Since the advent of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, there has been uncertainty among lawyers, private investigators and insurers about what impact this law has on the litigation of private tort claims. There has been some guidance from the Ontario courts in the Ferenczy decision, but the law was still unsettled. The only case to address this, Ferenczy v MCI Medical Clinics, was all about whether information collected (allegedly) in violation of PIPEDA would nevertheless be admissible. The court concluded that PIPEDA does not apply to the collection of surveillance information by a PI to . . . [more]

It was recently reported that Passport Canada has issued 25,000 biometric passports, and plans to issue them to all Canadians by 2011. The government is introducing e-passports to enhance security, fight fraud, reduce identity theft and meet international counter-terrorism measures already in use in travel documents in over 60 countries, including the United States, the European Union, Australia and Israel. The e-passport will now be valid for a period of 10 years (thank you!—that’s an improvement at least).

A biometric passport has a data chip inside it that can be read electronically. The chip contains information about the holder’s face—such . . . [more]

There is a lawsuit and a criminal investigation underway resulting from a school outside of Philadelphia that secretly took pictures of students with webcams on laptops supplied by the school.

The idea was to use the webcams only in cases where a laptop was reported stolen. It is alleged however that school officials turned on the webcams simply to spy on the students for their own curiosity.

More details and commentary can be found on Techdirt, Boing Boing, and this AP story.

It’s hard to sort out reality from posturing, but it doesn’t look good for the . . . [more]

As many of our readers surely know, Google has been reassessing whether to continue its operations in China following a series of hacking incidents that allegedly originated from that country.

Prof. Ronald Deibert of UofT revealed today that the hackers also attempted to access Google directories, which was not widely reported when the story first broke. Deibert is one of the experts Google is consulting with on how to respond to the incidents.

Despite the The Investigative Powers of the 21st Century Act (IP21C) that was tabled before the prorogue, Deibert claims that cyberspace generally operates in a policy vacuum . . . [more]

♫ Everytime I turn around
Something don’t feel right
Just might be paranoid..♫

Lyrics and music by: Nicholas Jerry Jonas, Joseph Adam Jonas, Paul Kevin Jonas II, Cathy Dennis, John Fields, recorded by The Jonas Brothers.

I guess it was just a matter of time. IT World posted an article today by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols (sjvn@vna1.com) entitled: “Can you trust Chinese computer equipment?”

While this may seem like the musings of a hyper-active Homeland Security Department, it is based on MI5’s report in The Times Online “China bugs and burgles Britain” . . . [more]

ROOTS

The Legality of an American Slavery

Introduction

February 1 is known as National Freedom Day in the U.S. It’s also the start of Black History Month, the annual celebration and triumph of the descendants of African-Americans. This year, President Obama has also indicated that National Freedom Day will also be the first ever National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month. For this reason, Blawg Review #249 will follow the theme of African slavery in America, using the model of Alex Haley’s Roots: The Saga of an American Family.

Haley’s novel traces his family roots back six generations to . . . [more]

I just listened to an IT.Can seminar where Frank Work spoke about the current privacy landscape from his perspective. Some of his thoughts:

We are awash in data that we can’t seem to turn into anything useful. For example, the data that was available on the attempted airplane bomber. Comments were made by the US government that they had intelligence about this individual. Frank’s point is that they really only had data – they were unable to turn it into intelligence.

He sees a trend for organizations to collect huge amounts of data, and try to turn it into intelligence . . . [more]

If Tiger Woods isn’t yet inspired to write his own tune about celebrity and privacy, he may at least want to kick back to the blues standard Ain’t Nobody’s Business. Or if that’s not enough to give Tiger some comfort in these trying times, he could also put on some Michael Jackson or Pink Floyd.

This post is about music with a link to privacy. I’ve compiled a list of ten songs and albums that offer some comment on privacy – from the standard lament for loss of privacy by celebrity pop stars, to deeper comments on privacy in . . . [more]

Here’s a recent statistic from an American study:

“Sprint Nextel provided law enforcement agencies with its customers’ (GPS) location information over 8 million times between September 2008 and October 2009. This massive disclosure of sensitive customer information was made possible due to the roll-out by Sprint of a new, special web portal for law enforcement officers.”

More on the blog of a PhD candidate in informatics, Slight Paranoia.

We have had some debate in Canada about law enforcement’s right to collect from ISPs (without a warrant) the name and address of people behind IP addresses. Cases have gone both . . . [more]

Simon Fodden predicted that the privacy complaints would begin once Google Maps Street View was launched. The maps have proven popular in Canada, with over 150 million views of other countries by Canadians in 2009 alone.

Google recognizes privacy concerns, but claims to address them through their collection and processing approach:

• public access images, no different than what would normally be seen walking down the street
• not in real time, so images can be months old before going live
• blurring of license plates and faces
• allowing removal requests, through the “Report a Problem” option in the bottom-left of all images

A Canadian, a Mi’kmaq, a man wrongfully convicted of murder. Mr. Marshall passed August 6, 2009. The CBC news has good coverage of the story. Wikipedia’s page on Mr. Marshall is also up to date.

The CBC news archive contains good links and summaries of wrongful convictions.

It should always be disturbing when justice is denied, delayed or miscarried. Fortunately or unfortunately, justice is in the hands of humans. Mistakes are inevitable, but will hopefully decrease as humans learn to live with technology. DNA testing, video surveillance, and advances in forensic science offer hope.

Rest in peace Mr. Marshall. . . . [more]

As you may have read in various news reports, one David Jonathan Ross is suing the Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General of British Columbia and the Attorney General of Canada because, he claims, the R.C.M.P.

attended at his residence near Hope, British Columbia. He alleges that he (and possibly others) was under investigation and was subjected to surveillance techniques that included “neurophone, advanced neurophone and subliminal messaging”. He says that, as a consequence, he suffers from headaches, sleeplessness, loss of normal brain function and related consequences.
Ross v. British Columbia (Public Safety), 2009 BCSC 930

Not surprisingly, . . . [more]