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The Current Transcript for November 3, 2022

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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Mr. Tabuns, you are named. You must leave the chamber for the day. Mr. West, you are named. You must leave the chamber for the day. Ms. Stiles. You're named. You must leave the chamber for the day.

MATT GALLOWAY: These are tense times in Ontario's provincial legislature. The Premier says he will use the notwithstanding clause to impose a contract on education workers and take away their right to strike. Opposition members are being thrown out of the legislature in protest and many schools are set to close indefinitely tomorrow if workers walk off the job. In an hour, Doug Ford's political gamble and what it'll take to keep kids in class. Also this morning, the war in Ukraine grinds on. Coming up, an investigation from the Fifth Estate into war crimes in Ukraine and the Russian soldier who spilt the details. Plus, the spotlight these days is firmly on Twitter now in the grip of Elon Musk. But spare a thought for TikTok.

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There is a lot of funny, positive content on TikTok. There is also the power to reach millions with harmful messages and when they get really big, good could be really good with the bad can be really bad.

MG: In 30 minutes, privacy, misinformation and the role of the Chinese state in an app loved by millions for dance videos and more. We begin, though, in Ottawa and the relationship between police and the protesters. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

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Emergencies Act inquiry told that police leaked information to protesters

Guests: Tonda MacCharles, Jessica Davis

MG: The truck convoy organisers are having their say this week at the Emergencies Act enquiry.

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There is a numerous times where information would come in to the operations centre from various police sources that a raid was imminent and it happened many times and then the raids did occur in parts such as Coventry or other evenings where they would go and take firewood and and fuel their food from one of the blocks.

MG: That's convoy leader Keith Wilson with just one of many revelations about the role of law enforcement that came out yesterday. He and two other convoy organisers, Tom Marazzo and Pat King, were speaking in front of the Public Order Emergency Commission. It's reviewing the federal government's decision to invoke the emergency powers to clear convoy protesters from the streets of Ottawa. Last winter tournament. Tonda MacCharles is a senior reporter in the Toronto Star's Ottawa bureau. She's been covering the hearings from the start and she's back today. Good morning.

TONDA MACCHARLES: Good morning, Matt.

MG: Let's briefly just talk about police and the protesters. We heard a little bit of Keith Wilson's testimony there in the introduction. What did he say about the information the convoy was getting from law enforcement agencies?

TONDA MACCHARLES: Well, it was a bit of an extraordinary moment. And it was it came up sort of I would say indirectly. It was the lawyer for the Ottawa Residents and Businesses Coalition that actually said put to Mr. Keith Wilson, the lawyer for the convoy. Some of the convoy organisers. You were getting information from sympathetic police, weren't you? Nobody had delved into that prior to this. And Wilson flat out said absolutely. And not only that, we had so many people on board. We had ex-military ex police. We had information coming in to them from all kinds of areas. But at one point, he said, but, you know, sometimes they were giving us information that we realised we couldn't rely on because there was so much we didn't even know how much dysfunction there was in the police. It was an odd moment. It was only later in a scrum with reporters where Wilson claimed and I say claimed because there's a caveat. We just don't know to what extent this is true. He claimed that they were getting information from pretty much all the services, all the police services that were involved in this RCMP, OPP, the Ottawa police, even CSIS the Canadian Intelligence Agency. The only ones he said he wasn't getting information from or leaks from was the military. And so an extraordinary moment, whether we can believe it or not, it's not clear, but it's absolutely clear by other documents at the enquiry and other documents I've reviewed outside the enquiry that the Government was very worried about this. The Federal Government was and had mentioned it and flagged it, the possibility that there were operational details being leaked to the Ottawa police.

MG: Worried that there were officers who were sympathetic to the cause.

TONDA MACCHARLES: Sympathetic to the cause and and feeding them and feeding them intel on what operational decisions were being made.

MG: We're going to hear over the course of our conversation some of the testimony yesterday. But just broadly, what was the impression of the organisers that you got as they were making their way through through this testimony?

TONDA MACCHARLES: Look, I think that the overall impression this week is one that is probably disturbing to a lot of Ottawa residents, and that is, you know, these organisers, they shared one thing in common. Not all of them were vaxxed vaccinated, some were, some weren't. But they share this the libertarian view, an defiantly anti-authority authority view as well, and had created this. They create this impression, if you listen only to their testimony, that it was all peace and love in Ottawa, that there were hugs abounding and there was no violence and there was no real disruption to the people of Ottawa or the Parliament of Ottawa that it was basically a Woodstock festival. And they downplayed the violence that some Ottawa residents felt they experienced. They downplayed any suggestion that, you know, ten days of blaring air horns was a big deal. They downplayed all the harms and they downplayed their own rhetoric. You know, there was a couple there who a couple of these witnesses have described themselves as online trolls who have made previously racist and anti-Muslim comments. And, you know, even then they were only semi contrite, I would say, about any of it, about any of the rhetoric leading up to the protest, the harms that are being put forward as the reason why the federal government invoked the act. And going forward, they sort of have this defiance of, I would say, sort of the the the overall government's approach. Some of them have rejected the idea that the protest was all about replacing the Trudeau government and elected government. But some and I think that, you know, this is this is a big question. You know, some, I think, have the view that, you know, that the elected government of Canada has no right to make any of these public health decisions that were made in the pandemic.

MG: So Tom Marazzo is a former military officer. He testified about his involvement in the convoy. Let's have a listen to some of what he had to say.

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What we wanted was for the government, anybody. We were desperate. It was a it was a basically a cry for for help to come in and sit down and do this democratically. We were trying to nudge them, motivate them in any way we could just to talk to us. And to this day. They've never spoken to us.

MG: So to do that picks up a little bit of what you were saying. What did we learn about his motivations for taking part in this?

TONDA MACCHARLES: Well, Tom Marazzo is an ex Canadian army captain. Retired captain who? Talked about his own struggles in in the pandemic, in in this sense, you know, he resented the the government telling people what to do. He said that he was even starting to build his own house to go off the grid because he suspected that there was talk that somehow unvaccinated Canadians would not be allowed to participate in society. But what is and what is shared with all of the other witnesses, again, is this sense of in the pandemic that there was an us and them dynamic going on, as opposed to that the pandemic affected all Canadians, that all Canadians were grappling with tough decisions. I found that Tom Marazzo also was one of the witnesses, and there were others who sort of also downplayed the suggestion that some of their compatriots would ever erupt into any violence, despite the fact that some of these witnesses, the people he was talking about, the enquiry, was showing videos of their language and their rhetoric that at times was quite disturbing, racist in some cases and in other cases, just talking about the prime minister should be prepared to catch a bullet. And, you know, this thing will only end in violence and that, that, those videos were linked to one particular witness, another self-described online troublemaker. And this is Pat King.

MG: Right.

TONDA MACCHARLES: And, you know, I think to hear people downplay that kind of thing landed in the room in a very odd manner.

MG: I was going to say, let's before we continue, let's hear listen to two Pat King. He was the last to testify yesterday.

