. says on their website. So if that danger level is there then what are we going to do. So to me that's not peacekeeping work. We're getting ourselves into a little more involved situation in support of our NATO allies. The U.N. troops are under attack. We are sending armed escort helicopters there. We're not sending armed escort helicopters to drop teddy bears, obviously, right. They are there for a reason putting that level of armament on our helicopters is because there is a real danger. That to me implies a certain level of possible violence may be required on the part of the forces. That concerns me. Post mission support concerns me in terms of [unintelligible] and making sure they are taken care whether they are physically injured or disease, and disease is a huge issue in places like Africa, malaria for example.

LL: So if you could talk to a young peacekeeper who is getting ready to deploy to Mali what would you say to that person?

MARTIN WOODS: I don't think I'd have to say it because I think all Canadian force personnel take care of each other. That is the number one thing is to take care of each other and watch each other's backs.

LL: And I'm going to ask you, this is a bit of a difficult question but obviously you'd like to think that your home country, the people in your home country, support what you do as a peacekeeper. I'm wondering whether you felt that was true back in the time when you were in the former Yugoslavia, whether you saw that kind of faith shaken by the events in Somalia, and how you expect the public to react now.

MARTIN WOODS: I've always in my time with the military certainly on one to one basis with people never felt a lack of support at all. I don't feel that same level of Support on the part of governments and to me that's not a political statement because I think that all parties.

LL: But was it at all shaken by what has happened with the troops in Somalia?

MARTIN WOODS: Somalia to me is an aberration. How to put it - At the end of the day, soldiers are people. And that means some of them will be flawed and the bulk of them will be absolutely wonderful and do what they need to do. So you mentioned Somalia where a few soldiers did the wrong thing should not reflect on our view of the forces at all.

LL: Well I thank you for your time. It is going to be interesting as we find out more details of the mission in the coming days and weeks. Thank you.

MARTIN WOODS: It was nice talking to you, Laura.

LL: Bye bye.

MARTIN WOODS: Bye now.

LL: Martin Woods was a Canadian peacekeeper in the former Yugoslavia in 1993 and is also a veteran of the Afghanistan war. He spoke to us from Strathmore, Alberta. Retired Lieutenant General Romeo Dallaire has seen peacekeeping and politics around these missions from the inside. He served as the head of the U.N. mission to Rwanda during that country's genocide in which more than 800,000 people were killed. He is also a retired senator which means he knows the political complexities of putting Canadian troops into violent situations. Romeo Dallaire is the founder of the Romney Dallaire Child Soldier initiative at Dalhousie University and he joins us today from Montreal. Hello.

ROMEO DALLAIRE: Good morning.

LL: Do you think Canada should be sending peacekeepers to Mali?

ROMEO DALLAIRE: Absolutely.

LL: Why?

ROMEO DALLAIRE: Because it is high time that we return into the tasks of peace keeping in this modern era. And that Mali is a mission that is in need of high technical support and going in with what has been proposed, which is bringing in the force multipliers that [unintelligible] are for any force, is a very good way to re-enter the free of the modern era of peacekeeping. And let's not get all hung up with the term peacekeeping. Although the U.N. likes to still use the term, we ended the classic peacekeeping [unintelligible] and everybody likes somebody there as a referee in what they call a Chapter 6 with the 90s, and we are in to Chapter 7 which means the use of force may be required in order to establish peace and to sustain it and to protect the population. And that's what we are into, and that's why we have to go into it in a deliberate way because peacekeeping has changed from the historic framework that it used to be.

LL: So what should we be calling it? If it is not peacekeeping anymore what is it?

ROMEO DALLAIRE: I use the term conflict resolution. We are into assisting nations resolve a conflict that is in territory and ultimately that will transition to agreements and those agreements will then transition into a requirement to monitor it and assist it. And then we go and do reconciliation and hopefully the nation carries on.

LL: You just heard the concerns of Martin Woods' who was a Canadian peacekeeper in Yugoslavia. How do you respond to those?

ROMEO DALLAIRE: Well I think that he responds appropriately. However the force that's going in has got the good medical package. It's got the good evaluation package that is required and the self-protection package that we are deploying with this capability, which will call up probably a couple hundred troops to keep those systems going. I think that the announcement of us going in in a support role with the caveats of knowing that yes there are risk if you're sending soldiers into a conflict zone, and if you are a nation that is mature and recognizing the course that that and we certainly did that in spades, we know that our soldiers - and they know also - that there will be risks. And the job of the command and the commanders and that may be why it's taken while to get to decisions is to ensure that we're minimizing the risk to the least possible level.

LL: Is that which you suspect? Because you know the political process as well is that why it's taken this long for the government to make an announcement?

