What motivates you the most in the workplace? Is it the sense of accomplishment from completing a challenging project? Or maybe the camaraderie of collaborating with a great team? No, of course not. Silly of you to think that! The thing that motivates all of us, of course, is fear and paranoia that comes from workplace surveillance! It is the sentiment of an invisible omnipresence—with the threat of criticism, punishment, or even unemployment—that will deliver managers the best results. What else could drive productivity quite like the Orwellian nightmare of constantly being watched by your superior?

This seems to be . . . [more]

On June 24, 2021, in Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle v Baltimore Police Department,[1] the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit On Rehearing En Blanc decided that Baltimore’s use of an aerial surveillance pilot program violated the Fourth Amendment.[2] The court remanded the matter for further proceedings consistent with the opinion. In this article, I describe the technology that was used in Baltimore, review what transpired leading up to the decision, explain the decision, and suggest insights that Canada may take from the decision.

The Program

In March, 2020, the Baltimore Police Department (BPD) decided . . . [more]

“Minds have been opened and changed over the past few months,” legal author and commentator Richard Susskind wrote in a 2020 article titled The Future of Courts. “Many assumptions have been swept aside.”

The global pandemic has forced lawyers and justice system stakeholders out of their normal physical environments and into what on the surface appears to be the safe harbour of the virtual world. Remote hearings may protect us all from a virus; the platforms that make them possible may, however, have their own issues.

An internet truism is that if you’re not paying for the product, you are . . . [more]

The use of surveillance cameras in the workplace in Canada is quite common. Often, surveillance cameras are installed to deter theft, vandalism, assault, harassment and suspected criminal or improper activity. However, many employees question the right of employers to record them in the workplace and state that it is a breach of their privacy. Do employees’ privacy rights compete with employers’ needs to ensure that his or her employees do their job, come in at the right hours, and don’t behave inappropriately?

This case involves a union’s application to exclude video footage from the admissible evidence in a recent grievance . . . [more]

I don’t normally do movie reviews, but Spectre, the latest James Bond movie, has a cautionary tale about the surveillance society that is worth commenting on. It deals with the undemocratic / totalitarian / dystopian aspects of ubiquitous surveillance.

Some reviewers have been critical about the movie, but my view of Bond movies is that they are more about entertainment than plot and character development.

Some elements of the movie are uncomfortably real – like its spin on the five eyes network . After I saw it I wondered what Ed Snowden would think. This is what Wikipedia has to . . . [more]

Merciless epithets are just one reason to watch last night’s episode of HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver — the primary being his face-to-face interview with Edward Snowden. “Uncumberbatchable” was the six syllable term Oliver coined in his warm-up act to describe the uncharming Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who is apparently so bereft of likeability that not even the gifted character actor Benedict Cumberbatch can (by Oliver’s review) imbue his character with any grace. But the searing candescence of Oliver’s satire—and his Assange put-down is certainly putting the Twittersphere in stitches—is just an invitation to treat. The . . . [more]

Canadians often look at intrusive, anti-privacy surveillance in other countries, and at things like the NSA and Patriot Act in the United States and think we are above that. But it is becoming apparent that Canada is just as bad. We need to do better than this and move the pendulum back towards individual rights and freedoms, and away from a surveillance society that does very little if anything to actually protect us.

For example, it recently came to light that the Communications Security Establishment, or CSE, Canada’s equivalent of the NSA, monitors and stores emails sent to Canadian government . . . [more]

The revelations by U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden that the National Security Agency has been conducting widespread snooping against pretty much everyone, everywhere, all the time has provoked more than just political and diplomatic fallout.

As can be expected, there are several new lawsuits.

The American non-profit investigative journalism website Pro Publica has created the NSA Surveillance Lawsuit Tracker that lists the “key legal challenges to [U.S.] government surveillance and secrecy” since 2006. The last lawsuit added to the list was filed on July 8th.

For a Canadian take on government whistleblowers, I recommend the work of the NGO FAIR (Federal . . . [more]

Much has been written about the NSA / Prism communications monitoring scandal over the last few days, including Simon’s recent post. Many things are unclear, and there are more questions than answers, but these things are clear to me.

Some people defend or trivialize it by saying that actual phone conversations and emails are not being monitored – just metadata. Metadata simply means data about data – it doesn’t mean that it is innocuous or public. The phone “just metadata” being tracked is equivalent to looking at one’s phone bill – numbers called, duration, etc. That definitely contains personal . . . [more]

Juice Rap News delivers detailed, imaginative commentary on the issue of warrantless internet surveillance in rap. It is quite hilarious, trenchant, and intelligible (and it features George Orwell). It comes from Australia.

The single solution The Juice offers (use Tor), may be augmented by the recently assembled free online text CryptoParty Handbook. According to BoingBoing, a Crypto Party is like a tupperware party, but “for people who want to teach their neighbors how to use cryptography to protect themselves from snoopers, especially broad government surveillance.”

However, the project is open source, and considering its subject, is . . . [more]

Ann Cavoukian – the Ontario Privacy Commissioner – has written an excellent op-ed in the Financial Post entitled Beware of ‘Surveillance by Design’. 

It starts off with:

I feel the need to raise a growing concern regarding the lack of understanding of a key privacy issue – the ease of data linkages in an ever-increasing online world.

In this day and age of 24/7 online expanded connectivity and immediate access to digitized information, new analytic tools and algorithms now make it possible, not only to link a number with a name, but also to combine information from multiple sources,

Now being reported widely (5, 6, 7), Wikileaks and partners have documented an international market in computer, cellphone, and GPS surveillance software that can and has be used by governments for the use of tracking down dissidents. Muammar Qaddafi is the poster child, at the moment, but the practice is widespread, as indicated on this interactive map.

I have a friend who jokingly teased me for imagining that governments could possibly care what I say or who I call. When it is this easy, though, it would seem almost perverse for them to deny themselves . . . [more]