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Our truckers here in Canada are the backbone of the economy in Canada. They move the freight. Their importance is a very basically, they're the forgotten. But I knew the importance that if you stopped the trucking industry within for within 72 hours, you'll be brother. I'm brother for a loaf of bread.

MG: So he was the one who compared what was happening to Woodstock, says, what's ten days of honking horns, given what he claimed he had been through. Some of the other organisers distanced themselves from King, and he was the one who you mentioned the videos that were shown in these videos threatening violent language towards the Prime Minister, talking about, yes, maybe the Prime Minister would catch a bullet espousing racist views. How did he explain those videos when he was on the stand?

TONDA MACCHARLES: He explained them as being taken out of context, that a comment he made about this thing only ending in in in with bullets flying, that that was a comment he'd made previously about indigenous and indigenous protests. But that was he, as he called it, spliced together. It was actually butted together against one of his comments that was made during the protests and put on online. Then he basically explains it all the way, as in, I'm taken out of context. That's just me. I'm joking all the time. But, you know, he himself was described by one of the other witnesses as rat. So, in fact, the guy we just talked about, the captain, the retired captain as a hand grenade ready to go off in a room and pecking, says, I'm just that guy who, you know, I always laugh and I always joking. He kind of presented this semi contrite figure to Justice Paul Rizzo saying, you know, oh, I'm sorry, maybe I shouldn't have said, you know, the catch a bullet thing that was maybe inappropriate, but everything's got a but everything is. But I was justified because and so there's a lot of self-justification going on. On the other hand, we are learning a lot about the the makeup of all the people in the convoy and learning what the Ottawa police, the beleaguered Ottawa police, which was facing its own dysfunctions, faced they faced a group of protesters that had many leaders, many factions, some of which began to split off during the convoy and argue with each other. And over the overall goal, were they there to overthrow the government or were they there just to overturn vaccine mandates? Were they there to essentially, you know, show Justin Trudeau a thing or two? We got a glimpse into that. We're getting more than a glimpse into that. We're going we're seeing the chaos. We're also learning, I think, a little bit more about, you know, what kind of relationship they had with the police and how that was breaking down. And we're learning, I think, more about the fundraising. Look, there's about they raised about $10 million on gifts. Go fund me initially. Before go fund me, this platform, this fundraising platform froze their funds. About five million of that, I'm told, is still in escrow. But then at one point, one of their lawyers suggested there was. Any million raised will, of course, fundraising shifted to another online platform and they raised another 10 million, it seems. Is that another 10 million? That's a lot of money, a lot of cash that could have allowed the convoy to stay planted in Ottawa for the long haul.

MG: We will talk again, I'm sure, because there's a lot still to come in this. Tonda, thank you very much. Thanks, Matt. Time to make Charles senior reporter in the Toronto Star's Ottawa bureau. Jessica Davis is a former senior intelligence analyst at CCS, now president and consultant at Insight Threat Intelligence. She's been listening in. Jessica, good morning to you.

JESSICA DAVIS: Good morning, Matt.

MG: How surprised are you to learn the convoy lawyer say that they were getting information, ostensibly leaks coming from inside various law enforcement agencies, including CSIS.

JESSICA DAVIS: Yeah, so that one definitely raised my eyebrows and I think it raises a lot of people's eyebrows here in Ottawa. The part about law enforcement wasn't a big surprise. There had already been a number of social media posts about this trend, the convoy, quite a number of insinuations that this was happening. So this CSIS piece is a bit more interesting, and I really wonder a little bit about the nuances there. You know, when I was reading through the transcript of the testimony, there was a comment about retired military. And I'm not clear if it refers to retired cases as well, or if Keith Watson was insinuating that active CSIS employees or feeding them information. If the latter, that is a huge issue, is actually a huge issue for law enforcement as well. It's what we consider to be an insider threat when there's someone within an organisation or agency that starts feeding your adversary or your subject is investigation information about them and it's exposed. I can't overstate the amount of damage that can do to investigations, to prosecutions, to the rule of law.

MG: So what should these agencies be doing now? But these reports, again, it's all levels of police up to the RCMP and CSIS.

JESSICA DAVIS: Yeah. This is where it gets really delicate because, you know, you don't want to start. You know, a hunt in your organisation to try to identify these people. You know, a lot of them are built on trust, particularly at CSIS. There's a lot of you have to be able to trust your employees. There's no way to always ensure compliance with all of the different policies and security procedures. You know, there really has to be that fundamental level of trust. But at the same time, these law enforcement and security agencies need to get to the bottom of what exactly it was, that Wilson was referring to and whether- and as much as they possibly can identify who might have been leaking that information. Because if you can't trust them on this, you can't trust them on anything.

MG: This is something that we'll be keeping an eye on. Obviously, you wrote, when it comes to more broadly, the intelligence that was gathered, the inside view from the two managing police forces and the major police forces does not inspire confidence when it comes to the intelligence that was being gathered. What worries you about how intelligence was being gathered?

JESSICA DAVIS: There's a couple of things that really worries me for both the OPS and the OPP in terms of the intelligence. Let's take the OPS first because it's sort of the easiest, the low hanging fruit.

MG: The Ottawa Police Service.

JESSICA DAVIS: Exactly, the Ottawa Police Service. So we've seen some intelligence assessments from the police service that are. Really classic examples of how not to do intelligence analysis. They're biased. They're citing unreliable sources. They're even plagiarising those unreliable sources. And frankly, in retrospect, they're dead wrong. There's absolutely no substantiation for a lot of the claims that things like this is a grassroots movement, that there's very little organisation. There's just a lot of things that are really wrong. And if this is informing police operations, that's a huge issue.

MG: One of those sources was is is read a column in the National Post from Rex Murphy.

JESSICA DAVIS: Indeed, that's exactly right. So this column I recommended was cited as some sort of insight, it providing insight to this assessment. And it's you know, it was basically an appeal to authority. You know, basically, like he knows this individual, you recognise him as an authority. So I'll fight him and we'll give my intelligence assessment more weight, more credibility, which is has exact opposite effect in retrospect. The Ontario Provincial Police there, their intelligence assessments are quite a bit better. Much more professional. I actually cite one of them early on as really getting it very right well before the convoy arrived. The intelligence assessment doesn't come out and say there will be an occupation, but it gets most of the way there, which is pretty astonishing, because if an intelligence analyst had said to their boss, you know, back in January 15th, 2022, there will be a month long occupation of Ottawa that would not have been taken as a credible assessment. But this assessment gets quite close to that. My concerns with the Ontario provincial police. Assessment is sometimes to stray outside of their lane of what they should and shouldn't be assessing. So, for instance, you know, when they start talking about foreign influence and foreign funding, they're not citing sources on that. They're not indicating where this information is coming from. And, you know, really, their mandate is one that won't really allow them to have a full picture of that. So it starts to get us out of the lane of what they're really able to collect and then assess credibly.

