Monday, April 27, 2009
Lessons from the Identity Trail
"One uploaded photo, credit card number or status update at a time, we are relinquishing our privacy and anonymity." That's according to the results of a study on how society's use of information communication technologies impacts privacy and anonymity. University of Ottawa professor Ian Kerr and nearly two dozen researchers from across the globe spent four years examining the issue, ultimately determining that our anonymity and right to privacy is in jeopardy.The results of their research have been published in a book, On the Identity Trail: Anonymity, Privacy and Identity in a Networked Society, which is available for free download online. Kerr also provides an overview in this CBC podcast, which aired on April 17, 2009.
Among the findings:
While Canada, the U.K., the Netherlands and Italy all have national laws protecting privacy – that is, laws that allow citizens to control access to their personal data – such legal protection does not exist for anonymity.The researchers reported that governments are choosing laws that require people to identify themselves and are lowering judicial thresholds defining when identity information must be disclosed to law enforcement officials. That is allowing the wider use of new technologies capable of making people identifiable, including smartcards, security cameras, GPS, tracking cookies and DNA sequencing.
Consequently, governments and corporations are able to do things like:
- Embrace technologies such as radio frequency identification tags that can be used to track people and merchandise to analyze behaviour.
- Boost video surveillance in public places.
- Pressure companies such as internet service providers to collect and maintain records of identification information about their customers.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Ontario's Privacy Commissioner on RFID & EDLs: Podcast
This week's CBC "Search Engine" podcast explores the use of RFID technology in Canadian driver's licenses. Ontario Privacy Commissioner Ann Cavoukian shares her privacy concerns about enhanced drivers' licenses (EDLs) and discusses ways citizens who choose to use EDLs could protect their personal information from RFID skimmers when the cards are not in use. She emphasizes that use of EDLs is voluntary and expects on-off switch technology for the IDs to be ready in 2010.Enhanced driver's licenses have been developed as a passport alternative for use when crossing the U.S. border. They are already in use in Manitoba and are set to launch in Ontario this June.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Project Eyeborg: "Bionic" Journalist Rob Spence
Rob Spence, a Canadian filmmaker who lost an eye in an accident as a teenager, plans to have a mini camera installed in his prosthetic eye to make documentaries and raise awareness about surveillance in society.For Project Eyeborg, Spence will have a camera, a battery and a wireless transmitter mounted on a tiny circuit board in his prosthetic eye, but no part of the camera would be connected to his nerves or his brain.
"In Toronto there are 12,000 cameras. But the strange thing I discovered was that people don't care about the surveillance cameras, they were more concerned about me and my secret camera eye because they feel that is a worse invasion of their privacy."
Spence, whose last film "Let's All Hate Toronto" explored the Canada-wide trend of hating that city, has no plans to make reality programming. The focus of his latest film is surveillance and the eye project has become central to the film.
The filmmaker has been working with a team of engineers to build a prototype in time for this week's 2009 “Digital News Affairs (DNA) conference.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Vancouver Olympics security raises privacy concerns
While the Vancouver 2010 Olympics have come under criticism for rapidly inflating costs, federal privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart is sounding the alarm about security plans for the winter event.“Experience has shown that Olympic Games and other mega-events can leave a troubling legacy – large-scale, security surveillance systems installed for mega-events often remain long after the event is over,” she says. What happened following the Athens Games of 2004 is a case in point. Closed-circuit cameras installed for the Games were left in place afterwards to help law enforcement monitor citizens, notably during public demonstrations.
British Columbia’s privacy commissioner, David Loukadelis said last year that he had been assured by the RCMP the images from those cameras will be available only to key people. While using extraordinary measures to keep diplomats and athletes safe is reasonable for a special event he is concerned that once the Games are over, those cameras might remain and become a unreasonable infringement on everyday privacy rights.
Just as in Athens, following the Olympics in Sydney, many closed-circuit TV cameras were left in place after the Games.
Both Stoddart and Loukadelis have discussed security and privacy issues for the Games and will collaborate in monitoring security measures and privacy protections, in order to ensure that privacy rights are fully respected during the Games and after.