MARTIN WOODS: I think that the government was going through some pretty difficult reassessment of how to re-engage. And having been in Africa with the minister himself and discussing it, the question was Is that what does the U.N. and what does Africa need in order to support it as it moves to its own self-reliant peace and security environment. And so when we were doing that it became clearer and clearer as we were moving down that road that they weren't looking for battalions of Canadians coming in to reinforce that which was already over 100,000 troops deployed in peacekeeping. But they were looking for professionalization of their forces, building capacity in their forces, bringing them new competencies and in fact Canada has been doing that. As an example with my child soldier initiative we've helped rewrite the doctrine on how to handle child soldiers because they're prevalent in every conflict, including Mali, and giving them the tactics and the training in order to adapt to this environment. So you do not walk in like we've been in peacekeeping. You are going to walk in with a capability and also offer a capability and I think that's what we can expect with the next 400 or whatever the numbers left to deploy and that is going into countries I think and helping them build capacity there to do the job.

LL: So you think the rest is worth end even though there have been 162 deaths in their mission in Mali since 2014?

MARTIN WOODS: Deaths have been related to combat. They are also difficult to discern because it is a civil war. The civil wars are got to be the dirtiest types of war ever to exist. They are the most ruthless and of course the most difficult to discern. So that experience we've been learning we learned in Afghanistan and we're certainly learning it in spades as we monitor and as our special forces are deploying in places like Iraq and so on. So the experiential background is now being reinforced by some very solid new doctrine and tactical skills in particular regarding this thread of child soldiers and that will reduce the risk. In so doing that prepares us to take on, I think, the next phase of the deployment. This is what are we doing with the other maybe 400 and also 150 police that's promised.

LL: You've spoken openly about the psychological effects you suffered because your work as a peacekeeper. Won't there be a similar risk for peacekeepers in Mali? And I am thinking about what you've just spoken about, which is the fact that they'll likely be facing forces who are using child soldiers.

ROMEO DALLAIRE: That is a very very pertinent question. There is no way that anyone will come back from any conflict zone and not be affected in a minimum, or sometimes extensively, psychologically. The question is, one, are you prepared to take them back and we have built a system that has become in fact a very sophisticated and is meeting more and more challenges, also there is still gaps between veterans and the ND and so what. However training them and giving them experience on the ground will reduce the ethical and moral dilemmas that they will face. And as an example facing child soldiers, the new doctrine that we built - and it's been over eight years in research and applying it in Africa and now in the Middle East also - is there to reduce that dilemma. It is to have them prepared to face the fact that they're facing children. What are means of neutralizing making children less effective without necessarily having to use lethal force. And the more you can give them that the less you will have the impact of that ethical dilemma that moral dilemma and in that way reduce the casualties, psychological.

LL: Canadian troops faced a lot of controversy after the mission to Somalia 25 years ago, when a young Somali man was beaten to death by the Canadian Soldiers, and Martin Woods talked about that earlier. I am wondering how you see public support in Canada for complex peacekeeping today.

ROMEO DALLAIRE: When I was campaigning my brigade 1993 and I had nearly 2000 troops deployed in Yugoslavia, the soldiers, the ones who had been killed at night and we were hiding them. And the government was not keen on showing that in fact the casualties could happen and the opinion of the [unintelligible] population at the time was about 20 percent.

LL: 20 percent supporting.

ROMEO DALLAIRE: Yes. Now Somalia, Somalia is now just one character that did some bad things. Somalia proved that we had lost certain elements of our leadership competency and we that had to do reforms. And in fact my job in 1999-2000 was to articulate and produce the reform of the Canadian officers in order to handle the leadership complexities of this new era which is not like the old classic warfare. And so what we saw however with Afghanistan is that the nation did see its forces as being effective, did see its forces being professional and conducting themselves appropriately and the support to the Canadian forces went up to 85 percent. And I think it's still at that level. So returning now to the field in a modest way but progressively is very much in line with what I think Canadians expect its forces to be able to do, to provide security in the world. And one must also remember there isn't a conflict in the world that will not knock on our door because the causes of pandemics through huge refugee camps, internally displaced camps, the possibilities of all kinds of other problems will affect us so we got to get out there.

LL: Right. We'll have to leave it there. Thank you very much.

ROMEO DALLAIRE: Yes, okay.

LL: Retired Lieutenant General Romeo Dallaire was the head of the U.N. mission in Rwanda during that country's genocide in 1994. He is the founder of the Romeo Dallaire Child Soldier initiative at Dalhousie University. He was in Montreal. What do you think about Canada's commitment to Mali. Tweet us @TheCurrentCBC or me @LauraLynchCBC. Find us on Facebook or e-mail from our website. Go to cbc.ca/thecurrent. Click on the Contact link. Coming up in our next half hour, I'll speak with Lama Nachman of Intel's Anticipatory Computing Lab. She worked closely with the late Stephen Hawking on technology he used to communicate with the world. I am Laura Lynch. You were listening to The Current.

