Policy wonk. Torontonian. Photographer. Not necessarily in that order.
Is social media info reliable?:
Christopher Parsons of Citizen Lab says the government’s use of social media to obtain information is filled with pitfalls.
I much preferred this interview over the one with CBC; in particular, the final discussion is helpful: Canadians want a responsible and transparent government, not one that is opaque and operates counter to Canadian values.
Government snooping on social media may breach Privacy Act:
Those are questions the government hasn’t answered, said Christopher Parsons, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, which focuses on human rights, IT and global security research.
“This is information that’s been collected without Canadians knowing, and as the privacy commissioner noted, without clear reason,” said Parsons, an expert on state surveillance tools.
“This government is saying they should be able to access public information just like anybody else, but that confuses how Canadian law works.”
Parsons said, once information is made public, Canadians maintain a “privacy interest” in the material.
Without a doubt, this is the most comprehensive piece to date on the federal government snooping on Canadians’ social media accounts.
The Canadian Government Is Creeping on Your Facebook:
Christopher Parsons, a cybersurveillance researcher at the Canadian nonprofit Citizen Lab, said the kind of social media surveillance used varied depending on the government agency. Law enforcement might use specialized and automated tools developed to monitor and react to events on social media, while political officials might be checking to see if citizens like new policies.
Parsons agreed that “some federal agencies are likely breaking the Privacy Act, because data is being collected without clear purpose,” he told me in an email. “Canadians don’t lose all their privacy rights just because data is made public and, unfortunately, the government doesn’t seem to realize this nuance of Canadian law. Hopefully they’ll come to their senses soon.“
U.S. tech firms routinely denying Canada’s requests for personal data:
Transparency reports from Twitter, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo! and Google suggest that the U.S. companies are being far more careful with Canadian data than even Canadian telecoms.
…
“The volume of (Canadian) requests, in the absence of the need for judicial warrants or other court oversight, illustrates the routine nature with which government and law enforcement can easily get (Canadian) telecoms to hand over personal information,” said Christopher Parsons, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab.
The transparency report numbers remain suspicious, and we need to investigate how accurate they actually are in recording Canadian requests for data when our requests are being served by US law enforcement agencies.
Expert on Ottawa’s social media snooping:
State surveillance expert Christopher Parsons shares his concerns over the way Ottawa collects information from social media
I look like junk (it was a long day and other variables before the taping) but I think I made some pertinent points, at least.
Is Canada Stalking Me? A New Software Platform Aims To Find Out:
Do you think CSEC and the Mounties are spying on you? There’s an app on its way to help you find out.
According to Parsons, creating the request platform isn’t the hard part, it’s securing the content from the prying eyes of government or hostile users.
“The hard part is, we could pound this out probably pretty quick, but we want to make sure the way we’re doing it is in the most privacy protective way possible,“ he said. “Canadians don’t want to worry the Citizen Lab or anyone who picks up this tool are in any position to use or know anything about them. We want to do this right.”
It’s important that Canadians are better able to request information about themselves from the companies they engage in commercial relations with. But, as important as facilitating that access is, it needs to be done in the most privacy-protective way possible.
Data issue took 3 years to surface:
Documents made public for the first time this week show that government agencies requested customer data 1.2 million times per year from just nine Internet and telephone companies. But those documents are from December 2011. For three years they were not made public by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.
“It would have been helpful, it would have advanced the debate several years ago had it come out,” said Christopher Parsons, a PhD candidate at University of Victoria’s political science department.
On his privacy issues blog, Parsons has developed a form to allow Canadians to find out how much of their personal information is stored and shared.
Canada’s privacy laws allow for Canadians to request this information from telecoms, which must respond. The form can be found at christopher-parsons.com.
Though they got my affiliation wrong (I’m currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto) I still do wish that these numbers had emerged earlier.
My recent interview with Jesse Brown about the disclosure of user data by telecommunications companies to the governments of Canada, why this is occurring, and how Canadians can learn if their telecom companies are sharing personal information with government agencies.
We can’t let phone companies determine our privacy rights:
Acting Privacy Commissioner Chantal Bernier is correct that we need more transparency in relation to the extent to which our telecoms co-operate with the state. But real accountability requires more than this. It requires legal standards that offer protection. It requires limits on how much of our privacy rights can be taken away by the one-sided, non-negotiated actions of companies we rely on for essential services.
The warrantless access question is currently before the Supreme Court of Canada in a case called R v Spencer. Let’s hope that they pause at least every 27 seconds and think about what’s at stake.
Lisa Austin and Andrea Slane on the need to inhibit of authorities’ warrantless access to subscriber data in Canada.
Telco-abetted spying is perverse on many levels:
The financial side of this whole issue aside, the Citizen Lab believes it’s time for people themselves to seek answers from the telecom companies, who have so far been obfuscating with experts, government bodies and the press on exactly what sorts of information they’re sharing. Canadians have the right to demand such information under Principle 4.9 of Schedule 1 and section 8 of federal privacy legislation, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, Parsons says. To that end, he has created a template letter and supplied the addresses of various companies’ privacy officers that they can be sent to.
Refusing to reveal to a customer what information is being shared about them would be a violation of federal privacy law, Parsons says. The answers to all of this will come out one way or another.
If you’ve been wondering what information your telecommunications company has about you, and whether it’s disclosed to other parties, then you can fill out the Citizen Lab’s template letter in under 5 minutes and then send it off to the relevant corporate privacy officers.
Excited Pixels