Friday, January 30, 2009
PEW Internet Study: Online Generation Gap Narrowing
The PEW Internet and American Life project released a report this week on Generations Online in 2009. The study shows that while over half of the adult internet population is between 18 and 44 years old, larger percentages of older generations are online now than in the past, and they are doing more activities online, according to surveys taken from 2006-2008. Contrary to the image of Generation Y (born between 1977-1990) as the "Net Generation," internet users in their 20s do not dominate every aspect of online life.
Among the key findings:
- Generation X (born 1965-1976), is the most likely group to bank, shop, and look for health information online.
- Boomers (born 1946 - 1964) are just as likely as Generation Y to make travel reservations online.
- Silent Generation internet users (born 1937-1945) are competitive when it comes to email (although teens might point out that this is proof that email is for old people).
The most dramatic increase in internet use can be seen in the 70-75 year-old age group. While just over one-fourth (26%) of 70-75 year olds were online in 2005, 45% of that age group is currently online.
Photo by: max_thinks_sees
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Data Privacy Day 2009: Raising awareness
January 28th marks the 2nd annual international data privacy day in Canada, the U.S. and 27 European countries. The purpose of the event is to "raise awareness and generate discussion about data privacy practices and rights." It also serves the important purpose of furthering international collaboration and cooperation around privacy issues.This year's data privacy day comes on the heels of what may have been the largest breach ever reported, with the personal information of nearly 100 million exposed at a U.S.-based credit card processing firm. Hackers breached the computer network at Heartland Payment Systems Inc., exposing customers' credit card numbers, card expiration dates and some internal bank codes - all information that could be used to forge a credit card. The company handles 100 million card transactions for 250,000 businesses nationwide each month.
The scale of the breach is “shocking,” says Jennifer Stoddart, Privacy Commissioner of Canada.
“After what we saw at TJX, that you could have such a major data breach, I'm asking myself what is happening and what is not getting through to organizations?” she says. “You should always take the steps to make sure there is suitable protection.”
As this most recent breach demonstrates, there is still much work to be done to raise awareness about data privacy.
Saturday, November 8, 2008
CCTV is not the best way to combat crime
British Columbia’s provincial government is planning to spend one million dollars on a pilot CCTV project to help combat crime in Vancouver, Kelowna and Surrey.
According to the province’s Solicitor General, John van Dongen:
Technologies such as CCTV can greatly assist the police and the prosecution in bringing offenders to justice. We believe CCTV can be an important tool in catching criminals and improving public safety.
If we look at the results of CCTV use in the U.K., van Dongen is vastly over-stating its effectiveness. The U.K. began experimenting with CCTV in the 1970’s and its use has grown to more than 4 million cameras across the UK, or at least one for every 14 people. In 2002, it was estimated that the average London resident was captured on camera about 300 times per day. Since the mid-1990’s billions of pounds have been spent on CCTV technology in the UK.
Yet, despite all this, a recent report from New Scotland Yard indicated that only about 3% of crimes were solved by the use of CCTV. Furthermore, a report by the Home Office in 2002, which reviewed 18 other studies on the effectiveness of CCTV, found just a 4% overall reduction in crime when CCTV cameras were used.
Given these results, the evidence tells us that the return on investment with CCTV is far too low to warrant the expense. One study indicates that there would have been a greater reduction in crime if those billions of pounds had been spent on more cops walking the beat. Jonathan Klick, a law professor at Florida State University, and Alexander Tabarrok of George Mason University, studied the increased police presence in key areas of Washington D.C. during high terror alert days and found a 15 percent reduction in crime.
The added and less quantifiable cost of CCTV is the loss of privacy to citizens and the negative impact on civil liberties. B.C.’s Solicitor General said he intended to work with the province’s Information and Privacy Commissioner “to establish clear rules for the collection, management and protection of information from the cameras.” However, Privacy Commissioner David Loukidelis said he learned about the program a mere fifteen minutes before the news conference announcing the CCTV pilot project.