MG: Does that then speak to the lack? Many people have pointed to of effective police collaboration between the various forces if the intelligence was suspected some levels. That's the other concern that people have, is that the forces weren't actually even working together, but perhaps, you know, they weren't working together because they didn't trust each other's intelligence.

JESSICA DAVIS: I think this was one of the underlying issues, and we've seen this in a lot of the different emails and other documents that have been circulated for the commission. That there is seem to be a lot of distrust, a lot of dysfunction between the police forces. But within Ottawa Police Service especially, there has to be a tremendous amount of dysfunction and distrust and cliquish behaviour to a certain extent. And the fact that they allowed this intelligence assessment to be written and then finalised to me also speaks to a serious lack of supervision and trust in the intelligence function. Intelligence in these cases should be directly informing things like operations, staffing decisions, logistical decisions. But it really seems like there was a massive disconnect between these different functions.

MG: So just in the last 90 seconds or so that we have, what would you want to see come out of this enquiry that would better inform how this could be done in future?

JESSICA DAVIS: I think there's a number of lessons learnt from an intelligence perspective here. I think unfortunately I think that a lot of them fall outside the scope of what justice is looking at. But we can still look at these documents and look at how the collaboration has happened or not happened and and try to learn some of those lessons. So I think, you know, first of all, professionalisation of the intelligence assessment process and intelligence collection process in Ontario Police Services, Ottawa and at the provincial level is something that needs to be addressed. There are common standards that need to be applied and enforced, and of course training needs to happen and effective supervision needs to be encouraged. And really a lot more integration of that intelligence in some cases has been seen as maybe unnecessary for police or a secondary function. But it really should be the thing that's driving a lot of these decisions. But you can't do that unless you have a really professional and well-staffed and well-resourced intelligence function.

MG: I guess one just wonders whether that will change coming out of these revelations.

JESSICA DAVIS: I certainly wonder.

MG: Jessica. Good to talk to you. Thank you very much.

JESSICA DAVIS: My pleasure, as always.

MG: Jessica Davis is a former senior intelligence analyst at CSIS, now president and consultant at Insight Threat Intelligence. Your CBC News is next . And then.

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Obviously they know your username and your password, whatever information you feed directly into the app. But they also know, like what? Kind of phone your on how full your phone battery is.

MG: Social media is watching. Twitter, of course, may be top of mind these days. TikTok, though, and the misinformation on that wildly popular app is causing some politicians and tech watchers to sound the alarm. The story of tick tock coming up in 6 minutes. My name is Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One. Stay with us.

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Security concerns over TikTok

Guest: Emily Baker-White

MG: Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current.

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MG: Still to come, Ontario's education workers are on the brink of striking at a plan to use the notwithstanding clause to stop them is throwing the provincial legislature into chaos. That story in just under half an hour. But first, tick tock with a side of misinformation.

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MG: With all the news about Twitter this week, you would be forgiven for thinking it's the only thing that matters in social media. But you'd be wrong. TikTok is the fastest growing social media platform by a long shot. Drawing people in with an eclectic mix of content that goes way beyond those dance videos.

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VOICE 1: A year ago, we bought an abandoned house.

VOICE 2: This is what happens if you give a raccoon an egg.

VOICE 3: No. No. What are you making today?

VOICE 4: Today are going to make me love for my grandchildren.

VOICE 5: Are you going to put corn flakes in ketchup?

VOICE 6: If you're seeing this video on November 1st? This message is for you. There is going to be a big shift in your life. Give me something amazing. Is getting ready to happen.

VOICE 7: Well, it's 4:00 p.m. on the east coast of Canada and Hurricane Fiona has gained strength, allowing them to upgrade her to a category four hurricane level.

MG: Posted in the last year. More people visit TikTok website than Google with over a billion users. It is a major cultural force and increasingly a source of news and information for its users. And yet it's still grappling with persistent questions about how it handles content and how it handles the data of its users. Now a new investigation by the US publication Forbes says it has uncovered plans by Tiktok's parent company to use the app to monitor the location of specific U.S. citizens. Emily Baker-White is a technology reporter at Forbes. She's in San Francisco. Emily, good morning.

EMILY BAKER-WHITE: Good morning.

MG: How would you describe the scale of tech talk right now? I mean, I kind of in the introduction talked about numbers in a billion users and what have you. But how would you describe the scale of this thing?

EMILY BAKER-WHITE: It truly is. So ubiquitous in in culture in the US that I think it is starting to act like a Google. Right. There are people who instead of googling things now, tik tok things or people searching for apartments on tik tok. There are people searching for information about their local communities on Tik Tok and I think we sort of saw this happen with Facebook a number of years ago where all of the sudden it was the app that people were going to for everything. And I think that is starting starting to happen with Tik Tok as well.

MG: And so given that scale, why did you want to look deep into what TikTok might be doing with the data of its users?

EMILY BAKER-WHITE: I think the U.S. is behind a lot of other places around the world in the way that our government thinks about data protection. We don't have strong data privacy laws, and it's really important to try to understand, you know, in Silicon Valley, there's a phrase that if you can't see the product, you are the product, right? If you're not paying for something, you're probably paying for it with your data. And I think it's really important to sort of interrogate what exactly these companies want with our data and how they might be using it, either in sort of predictable ways to serve as targeted advertising or in less predictable ways.

MG: And so what did you learn? I mean, again, the targeted advertising, I think people are almost used to now, but there's a whole lot more going on. So what did you learn?

EMILY BAKER-WHITE: So last month I reviewed Internal Tick Tock and Bytedance's Buy Dance is Tiktok's parent company, which is based in Beijing. I reviewed internal materials from the companies. They showed that Bytedance's team, based in Beijing, had planned to monitor the location of certain U.S. citizens. And the team that was doing planning to do the monitoring was a team called Internal Audit and Risk Control, and that team primarily focuses on things happening inside the company. They do audits and investigations to protect against sort of wrongdoing by employees, things like embezzlement and conflict of interest in vendor contracts, somebody giving a contract to their brother in law or whatever. And also things like exfiltrating confidential information for competing companies. That's primarily what that team does. But we found that in at least two cases, that team, again, which isn't a part of TikTok at all, it's made up of Bytedance employees who report directly to Bytedance's leadership. That team had also sought to use the Tik Tok app to monitor the location of individuals who'd never been employed by the company. So they weren't looking at, you know, say, embezzlement from a company. And I wish I could tell you more about about the documents there. There's stuff I can't say because because of the terms under which I received them and because they want to protect the sources of that information. But sort of the reason that it struck me as so significant, because TikTok is currently in a big negotiation with the US government about whether and sort of to what extent these trying to be as bytedance's employees should even be allowed to access that kind of data.

MG: So I'm going to ask you some questions that you may not be able to answer, which is, who are these individuals that were being monitored? Do we know?

EMILY BAKER-WHITE: I can't tell you that.

MG: Why? But why would those individuals be monitored?

EMILY BAKER-WHITE: I can't tell you that either, which I realise is very frustrating.

MG: How would this company go about monitoring them?

