Last spring I was invited to testify and present with Dr. Avner Levin before the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, House of Commons, in the context of their study conducted on the “Growing Problem of Identity Theft and its Economic Impact“. I discussed why there are no real incentives for Canadian businesses to […] Read more
I came across an article today about Toronto police officers which will soon begin to wear body cameras as part of a pilot project in December. This project is launched in response to the growing number of accusations of citizens claiming that police officers use excessive force or acted inappropriately with them. Given that citizens […] Read more
A recent article reports that Facebook is considering its first steps into the field of health care: it is exploring creating online support communities that would connect Facebook users suffering from various diseases or chronic ailments. Facebook would also be exploring new “preventative care” apps that would help users improve their lifestyles. Interesting benefits One one hand, without any doubt, there could […] Read more
In response to concerns about widespread Internet surveillance by police and law enforcement agencies, many Canadian telcos have been releasing their transparency reports for 2013. Rogers released its report earlier this year and Telus issued its 2013 transparency report a few weeks ago. It is now for SaskTel to release its transparency report. The SaskTel report confirms that in 2013, SaskTel […] Read more
Last summer, it was revealed that Facebook had manipulated its users’ feeds to run a psychological experiment. A report titled “Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks” was published, which disclosed that in 2012, Facebook manipulated the news feeds of 689,003 users to see if the emotion they picked up through the content on […] Read more
At the beginning of 2012, Google announced that it would be adopting one single privacy policy across all of its various services. Immediately, the EU data protection authorities launched an investigation to assess the compliance of Google’s privacy policy with the European Data Protection legislation. The Article 29 Working Party (WP29) (European data protection authorities), […] Read more
A Court decision was rendered in Quebec city earlier this week, granting damages to a woman wearing a niqab and her husband under the right to one’s image. The facts are as follows: the editor of a magazine about immigrants in Quebec city took a picture of a woman wearing a niqab in a flea market and used it to […] Read more
I was interviewed today by Global News regarding a well-known online U.S. retailer selling an adult movie starring accused murderer Luka Rocco Magnotta. Magnotta is currently facing charges of first-degree murder, committing an indignity to human remains, publishing obscene material, distributing indecent material through the mail and harassing Prime Minister Stephen Harper and other members […] Read more
The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) issued in May 2014 a groundbreaking decision for online privacy rights in Google Inc. v. Agencia Espanola de Proteccion de Datos under which European Union citizens have the right to require the erasure of inadequate, irrelevant or outdated information from search engines. This decision further concluded that […] Read more
Home Depot Inc. recently suffered a security breach under which 56 million credit cards may have been compromised in a five-month attack on its payment terminals. Yesterday, an article was discussing the fact that the risks of hacking were clear to computer experts inside Home Depot, that Home Depot relied on outdated software to protect its network […] Read more