Mr. Ryan Meade:

On account verification, it does vary depending on the service. We carry out account verification in certain circumstances where we feel it is proportionate, for example, when we introduced new policies for election advertising for the European Parliament elections. That involved a process of account verification so that anyone who wanted to advertise had to provide documents and so on. The degree of data that was required to be collected in that process was quite significant. Our view is that it was proportionate to apply that in that case but perhaps not proportionate in every case.

In terms of a universal obligation, there are certainly countries in which we operate that require people to verify their account with us, using a government ID or some other form, in order to use our services. There are certainly countries where that would exclude large numbers of people. In particular, it would exclude people who were perhaps not as well got with the government as other parts, shall we say. That is just the nature of them. That may not necessarily apply here in Ireland but in many countries in which we operate. That is a consideration we have to take into account.

I will not repeat the issues concerning data minimisation. That point would have to be considered against the GDPR.

Speaking for Google, we do see a role for private or anonymous use of the Internet. There are use cases for various reasons. We offer, for example, in our browser incognito mode where people can switch into a mode to use the Internet without their identity being known. Overall it is useful to hear from the companies on this but, primarily, one would have to put that question to the people who would be affected by it, which would be our users. I know that next week the committee will hear from civil liberty groups and so on and that is a really important question to tease out. At present, our view broadly is that there are circumstances that are proportionate to require account verification but I am not sure we would go as far as to say it is appropriate in all circumstances.