BC residents and politicians who are concerned about crime and public safety should advocate for more police officers, community policing programs and proven crime prevention measures (such as improved lighting) instead of throwing away millions in tax dollars in the creation of a surveillance society.
Related posts:
Smile, You're on Candid Camera
Cops Want Covert Cameras in Public Places
Homeland Security's Chertoff: more surveillance, less privacy
Saturday, October 25, 2008
PIPEDA: Guidelines for Covert Video Surveillance
- A manager at a railway company uses the zoom lens on cameras, installed for the purpose of monitoring train movements, to watch two employees leaving company property during regular working hours without permission.
Which of the above scenarios are in violation of PIPEDA (Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act)? *
The Privacy Commissioner of Canada has prepared a draft guidance document that sets out good practice rules for private sector organizations that are either contemplating or using covert video surveillance.
The guidelines also include the test used by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner to determine whether an organization may properly rely on covert video surveillance:
2. There should be substantial evidence to support the suspicion that:
- the relationship of trust between the organization and an individual has been broken;
- there has been a breach of an agreement; or,
- a law has been contravened.
3. Covert surveillance is a last resort and should only be contemplated if all other less privacy-invasive means of collecting personal information have been exhausted.
4. The collection of personal information must be limited to the stated purposes to the greatest extent possible.
Feedback on the draft guidance will be received until November 14, 2008. The Privacy Commissioner is particularly interested in comments from those directly affected by covert video surveillance, including unions representing employees of federally regulated organizations as well as consumer associations.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Private eye Steve Rambam: Privacy is dead
PallTech claims to have “ pretty much every American's name, address, date of birth, Social Security number, telephone number, personal relationships, businesses, motor vehicles, driver's licenses, bankruptcies, liens, judgments -- I could go on and on”
If the fact that PallTech has amassed this much specific information on almost every American isn’t troubling enough, there are two other disturbing issues raised in the interview. The first is the apparent lack of security or oversight of the sensitive data. When asked who has access to the data and how it is safeguarded, Rambam replies:
This is a database that's restricted to law enforcement, private investigators, security directors of companies and people who have a genuine need. … The most restrictive rule is my own personal ethics. In 20 years, we haven't had a single lawsuit or complaint.
The second troubling issue is how the data is being contributed:
The other thing is the mind-boggling level of self-contributed data. The average person now willingly puts on the Internet personal information about himself that 20 years ago people would hire an investigator to try and get. It's extraordinary. If you know how to use the Internet, 75% of an investigation can be conducted sitting in your pajamas.
Rambam feels that people have no reason to fear that PallTech will abuse their personal information, as they are “more accountable” than the US government: “You can sue us; you can subpoena us. You can hold us to task if we do something improper. Not so the U.S. government.”
Rambam is a proponent of public access to information, in order to prevent government abuse. In an earlier post, I mentioned David Brin’s book The Transparent Society , which discusses the illusion of privacy and advocates making most information available to everyone to ensure greater transparency and accountability.
Will information remain private and "secret", or are we on a path to making it open and public?Monday, October 6, 2008
October is Public Library Month in British Columbia
According to B.C. Library Association executive director Alane Wilson, more than 98 per cent of British Columbians live in an area that is served by a public library, and this year's theme for Library Month -"Your Library, Your World" - reflects the many ways in which libraries contribute to the fabric of B.C.'s education, culture and community.While the following video focuses on Seattle Public Library, the message about the library's role in society is true on both sides of the border:
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
“Radical Pragmatism” : Privacy by design
Privacy protection must be built into new technologies right from inception, according to Ontario’s Privacy Commissioner, Ann Cavoukian. In a paper she delivered yesterday at the University of Waterloo, entitled “Privacy and Radical Pragmatism: Change the Paradigm “, Cavoukian argues that enhancing surveillance and security in society does not need to be at the expense of privacy. Instead, Cavoukian advocates that "privacy-enhancing technologies" can be used to counter privacy-invading tools such as biometrics, RFID (radio-frequency identification tags) and video surveillance:
By adopting a positive-sum paradigm and applying a privacy-enhancing technology to an otherwise surveillance technology, you can develop, what I am now calling, a “Transformative Technology” – transformative because you can in effect, transform the privacy-invasive features of a given technology into privacy-protective ones. Among other things, transformative technologies can literally transform technologies normally associated with surveillance into ones that are no longer exclusively privacy-invasive in nature.