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Meet the woman who saved Stephen Hawking's voice, and then gave the technology away to those in need

Guests: Lama Nachman, Gary Birch

LL: I'm Laura Lynch and this is The Current

SOUNDCLIP

For a time at home. I could communicate only by raising my eyebrows when someone pointed the letters on the card. All thoughts of work and furnishing my book grew distant. But then quiet and expectedly a glimmer of hope came from across the water.

LL: The unmistakable computer assisted voice of Stephen Hawking who died last week after living much of his life with a motor neurone disease. That glimmer of hope, a computer system that allowed him to communicate after a tracheotomy took away his ability to speak. During his life that computerized voice became so closely identified with the physicist that he had a copyright protected so no one could imitate him. It was an assistive technology that allowed the world famous physicist to flourish. And similar technologies are being used everyday by people like Melody- Anne Arbeau. The 15 year old lives in Calgary with her parents and her younger sister. She has cerebral palsy and uses a computer generated voice to help communicate with her mother, Valerie.

SOUNDCLIP

VALERIE: Melody-Anne, can you tell Mom what is it you'd like? What is that you want, darling?

COMPUTER: I want.

LL: What would you like me to do? She just closed the page. So she's going to another page now so she can tell me what she wants. Just going through.

COMPUTER: Sing.

VALERIE: IT says: I want Mom thing. You want Mom to sing? You want Mom to sing right now? [Chuckles] Melody-Anne loves christmas, so we often think a lot of Christmas songs. So are you ready Melody-Anne? Should we sing Haul out the Holly? Okay [sings] Haul out the Holly, put up the tree before ...

LL: Melody-Anne has been using this kind of technology for the past eight years. Her mom Valerie explained how it works to our producer Michael O'Halloran.

SOUNDCLIP

VALERIE: Melody-Anne is using an Accent 1200. So it's kind of like a computer tablet. And the way it works for her is she presses a button, it highlights a section of the screen and then she presses another and as it gets close to what it is she wants to say. So she's just telling us about polar bears [laughs]. So she's using this which is basically to activate what she wants to sing and then she can create sentences that way.

MICHAEL O'HALLORAN: So tell me about the early days when you were using this technology. How how did the work at the beginning?

VALERIE: Well first of all we started with low tech. So we were using symbols on a felt board. And then we went to Assets which is that program [unintelligible]. And so they kind of assessed her to see how she would do with more advanced technology. So when we first got it we were kind of excited and we were sort of working up with her sort of prior in the hopes that she would be able to just kind of pick up and go with it but then not so much. So when she first got the device, when she was at school, she would just kind of watching everybody else. She was on the sidelines but we didn't realize until later what she was doing was learning where everything was. Because you have your initial screen like the home page and then she can hit buttons which will open up another page. So she was learning what all this stuff was unbeknownst to us. When she did start talking it was sort of like 'Wow! She's getting some of this'. One of the things though that we don't get is kind of conversation per se. So most of Melody-Anne's communication with this is requesting; 'I want'. So she's letting us know what she'd like to do, where she'd like to go, what she wants to listen to that kind of stuff.

MICHAEL O'HALLORAN: How has it changed you as a family?

VALERIE: It's kind of nice to know some of what she's thinking or some of what she would like to do. It helps reduce behaviours. Often when children - even little toddlers they are typical - when they can't communicate yet they get frustrated and they have tantrums, pull hair, they'll cry whatever. So we see a big reduction in that. Now if she starts with the hair pulling or whatever her behavior might be I can say no you don't need to do that. You can tell me. You've got words to speak.

LL: But not everyone who could benefit from similar technology has. Jeff Moulins of Vancouver has been a guinea pig for various iterations of that same technology and it's never really worked for Jeff. But as he tells his brother Joe Moulins he did eventually find another use for it

SOUNDCLIP

JEFF: [Audible communication] Touch.

JOE: [To Jeff] You want to touch it? What are you using? Your unicorn stick?[To producer] He types with a unicorn stick on his head. It worked for Stephen Hawking because he didn't move around. Like you can see that Jeff has a hard time sitting still. And the problem back then, this was late 80s, laptop computers there didn't have backlit screens. If the angle of the screen was off just a little bit, then Jeff couldn't see it. So he had this this big contraption with the computer mounted in front of him. And as soon as he would try to use it the screen would move and he couldn't see it.