EMILY BAKER-WHITE: After our report, tick tock, the company tweeted, specifying that they don't collect in the TikTok app precise GPS location data. And I have no reason to believe that's not true. I assume it is true. It does mean that the location data that they have, because it's not GPS, is somewhat less precise. But that did not change what we reported, which was that there was this plan to monitor location. And so there are a number of ways you can get location data. And one of them is GPS. It's not the only way you can also approximate someone's location, for example, using their IP address.

MG: How much data is generated from using TikTok? I mean, if you're on the app, what are you serving up to the company.

EMILY BAKER-WHITE: When you're using a lot of apps? You're sending more than you realise. Obviously they know whether you've scrolled positivity or whether you watched it, right? Obviously they know your username, your password, whatever information you fed directly into the app, but they also know like what kind of phone you're on. And sometimes they know how full your phone battery is. They could know. They do know the IP address that you're coming in from and they know the language that you're using the app in. And a lot of these things like they don't feel nefarious, right? That's just like they need that information in order to serve you their app in a coherent way. But when you actually think about all the things that add up, when you are using an app, it gets to be a pretty granular picture of the person who's using it.

MG: We asked Tok for comment and they addressed the activities of the internal audit team that you mentioned. They said Tick Tock said that its investigations are conducted only to assess specific claims, not to undertake open ended enquiries into users, as insinuated by Forbes. What do you make of that response?

EMILY BAKER-WHITE: Interesting. I, I certainly didn't mean to insinuate that there was, that there were open ended enquiries. I don't think that changes the key findings of our reporting that there was a plan to monitor the location of certain individuals. I think that nothing in what they said suggests that that what we reported is inaccurate.

MG: As you mentioned, Ticktalk parent company, Bytedance, is based in China, in Beijing. How does that shape this conversation?

EMILY BAKER-WHITE: Yeah. So I think it sort of undergirds a lot of the regulatory concern in the US about TikTok. Since 2019, the US government body called Syphilis or the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US has been investigating whether tick tock ownership by a Chinese company could pose a national security risk. There are basically, I think, two ways that that could happen. And the first one is that bytedance through Tick Tock could change public discourse in the US by subtly tweaking one of tick tock recommendations. Algorithms. Even a very subtle changes to how the algorithm promotes or demote certain content would have a big impact on what people are seeing and talking about. And if Bytedance felt pressure or even subtle or implicit pressure from the Chinese government about what to prioritise the fears that they might implicitly or explicitly yield to that pressure. So that's the first concern. The second concern is something that the commentator sometimes called data espionage, which is the idea that the Chinese government could, through bytedance, get access to a bunch of private information about US citizens and then use that information to figure out where members of the U.S. military are going or, you know, get information about activists or dissidents who oppose the Chinese government. And it's that second concern, that sort of data espionage concern that the U.S. government has been most worried about.

MG: Is there any evidence that the Chinese government through BYTEDANCE has done either of those things?

EMILY BAKER-WHITE: No, absolutely not. I think there's a lot of concern that they could. The closest evidence that I've seen is the story that I reported earlier this summer about a different Bytedance's app, where people who had worked on that app told me that they were ordered to or that people were ordered to prioritise and serve up rank or pin to the top of the the app content that was that showed China in a positive light and that it was a news app. It was called Top Buzz. It doesn't exist anymore. But those employees, those people who had worked at Top Buzz, described essentially being required to push out pro-China messages to folks in the U.S. and elsewhere around the world. And so while there is some president to suggest that Bytedance has done this before, there is no evidence to suggest that they have ever done it on TikTok.

MG: You could imagine.

EMILY BAKER-WHITE: When we asked them about that top US report and a bunch of people told me it happened by dint that it didn't happen. You know, I think we have to just take that as it is. But I think it's important to note that they that they flatly denied that that happened.

MG: Well, I was going to say just the scale of the data that the company has. Could ring any number of alarm bells, whether it's in government or just in individuals. What is the company said about what it's doing to try to ensure that that data is kept private?

EMILY BAKER-WHITE: Yeah. So this gets to, I think, one of the biggest things that Tik Tok has undertaken over the past several years, which is a project called Project Texas. And that effort is sort of a across the company. Tons of people have been involved in this effort that tries to segregate private or personal U.S. user data into US based servers and restrict access to it for the most part to a US based team. And like in theory, this seems like the right fix. It would enable Bytedance to keep running TikTok, but would assuage concerns that people physically located in China could be using TikTok to to amass sensitive information about U.S. citizens. But I think there are a few reasons that folks worry it might not work. First, TikTok is acknowledged that some employees overseas will continue to have access to U.S. user data so that sort of segregation will never be totally complete. But second, and this is something that we've definitely seen in reporting, it turns out executing that project, Texas mandate is really hard just because of how TikTok is built. So TikTok was built by Bytedance's engineers in China, and like any tech company of its size, there are dozens of internal apps and tools that its engineers and product managers and other employees use just to keep the app up and running. And all of those internal apps and tools were also built by and maintained by engineers in China. So there's nothing nefarious here but the spectre of untangling all of those tools and cutting off access to the very teams that built and maintains them. How do you know if you've gotten them all?

MG: One of the other issues when it comes to the scale of this app is, something I mentioned in the introduction, which is that people are increasingly using it not just to look at funny videos, but also to get information, to get news from TikTok. And there is a huge concern with any social media platform around disinformation, misinformation. Global Witness is an NGO. It did an experiment to test how well TikTok, Facebook and YouTube were able to detect election misinformation in particular, which, of course, is top of mind given the midterms in the United States that are quickly approaching. Take a listen to John Lloyd from Global Witness explaining what they did to try and put ads featuring misleading content onto these platforms.

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And that fell into two categories. The first was around false election information, so that had stuff like the wrong election day and details about voter registration, encouraging people to vote twice, saying that you need to have your COVID vaccine in order to vote in person. And then we also had a category on ads that de-legitimize the electoral process. So that was about saying that mail in ballots weren't ballots that voting machines could be hacked, and also implying that election officials just couldn't be trusted to count your ballot properly. Then we created a set of ads. It was just plain text on a plain backgrounds. We did those in English and in Spanish, and then we set up some fake accounts. When you submit them, they go through this process. They say that they're in review and then you get a notification on whether or not they have been approved or rejected. And 90% of these ads that we submitted all came back with green checkmarks and just two of them came back with a red sorry account from A-Z.

MG: So that 90% number is for TikTok. Facebook did considerably better. YouTube managed to catch almost all, if not all, of the problematic ads. So what does that tell you about Tiktok's ability or lack thereof to control misinformation?

EMILY BAKER-WHITE: Yeah, it's not great. I think I have I have sympathy for any platform that is trying to do this at scale. It's really hard. Tik Tok is also a younger platform than YouTube or Facebook by a considerable margin, and its success in the US has meant that they've had to scale up really, really quickly. Scaling up quickly is chaotic and I think the fact that YouTube performed sort of best, Facebook performed in the middle and TikTok performed worse does sort of track with my understanding of just how long the platforms have been dealing with this stuff. I think it's definitely concerning, though, especially given that more people are using Tik Tok to get this type of information than than ever before.

