My wish list for a few things we need in the privacy world
Okay, okay… It’s still a few months away from the Holiday season and the New Year. Regardless, they’ve given me the pen for this spot and I’m making a list. I figure if I get my wish list in...
Rewriting my Autobiography: Me, Myself, and (possibly) a Different ‘I’
I’ve always wanted to write my own autobiography. Maybe it’s narcissistic, but I thought it would be a good chance for me to think back, reflect, introspect, and remember both the good and bad things that happened to me...
Intimate Invasions: How Far Will Internet Users Push the Realm of Acceptability? or Have You Been Facebook Stalked Yet?
I recently, for the first time in my life, set up my own wireless router in order to connect my laptop, as well as my roommate’s, to the Internet. This was not a user-friendly experience, and my stress level...
Wikisurveillance: a genealogy of cooperative watching in the West
As the duly elected Liberal government currently serving the Province of Ontario stands poised to infuse one of the largest revenue collection and fine levying agencies in the Western hemisphere—the Ontario Provincial Police—with $2 million (Can) to fund the...
A Canadian Privacy Heritage Minute: Surveillance, Discipline, and Nursing Education
In this particular historical moment of fetishized “security” and state-sponsored surveillance carried out “for our own good,” it is tempting for some of us to think that we are reaching some low point in the history of privacy, where...
The Wrong Kind of Privacy
I recently received news that my friend Kelly was found dead in her single room occupancy [1] hotel in Vancouver, several days after she had died. [2] I knew Kelly as a great force working to improve the lives...
For Better, For Worse, or Until I Decide to Spy on You
Being recently married, I still haven’t quite adjusted to the idea that you can’t change certain traits in your spouse. For example, my other half tends to view cell phones as a leash, and he regularly “forgets” to call...
Cash(less) on the Road
Credit cards and databases/data-mining/data aggregation. How does the database nation get affected by a cashless society? I recently had the opportunity to dwell upon the loss of anonymity as we continue the path to cashless-ness. It was on one...
Existing and Emerging Privacy-based Limits In Litigation and Electronic Discovery
Privacy law is increasingly important in litigation in Canada. Contemporary litigants routinely file requests for access to their personal information under PIPEDA and its provincial counterparts. Such requests can give a party a partial head-start on litigation discovery, or...
Blogging While Female, Online Inequality and the Law
“Those who worry about the perils women face behind closed doors in the real world will also find analogous perils facing women in cyberspace. Rape, sexual harassment, prying, eavesdropping, emotional injury, and accidents happen in cyberspace and as a...
PETS are Dead; Long Live PETs!
In this Google Era of unlimited information creation and availability, it is becoming an increasingly quixotic task to advocate for limits on collecting, use, disclosure and retention of personally-identifiable information ("PII"), or for meaningful direct roles for individuals to...
Authentic[N]ation
A short story on the ID Trail ********** Incorrect username or password. Please try again. He tried again. ********** Incorrect username or password. Please try again. He tried again. Incorrect username or password. Your ID is now locked. Please...
