Privacy issues could not be ignored in 2014 (Transcript Summary):
Telecom and online security expert Christopher Parsons, post-doctoral fellow at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab and director of the Telecom Transparency Project, reviews how Canadians’ shifted in 2014 and what to expect in the new year.
Conservatives mulling legislation making it illegal to condone terrorist acts online:
Sources suggest the government is likely to bring in new hate speech legislation that would make it illegal to claim terrorist acts are justified online.
The Prime Minister told the House of Commons on Thursday that Canada’s law and policing powers need to be strengthened in the areas of surveillance, detention and arrest. He said work is already under way to provide law enforcement agencies with “additional tools” and that work will now be expedited.
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The Conservative MP said the new legislation was crafted before this week’s events and is not “trauma tainted.”
Never waste a crisis: one way of using them is to to pass legislation that’s crafted ‘well in advance’ of any given crisis, but that could likely only pass with the support of the House and/or the citizenry in the face of the crisis.
Nicky Hager’s house raided by police:
While working on the book, Mr Hager said he was prepared for a raid-type situation, but did not believe the police would conduct one on his property.
This is exactly the kind of thing that political reporters shouldn’t have to prepare and defend against is democratic states. But more and more are because of overzealous state secrecy laws combined with bullying policing tactics.
Inside Citizen Lab, the “Hacker Hothouse” protecting you from Big Brother:
Starting out in the basement of the Munk School of Global Affairs with a handful of students in the Spring of 2001, Deibert’s Citizen Lab now operates out of a third-story office on Bloor Street, on the northwest edge of the University of Toronto campus. But like the agencies its members often criticize, Citizen Lab has collaborators operating everywhere, supplying information about how state power is being exercised in cyberspace.
Deibert doesn’t mind the comparison. In fact, much of his inspiration for the Lab came from working inside the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs in the mid-‘90s, where he studied the use of satellite reconnaissance for arms control verification. The working group he was part of conceptualized a kind of “earth monitoring system” to enforce bans on nuclear testing—a worldwide system of satellites, underwater fences, and seismic stations designed to hold entire nations to account.
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Still, when it comes to what a “people’s intelligence agency” might look like, it’s hard to find a better template than the one created by Citizen Lab. And its hacker ethos is reflected in those it calls its allies.
One of the better descriptions of some of what we do, on a daily and ongoing basis, at the Citizen Lab.
Political Staffers Tried to Delete the Senate Scandal (and Other Bad Behaviour) from Wikipedia:
VICE Exclusive: Canadian political staffers are using their work time to delete large sections of Wikipedia articles in order to remove controversies, misinformation, and unpleasant truths.
Surprising? No. Sad? Kinda. Reason to ban House of Commons IP addresses from editing Wikipedia? Almost certainly.
A Crisis of Accountability — The Canadian Situation:
The significance of Edward Snowden’s disclosures is an oft-debated point; how important is the information that he released? And, equally important, what have been the implications of his revelations? Simon Davies, in association with the Institute of Information Law of the University of Amsterdam and Law, Science, Technology & Social Studies at the Vrie Universiteit of Brussels, has collaborated with international experts to respond to the second question in a report titled A Crisis of Accountability: A global analysis of the impact of the Snowden revelations.
You can read about the state of Canada, as well as the rest of the report, over at Technology, Thoughts, and Trinkets.
Cartoon by Greg Perry
Critics decry new Privacy Commissioner’s appointment:
Daniel Therrien, nominated as Canada’s next privacy commissioner, is too close to the data-mining programs he must critque, the opposition says
For the letter the civil liberties groups, academics, and concerned citizens signed onto, see this .pdf
The Pressure’s On Harper to End Online Spying — Let’s Keep it Up:
And let’s not forget that criticism of the online spying bill comes from across the political spectrum. We’ve seen leading figures from the NDP, the Liberals, and the Green Partyall speak out against this reckless online spying plan. None of this would have happened without you and tens of thousands of other Canadians taking action to pressure decision-makers. And our own Steve Anderson is planning to take your voices directly to leading MPs. Steve is currently scheduled to testify on June 3 before key MPs on the Parliamentary committee examining Bill C-13 – we’ll let you know early next week how you can help shape Steve’s testimony.
That’s not all. In the past few days alone we’ve seen two major efforts from members of Canada’s largest-everPrivacy Coalitionto curtail the government’s out of control spying. First, coalition members at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association joined with leading expert Dr. Chris Parsons to announce alandmark constitutional challengeto the parts of Canada’s privacy legislation that enable the government to obtain our private information without a warrant.
Second, dozens of top privacy experts, supported by pro-privacy groups including OpenMedia.ca, launched the Ottawa Statement on Mass Surveillance – a set of high-level proposals to rein in out-of-control government spying for once and for all. (Learn more and sign on to the Statement here)
A good summary piece of the actions taking place in opposition to contemporary Canadian government surveillance practices. There’ll be another piece coming out in a while that’s even more comprehensive: it’s actually pretty amazing how much is going on in Canada post-Snowden once you list it all!
Declaration on mass surveillance calls for new privacy measures:
One of the voices behind a new declaration on mass surveillance says Canada needs a commission of inquiry to ensure governments and corporations respect privacy in an era of big data.
While I’m sympathetic to the sentiment behind the Ottawa Statement, I remain unclear about how useful it is – when presenting the Statement to the media – to state that the current government of the day is unlikely to listen to anything the signatories have signed off on. If that’s the case, then what is the aim of the Statement itself?
Excited Pixels