MG: TikTok told us that it does prohibit and remove election misinformation and paid political advertising. But you said you have sympathy for how difficult that is. I mean, you have some knowledge of this, right, having worked at Facebook and at Spotify.

EMILY BAKER-WHITE: Yeah. Yeah, I did work in content policy and trust and safety. So so I've definitely sort of seen seen the inside of what it looks like to train these algorithms. It is really hard. I don't think TikTok is intentionally missing election misinformation. I think it's just a matter of having enough people to get enough strong data to teach a machine whether something is is showing election misinformation or not.

MG: And so Global Witness and others are calling on TikTok to take meaningful action. Take a listen to once again to John Lloyd in terms of what he wants platforms like TikTok to do.

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So right now, the platforms are making their own homework. We just have to take their word for what they say that they're doing. So we want them to publish their pre risk assessments. We want them to include full details of all of the ads that go on, the platforms that include things like the intended target audience to the actual audiences that sees the ads, how much they're spending, and who the people buying the ads are. Put all of that into an ad library that journalists or academic researchers or even just people in the general public can access. We want them to publish all of the information on what steps they've taken in each country and then any language as well to ensure election integrity. And then, crucially, we want them to allow verified, independent third parties to come in and audit them so they can actually be held accountable for what they say they're doing.

MG: How do you think TikTok would feel about that sort of transparency?

EMILY BAKER-WHITE: I don't want to speak for TikTok, but man, it's music to my ears. I think one of so so Facebook and Google both have ad libraries today. TikTok does not so to talk sort of meaningfully behind the curve on that and and there's really no way for us to know how many ads that contain those information are running today on tick tock because they don't tell us. And right now, there's no law forcing them to tell us, though that could be an interesting, fruitful place for legislation. I think the other thing is this. This really does get to sort of the the idea of the power of tick tock, the algorithm right now. I don't know what the most popular videos were on tick tock yesterday. I can look at my for you page and see what I saw, but I don't know if that's the same thing that you saw or my mother saw or my cousin saw because it's all personalised. And so if there were efforts, either through advertisements or through regular organic content, just things people post, if there were an effort to tilt an election toward a candidate or against a candidate, or to push messaging that's favourable to China or message that's favourable to anyone else, we wouldn't be able to track that today because we don't know what they're showing people. And so I think one of one of the most important areas for transparency, for TikTok is to help us understand and give us the raw information that will make us comfortable with the idea that their algorithm is not either posting harmful content like election misinformation or pushing certain narratives over others. And the way for them to give us that competence is to give us access to the data in live lifetime. I want to know what was the most popular content on TikTok yesterday and the day before and the day before that? I want to see who was targeted to on what basis and that's how you build the confidence of everyone who doesn't work inside the company.

MG: And so Brendan Carr, a commissioner with the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission, told Axios, I don't believe there is a path forward for TikTok with anything other than a ban. Is this company going to survive? Is the government, the US government going to ban TikTok?

EMILY BAKER-WHITE: I don't know. But I guess I would say this about the idea of a ban. This is not going to be the first time that a non-U.S. based company creates a smash hit app. And so next time, who knows, maybe maybe the app will be connected to in some way the Saudi government, the North Korean government, the Russian government, whatever. It seems inevitable to me that there will be other situations where even looking at what's happening to Twitter right now, where other governments may be able to exert influence over an app to try to influence it in some way or access some sort of data. And so if the US government says, okay, TikTok's that we're going to ban TikTok. That doesn't necessarily provide any useful insight into what they should do next time. And I think project Texas for all its failures or all its issues in a way is sort of. Trying to look beyond this as one app. Right. And is trying to say, what do we do in a world where governments might not want to share all of this information, might not want to cede this much power to a corporation that's based in another area of the world or under the power of another government. That's an issue that's going to keep happening. And so I guess I would urge the U.S. government and any government to think of TikTok as one of those situations rather than the only one, because I don't think it's going to be the only one.

MG: Emily, this is super interesting. It's great to talk to you. Thank you very much.

EMILY BAKER-WHITE: Thanks very.

MG: Much. Emily Baker-White is a technology reporter with Forbes. If you're on TikTok, you know that it revolves in many ways around a lot of challenges and trends, and those can change daily. This week, Taylor Swift entered the chat. Her song Anti-Hero has been featured in over 100,000 TikTok videos already, with content creators calling out their own absurd flaws.

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[Song]

MG: Taylor Swift. Thursday morning. Coming up after your regional update, a looming strike of education workers in Ontario, the notwithstanding clause threatening to take away that right to strike. We'll hear what's at stake with negotiations stagnant in Matt Galloway current is back in 90 seconds.

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NDP MPPs kicked out of Ontario legislature; and a Fifth Estate investigation into alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine

Guests: Robert Benzie, Marit Stiles, Alex Sphrintsen

MG: Hello again. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current.

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[Sounds: Noises and crowd shouting]

Order. Order. Member for Sudbury is warned. Order. The member for Davenport.

MG: Yesterday, things got heated in Ontario's legislature.

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VOICE 1: Another teacher tells my office one of ECEs held a little girl in her lap and told her grandpa had to come because she was throwing up in a garbage can. The ECE refused to leave this little girl because she was scared and nervous. Speaker, will this government show the fraction of emotional intelligence that we see from education workers and return to the bargaining table and give them a fair deal when.

[Applause]

VOICE 2: There is only one party in this legislature that is standing up for the students and the parents and that's the PC Party. Mr. Speaker, the opposition can have it both ways. Either they support shutting down schools or they stand with this government and will support keeping kids in classrooms.

MG: That was an exchange between NDP MP Kristyn Wong-Tam and Ontario Premier Doug Ford. This, as an education workers strike, looms on Friday, which would close most schools in the province, perhaps indefinitely. By the end of yesterday's session, 16 opposition MPPs had been escorted out of the chamber. Robert Benzie is the Queen's Park bureau chief for the Toronto Star. Rob, good morning.

ROBERT BENZIE: Good morning, Matt.

MG: What is the latest on the government's back to work legislation, the negotiations such as they may be and this looming threat of a strike?

ROBERT BENZIE: It's sort of a collision course that everyone is on Matt. And it's weird. The government was saying yesterday that they're not going to negotiate as long as the union is keeping its strike threat. But negotiations are continuing. The legislation which uses the notwithstanding clauses, it's the second time that Ford has invoked it to try to pass legislation. It's the third time he's threatened it. But he's only had he's only actually done it once last year to kerb pre-election advertising by unions and other third party groups. It will pass this afternoon. The Tories have a majority. They've got about 3 hours of debate left, so we expect it passing around 4:00 today. But parents are still in limbo, not knowing whether tomorrow there will be a school for their kids. 55,000 CUPE workers are saying their union says they're going to go on strike tomorrow even though such a strike is illegal and there will be massive fines. Matt, $500,000 a day for the union and $4,000 per employee. So the union had said, oh, well, we'll cover the fines, but that's around $220 million a day. And I don't think they have that kind of war chest. And I also don't think that the Tories, the government wants to be seen as penalising, you know, frontline workers, you know, a caretaker at a school or any ECE worker or something like that. It's just not a good look if you're fining them.

