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« Older EntriesDrawing the curtain on ISP cooperation with law enforcement
I’ve been a faithful follower of Cryptome for quite some time. Cryptome has been posting very interesting and controversial content on the internet since 1996. It was the first WikiLeaks. Recent readers would note some publications that are very interesting for those who are interested a look at the level of cooperation of between internet [...]
Posted in Miscellaneous | No Comments »>
Procedural Lapse Leads to Loss of Jurisdiction by the Alberta Privacy Commissioner
I hope that this is not a new theme emerging: privacy proceedings in limbo.
Last week I wrote about how the recent vacancy of the Information and Privacy Commissioner’s office in BC could have placed all pending files on hold. Now, this week, we have a decision [PDF] from the Alberta Court of Appeal that [...]
Mind the gap
This past week, the Government of British Columbia announced that Information and Privacy Commissioner David Loukidelis would be leaving that post to take on the role of Deputy Attorney General of the province. The transition will be effective February 1, 2010 though his resignation as Commissioner [PDF] was effective immediately.
David was appointed Commissioner in [...]
Where is video-on-demand CLE?
I’ve noticed that lawyers tend to be second wave adopters of technology. Not quite on the cutting edge, but once that edge blurs into the maintstream most (young? progressive? keen? geeky?) lawyers are there. There are dozens of examples, from e-mail to social media. Lawyers, law firms and legal education are all there. But one [...]
Posted in Education & Training: CLE/PD | 5 Comments »>
A real debate about privacy and security
I often wonder why it appears that only a small handful of people are regularly engaged in real discussions about what is happening with privacy in Canada. These discussions typically — at least in my experience — take place on blogs, tweets flying around the ‘net and regular submissions to parliament by organizations like the [...]
Posted in Substantive Law, Technology | 2 Comments »>
Track federal bills with RSS/XML
I am greatly afeared that this may be old news to some (though I did search slaw.ca to try to make sure that it has not been mentioned here), but it was news to me. And very cool news indeed. The federal parlimentary website has added XML/RSS tracking for the status of Bills. Want to [...]
Posted in Miscellaneous | 1 Comment »>
Deputizing the online industry?
The Vancouver Sun is reporting that the current government plans to introduce a Bill in Parliament tomorrow that will require internet service providers to report suspected child pornography on sites they host or that are linked from sites they host: Ottawa aims to strengthen Internet child porn laws.
The text is not available, but when considered [...]
When lawyers become politicians
Today’s Halifax Chronicle Herald reports that the current mayor of Cape Breton municipality, John Morgan, is about to face a disciplinary hearing by the Nova Scotia Barristers Society for professional misconduct. He’s not accused of bad lawyering (he hasn’t been practicing since becoming mayor in 2000), but of being discourteous to the bench in media [...]
Posted in Practice of Law | No Comments »>
Forging a global privacy standard
Over the last week, privacy regulators from around the world have been meeting in Madrid at the 31st International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners. Canada’s own Privacy Commissioner, Jennifer Stoddart, has not surprisingly had a prominent role in the conference, chairing a plenary session on internet privacy. She was also a speaker at [...]
Posted in Miscellaneous | 1 Comment »>
Antiquated access and privacy laws to stay unaltered
More than twenty years ago, Canada was on the cutting edge with its newly minted Privacy Act and the Access to Information Act. Since then, we’ve seen each of the provinces step up to implement similar regulation for their public sectors. Though the federal laws set the benchmark at the time, they have both remained [...]
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The debate about warrantless access to ISP customer information
In the privacy community, there has been a debate over whether it is lawful, under PIPEDA, for a custodian of personal information to provide customer information when then police come knocking. The debate has been most heated in the arena of internet service providers customer names and addresses to the police when presented with an [...]
Posted in Substantive Law | 1 Comment »>
Right to know week wrapup
Today, October 2, 2009, is the last day of Right to Know Week in Canada.
Right to Know Week was originally started in Sofia, Bulgaria in 2002 as a result of a meeting of Access to Information Commissioners from around the world. Its purpose is to raise awareness of the necessity of access to information [...]
Lawful access rears its head again
Yesterday, the Justice and Public Safety ministers unveiled the latest generation of proposed “lawful access” legislation. Variations had been introduced in the past by previous Liberal governments, only to die on the order paper.
The texts of Bills C-46 and C-47 are now online at the Parliament website for your reading pleasure (and here are the [...]
Posted in Substantive Law | No Comments »>
The future of collaborative communications?
A friend pointed me to what I think may be The Next Great Thing that may actually enable the dream of networked collaboration and communication. It’s Google Wave and it hasn’t left the labs yet. But if the video is any indication, it’s amazing:
It’s a long video (an hour and a quarter), but worth the [...]
Posted in Miscellaneous | 2 Comments »>
Is it OK to use deceit to get Facebook users’ info?
The Philadelphia Bar Association has issued an advisory opinion (PDF) concluding that it is unethical for a lawyer to have a third party “friend” somoene on Facebook for the purposes of getting information about that Facebook user.
Facebook lets users fine tune their privacy settings, allowing a user to lock down all their info so it [...]
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