MG: We heard a little bit of the premier talking yesterday. Why is it, as you understand it, why is he bringing the hammer down now with the notwithstanding clause in particular?

ROBERT BENZIE: I mean, it is certainly a very heavy handed move. It's only the second time in Canadian history that that, you know, this constitutional provision has been used to override charter rights in a labour dispute. Last time was in 1986 and Saskatchewan. So it's very unusual. I think the Tories are looking back to what happened to the previous Liberal government. Premier Dalton McGuinty imposed a settlement more than ten years ago on teachers and what was called Bill 115, and that was very controversial at the time. And then they lost in court later and had to pay a huge amount of money in sort of back pay to the teachers union. So the government knows it can't impose a settlement without using the notwithstanding clause, but it's really heavy handed. It's and it's I mean, this morning at Queen's Park, the Canadian Civil Liberties Union Association is denouncing it. You had Prime Minister Trudeau and Premier Ford spoke last night, and Trudeau, in a readout of the call, said it's wrong and inappropriate to use it in this instance. Now, there's a little bit of performative things going on because I do not remember Prime Minister Trudeau saying the same thing to Quebec Premier Francois Legault after Bill 21, the racist secular law in Quebec was passed and that uses the notwithstanding clause as well to override charter rights.

MG: I mean, there's a lot at stake here. We'll talk about political risks in just a moment. But there are other negotiations for education unions and beyond coming up. So if this move is made now, what does that mean for those other labour negotiations in future?

ROBERT BENZIE: And I think this is what the CUPE workers are, the canaries in the coal mine or the guinea pigs dispelling, depending on the animal metaphor you want to use, because they the teachers unions are all in negotiations now. They haven't had strike votes yet. So they're far behind on the calendar. But I think the teachers unions are to in a little way using CUPE as their kind of, you know, experiment to see what the what the template will look like. And the government is using CUPE by saying, we're going to send a signal to the rest of you, if you try to pull any stunts, we'll do this. This is what will happen to you. Now, CUPE has has bungled things a little bit by asking for 11% raises for for some workers in the in their first offer. They've reduced it yesterday to a little more than 6%, but they should have been having these kinds of talks before. And the Tories have bungled by being so heavy handed with the notwithstanding clause and being this pre-emptive legislation. It's very strange. It's almost like a Vietnam War analogy. It's you know, it's necessary it was necessary to destroy the village in order to save it. You know, it's that's there's something very nihilistic about the whole about both sides.

MG: Frank, just finally, what are the political risks here? Because the union is set to go on strike ostensibly tomorrow, but they say that they could strike until further notice. Doug Ford has a majority, not an election for a while. But what are the political ramifications if this labour unrest continues?

ROBERT BENZIE: Well, Ford was just re-elected on June 2nd with a bigger majority than he had before. And I think they they have polling research to show that parents are fed up with disruptions in education. It's not the teachers fault in the education workers fault that there was a pandemic for two and a half years and Ontario kids were out of school more than in any other jurisdiction in North America. That was actually the government's decision. And I guess they were you know, they were erring on the side of caution and we can debate whether that was smart or not smart. But I think parents have had a very, very difficult two and a half years. And I think the Tories know that and they know there's no appetite for Labour disruptions. They also are saying, look, we're offering a they think a decent offer and and, you know, compared to other settlements, unions, settlements in the public service in Ontario and across the country, it's not these aren't terrible offers, but inflation is high. These are not highly paid workers, the CUPE members. So I think it's just one of these situations where I think the government feels it can expend that political capital right now having just won an election. And they figure by the time the next election rolls around in 2026, people won't remember this. But the notwithstanding clause in a labour dispute is problematic. And I think that's going to haunt them.

MG: Rob, good to talk to you as always. Thank you.

ROBERT BENZIE: Thank you, Matt.

MG: Robert Benzie, Queen's Park bureau chief for The Toronto Star. We heard some of the sounds in the legislature yesterday, people being ejected from said legislature. Marit Stiles is an NDP member of provincial parliament in Ontario amongst those ejected from the ledge. She's here with me in studio. Good morning.

MARIT STILES: Good morning.

MG: What was the purpose of getting thrown out of the legislature yesterday?

MARIT STILES: Well, you know, we were we're kind of had it with this government and their attempt to take away the charter rights of workers. The legislation is really offensive. And our interim leader, Peter Tabuns said, you know what, when the Premier said this was all about the kids, he said, no, you're lying. And you can't say that the Premier's lying in the legislature. So he got thrown out and the rest of us said, You know what? We're not backing down either. So we we were walked out. It meant that we couldn't be in the chamber for the rest of the day.

MG: When to come back to the kids in a moment. Let's talk about the workers. CUPE, the union represents these workers says that they deserve to be paid more. Who are these workers? Who are are we talking about?

MARIT STILES: So these are education workers, like educational assistants who help kids with special needs in our classrooms.

MG: Not teachers.

MARIT STILES: Not teachers. Early childhood educators who work with the kindergarteners. They're the custodians who clean the classrooms. So these are the workers we're talking about, the people who work in the in this school office. And you know what? As a parent and in public schools, these are the people that you as a parent, I think, rely on the most, almost. Right. And so these are workers that are also amongst the lowest paid education workers in the province.

MG: How much are they making?

MARIT STILES: They're making, on average, $39,000 a year or less. And that's not enough to live on.

MG: Is that for full time work.

MARIT STILES: Or that is there are some part time workers, obviously. But you know what? What we've been talking to a lot of educational workers. And the stories I hear and more and more often are people who have a full time, a job as an educational assistant, say then they have an additional job because they can't afford to live off of that. So they go to work for a full day, then they go to FedEx and work, and then they still end up at a food bank because $40,000 is not enough to live on. Not in Toronto, certainly, but not in cities like Sudbury or anywhere else in this province.

MG: So you don't represent the workers, but you're speaking on behalf of them in many ways with the party. What are they looking for in terms of a new contract?

MARIT STILES: Well, I mean, they want a decent wage. These are workers who have had their wages frozen for years or they've seen very minimal increases like 1%. So they're saying, look, we can't afford to live like this anymore. We want a fair wage increase. And you know what? Where would it land? We will not know. At this stage. We don't know because the government is coming in and imposing a contract.

MG: But the ask was around 11%.

MARIT STILES: That's right. But we don't know where it would have ended up. I mean, that's their starting point, right? So where would it have ended up? We won't know because the government never really for the last few months rolled up their sleeves and sat down at the table to bargain.

MG: This isn't. About those workers. But you could imagine there are people who are listening who are saying 11% annually. I don't get an 11% annual increase. What would you say to those people who are listening who who whose eyebrows shoot up when they hear about an 11% wage?

MARIT STILES: I would say that increasingly what we're hearing is there are a lot of workers in our country and in our province who have full time jobs, who work full time jobs and still end up in food banks. If you're doing a full time job and you're ending up at a food bank. There's a problem. And if that's what's happening to educational workers in our province, we better address that situation because I know that families out there, kids out there, they don't want the person who that is cleaning their school or helping them supervise the lunchroom to be exhausted, to not be able to feed their own families. And that's what we're talking about. And the cost of living increases that we're all seeing right now are astronomical. So we have to figure out a way to catch up with that.

MG: Stephen, let's say the education minister said yesterday, and I believe the overwhelming majority of parents insist their kids are in school, they understand there is a debate between the parties. They don't think their kids should be the casualty. Is he right?

MARIT STILES: Well, I would say that if there is a disruption to this school year, it's going to be on Doug Ford's shoulders. Right. And this government, as you were talking about earlier, I mean, they they closed schools for 27 weeks in the pandemic. It's the worst record in the country and pretty much anywhere. And they did that because they refused to invest in public education. So what I'm hearing from parents is, yeah, they don't want any more disruption. The kids certainly don't need it, but they know what this is about and they know that at the end of the day, if we don't figure out a way to properly compensate these workers, these lowest paid workers in our schools, they're going to leave the sector. And that's what we're seeing in health care here in Ontario. We're going to see it in education, too, and we're going to have a crisis.

MG: But is he right to say that most parents want their kids in school?

MARIT STILES: Oh, absolutely. Who doesn't? But you know, the other thing I would say and I counter Doug Ford on this. Educational workers, they don't want it. They want to be in school too. These are not people who do this because they they have to they do it because they love the work. They love to be there with the kids. There's not one educational assistant out there who doesn't want to be at school tomorrow helping that kid with special needs get through the day. They want to be there. And unfortunately, because Ford is using these tactics, these really these unconstitutional. So this is really unprecedented almost tactics. These workers, the lowest paid workers, are the ones who are going to have to stand up to this bully.

MG: And so what would you say to those parents who, like I did, I have a child in the public education system, got a note last night from the Toronto District School Board saying we're going to close schools tomorrow, perhaps beyond that. What would you say to those parents?

MARIT STILES: Well, I would say that we need to stand with these workers. You know, it's going to be tough. And I and I would say don't give up yet. Right. Call your conservative MPPs and tell them you expect those kids to be in school tomorrow and you expect this government to come up with a deal for those workers. That's how you avoid this strike. They spent the last, I'd say, five months. They've been working on this legislation as this honking, thick piece of legislation they threw on the table the other day as if it was something they came up with last minute. They're taking away the charter rights of workers and it will impact all of us. It will impact our ability as working people to negotiate with any employer.

MG: Well, I mean, just finally, in the last couple of minutes that we have, what are you most concerned about when it comes to the notwithstanding clause? Again, this is about this dispute, but Rob is just talking about this. A conversation we had yesterday was about this as well around where this goes in future if this clause is actually used in a labour disruption.

MARIT STILES: Well, you know, I'll say, first of all, I think this is lazy. This is lazy. They should have been at the table like every other employer does, actually negotiating for months. They didn't have to be here.

MG: But they are they're still at the table now.

MARIT STILES: Well, they say they are. We'll see. I mean, why why why put this legislation on the table in the legislature? They're sending a message to all working people that, you know what, your rights to bargain don't exist anymore. We're willing to throw away your charter rights, your constitutional rights to impose contracts. And we are seeing in, you know, across Ontario, we've seen wage freezes in health care, in education, the public sector. And the result of that is that people are leaving those jobs. So emergency rooms where you're waiting 10 to 12 hours to see somebody. Why? Because there aren't enough staff. Why are there not enough staff? Because they're not respected and they're not paid enough. And we're going to see the same thing happen in other sectors, including in education, if we don't get this right. So he's willing to throw those rights out. Every single person in this country and in this province should be concerned about that.

MG: Do you think the bill will pass this afternoon? Well, I mean, they have the majority.

MARIT STILES: They have a majority. And they've also taken away many of the tools that opposition has had to to delay these things. So we will keep fighting as much as we can. Will pull the- as well, we'll pull all the all the tools out of the toolkit and try to and try to hold it up. But at the end of the day, yes, they can pass this legislation. And it's it's a sad day for, I think, Ontario. And I hope, I hope that our kids don't suffer any more than they already have.

MG: Thanks for being here.

MARIT STILES: My pleasure.

MG: Marit Stiles is an NDP member of provincial parliament in Ontario. We did ask to speak with both the Premier, Doug Ford, and the Education Minister, Stephen Leicce. They both declined.

[Muisc]

MG: You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One. My name is Matt Galloway. A warning before we get into this next story. The conversation we are about to have is about war crimes in Ukraine and consists of graphic descriptions of what happened there.

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All my 3 cousins were executed, on the same day, Vitalik, Vadym Hanuk and Ruslan Yaremchuk, all hands behind their backs. One was in the barn, another in the cellar, but all in the same way, hands tied and a bullet to the back of the head. I don't know why, maybe there was something in their cell phones, maybe they took pictures of their tanks, I don't know.

MG: Anatoly Kybukevych is the mayor of Andriivka, Ukraine. It's a suburb of Kyiv. He's talking about war crimes he alleges were carried out by Russian soldiers in that city. The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, denies any such crimes took place. But a new, fresh investigation by CBC's The Fifth Estate has connected one of the war crimes in America to the Russian soldiers confession. Alex Sphrintsen is the producer on the story. Alex, good morning.

ALEX SPHRINTSEN: Hello, Matt.

MG: Remind us what happened in this suburb of Kyiv.

ALEX SPHRINTSEN: So as soon as the war began, the Russians went in from Belarus, from the north, through several small towns and villages just west and north of Kyiv, very close to the border, obviously, Andriivka, Bucha, which we heard about back in April, [unintelligible], which is an airport town, and they essentially terrorised the local population for about a month, the month that they occupied those places. And Andriivka was one of those places. They went after civilians. They threatened them. They took over their houses, they stole their goods, they looted stores, and then they also killed and raped. So it was very similar to what we saw in Bucha, back then on our screens. But this just wasn't documented by cameras.

MG: I mentioned in the introduction that you have connected those war crimes to a confession from a Russian soldier. What do we know about that confession?

ALEX SPHRINTSEN: We can talk about the specifics of how the confession came to light. But essentially, he admits to killing one of the civilians in the village, a father of three daughters, somebody who had no connection to any service in Ukraine and they don't even know what it made of may have meant. I mean, one of the bets by a lot of people has to do with people who had cell phones. Many of the people who died later were discovered with cell phones around them. They know that the Russians were obsessed with the idea that somebody who has a cell phone would take pictures and then send them off would be spot or something along those.

MG: So this would allow for some sort of reconnaissance or proof of what was happening.

ALEX SPHRINTSEN: This is, there actually no record or no evidence whatsoever that he was doing anything like that, even because phones were discovered later. But this was something that their commanders were telling the soldiers on the ground to do. And that's why a lot of people died.

MG: The Russian soldier, his name is Daniel Frochen. And I want to hear a little bit of that confession. Take a listen.

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[Foreign speech]

ALEX SPHRINTSEN: What this was, it was a confession by phone to a Russian expatriate journalist, an independent journalist who was in exile for her own safety, where he basically says, I, Daniel Frochen confessed to committing crimes, to looting, to actually he specifically outlines the fact that they stole phones or took phones away. And then he accuses his commanders in telling them to do this and also in abandoning their own soldiers and on the battlefield. He doesn't in this particular confession, he doesn't say, I killed someone. It's a different confession. But he says, I committed all the crimes or all those crimes.

MG: How is it that he came to make this confession to this independent journalist?

ALEX SPHRINTSEN: So this is, it's kind of interesting and it's ironic in a way, because these cell phones, the ones that they were taking away from residents, came back to haunt them. This one particular cell phone, which belonged to one of the residents. There's a bunch of pictures of him in kind of celebraboratory poses. He, for example, stole Medals of World War Two, medals from someone and put them on himself. And they actually never found them later, even though he claimed that he returned them and so they didn't dispose of them properly.

MG: Of the pictures.

ALEX SPHRINTSEN: Of the phones and the pictures, and then somebody found them. And then eventually when the media moved in and including Ekaterina Fomina, the Russian journalist, she was clever enough to - and she's Russian, I guess she understands how, where to look in the social media and in the Russian cyber sphere. She traced them. She basically looked at the photos. She went on various social media. They used an AI programme to connect images to other images and essentially knew his name and not just his, by the way, but some of the other people who were in the pictures, the other soldiers.

MG: I was going to say, why would he confessed? But I guess if all of the information is there, it's difficult to deny.

ALEX SPHRINTSEN: No, I think it's a very good question. It's difficult to deny. But he went out of his way. And what's interesting is he actually called her to say, hey, by the way, he talked to her. By the way, I want to confess now what she says is that he used her as a kind of psychologist for weeks. He was suicidal. They talk regularly, talked about all kinds of things. One of the points that she makes is that the army psychologists and psychiatrists don't take anything seriously. They say, you're fine, you're fine, there's no problem. Just go fight. She was, she would listen to him and that's her assessment. He probably trusted her because she had a friendly manner. She wanted to get information and he just wanted to get it get off his chest. And the other thing is that this is one of the few instances that we've heard where there's somebody with a conscience. You know, he may not have been completely open about everything, but he certainly feels somewhat guilty about this. He he had these kinds of rationalisations to why he killed the guy he killed. I saved a thousand other lives. But the bottom line is that he has a conscience.

MG: This is something that you spoke with the journalist Ekaterina Fomina about. Let's take a listen to what she told you.

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He was a witness of all these crimes and he also was a criminal. And yeah, he couldn't hold all these feelings inside himself. This is why he shared it.

MG: This is a strange question, but how unusual is it to you that a soldier like this would confess?

ALEX SPHRINTSEN: Well, it's unique. That's how unusual it is. I have not seen any other instances during this war. I can't speak for other wars. But during this war where a Russian soldier did anything like this, I mean, they they would, quote unquote, confess in various intercepts by the Ukrainian security to their wives, to their mothers. They would talk, I did this, I did that. This guy went out of his way. He actually called her and said, hey, I want to make a confession about this.

MG: Where is the soldier now?

ALEX SPHRINTSEN: So what happened is they were in Ukraine for the period that they were occupying. Then obviously the Ukrainians took over that area. They left. He left Ukraine. He is from the Far East in Russia, from a small village. Grew up in a not a particularly nice home as a lot of these soldiers are. One of the questions that I had is, given what he has told the world, essentially he's how come he's still walking around, which he is, according to Ekaterina. He's fine. He's still on social media. He's living in that town. He wants to be a police officer. Apparently that's where he's going in his town and nothing has happened to him. We are all speculating that the higher people decided not to make this a bigger story and they may still deal with him. It wouldn't surprise me. That's how they often do things.

MG: What about those who are investigating war crimes? Do we know whether he's spoken to those investigators?

ALEX SPHRINTSEN: My understanding is as many people in those in that field didn't want to talk too much about it. But my understanding is that they have spoken to him. And I'm talking about beyond Ekaterina, actual war crimes investigators and prosecutors. They tried to convince him to testify, to maybe leave Russia and go to some other friendlier country where he could talk. My understanding is that he refused. Why he said no, we have no idea.

MG: We spoken with people on this programme who are leading those investigations in those communities where Bucha and beyond where Russian troops have withdrawn or been driven out. What does that tell you about how difficult it's going to be to do a full investigation but then prosecute any of these crimes?

ALEX SPHRINTSEN: Well, I think that as we can probably see in other examples, well, Yugoslavia is a perfect example where there was success. The leaders of Yugoslavia, then Serbia were prosecuted, but they lost their power. There was a new regime and that regime handed them over, in a sense, or helped the West grab Milosevic, Karadzic. And I think it's the same thing here. I think that if and when there is a change of regimes in Russia, at some point that will happen. But it may not happen for five, ten, 15 years. Who knows? I think the chances at that point of something like this happening are much higher. The thing is that whatever Danielle Frochen told Ekaterina is actually considered to be part of the evidence. They can use that. In other words, they probably they would need to get him to say other things and they would need to get other information. But it is considered to be part of the evidence. So it's all contingent on who is in power in Russia. If the Putin regime stays, it's next to impossible to do it. One one good example, by the way, is that in the Netherlands, they just had and actually still the trial is on to do with MH 17, which is the Boeing the Malaysian Boeing that was shut down over Ukraine in 2014. And they actually have they accused four people. They're being tried in absentia, but they're not there and they're not even participating in any way in this. So which is not to say that this is not worth doing. It's a lot of these people. And you've probably when you've spoken to them, they told you the same thing is that you need to deal with this, even if to send a message to some others who are about who are thinking about committing war crimes. So if you can save one person from being raped, you're accomplishing something.

MG: I have a feeling we'll talk again as this continues in the meantime. Alex, thank you.

ALEX SPHRINTSEN: Thank you.

MG: Alex Sphrintsen is a producer with the CBC's The Fifth Estate. His story Investigating War Crimes in Ukraine airs tonight on CBC Television at 9 p.m., 930 in Newfoundland and Labrador. That's The Current for this Thursday. q's up next on CBC Radio One, we've been talking a lot on this programme about the cost of food and some of the reasons behind inflation that we're seeing right now. Later today, the Deputy Prime Minister, Chrystia Freeland, delivers the federal government's fall economic statement. Full coverage right here on CBC Radio begins at 4:00 p.m. Eastern tomorrow on the programme. Chrystia Freeland will be here to talk about this country's economic future. Make sure you tune in for that. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening and we'll see you tomorrow.

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Thursday November 3, 2022 Full Transcript

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