In an interview with IT World, David Fewer from CIPPIC says that a lot of work still needs to be done to get the private sector on-board:
Privacy enhancing technologies are often viewed as a cost by major corporations. It will likely be the role of statutes such as PIPEDA (Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act) and other … privacy laws to push companies toward investing in these privacy-enhancing technologies.
“As of now, industries will only be forced to do it when faced with an obligation to do so by regulators or when they make some kind of mistake in the marketplace and are forced to implement these technologies by some kind of legal action,” Fewer said.”
Image by Kevin Dooley
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Tasteless Twittering: Newspaper tweets details of child’s funeral
The decision by the Rocky Mountain News to broadcast continuous, live updates to Twitter of the details of the funeral of a three-year old boy has caused a storm of controversy among ethicists, journalists and bloggers. Twitter, for the uninitiated, is a social networking service that uses instant messaging to allow users to share information about what they are doing at any given moment. Updates, known as “tweets” are displayed on the sender’s page and automatically sent to subscribers.
Most Twitter users share the mundane details of everyday life, answering the question “What are you doing now?” Lisa Reichelt, on her disambiguity blog, refers to this as “ambient intimacy”:
Ambient intimacy is about being able to keep in touch with people with a level of regularity and intimacy that you wouldn’t usually have access to, because time and space conspire to make it impossible. … There are a lot of us, though, who find great value in this ongoing noise. It helps us get to know people who would otherwise be just acquaintances. It makes us feel closer to people we care for but in whose lives we’re not able to participate as closely as we’d like.
One benefit of twittering is that updates can be made frequently, facilitating uses such as marketing, micro-blogging, networking and breaking news. You can track Barack Obama on the campaign trail, follow TechCrunch’s blog updates, stay up-to-date with NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander or catch breaking news from the CBC. Twitter has also been used to share the blow-by-blow account of a couple’s argument or even to offer a proposal of marriage.
Given the broad spectrum of information that can be shared via Twitter, what then, is the etiquette? What is appropriate twittering and what is taboo? In the case of the funeral for three year-old car crash victim Marten Kudlis, many believe the good taste envelope was pushed to the limit. Reporter Berny Morsen’s play-by-play of the toddler’s funeral seemed voyeuristic and lacking in the reverence one would expect from newspaper coverage of such an event.
While shocking, it is simply a more extreme example of how the use of technologies such as Twitter is blurring the line between what is public and what should be private.
20th century etiquette expert Emily Post noted that: “People who talk too easily are apt to talk too much, and at times imprudently”. The need to feed Twitter followers with a steady stream of updates, coupled with the immediacy of the technology, encourages users to post before thinking.
Margaret Mason, contributor for The Morning News, perhaps says it best: “What’s rude in life is rude on Twitter.”
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Google Responds to Privacy Concerns with Chrome
Google plans to anonymize the IP addresses and cookies that track users when they enter search terms or URLs into Google’s new browser, Chrome.Privacy advocates have been concerned about the potential of the browser to allow Google even more ability to track users’ online habits and develop extensive user profiles.
Electronic Frontier Foundation technologist Peter Eckersley says: “We're worried that Chrome will be another giant conveyer belt moving private information about our use of the Web into Google's data vaults. Google already knows far too much about what everybody is thinking at any given moment."
Google also plans to anonymize user IP addresses nine months after they have been collected.
Regulators and policymakers have been scrutinizing Google’s privacy practices for the past year, and this seems to be yet another example of the company’s lack of attention to privacy and failure to fully disclose how data will be used.
Image by Randy Zhang
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Privacy Mode Planned for IE8
Internet Explorer 8, due for release later this year, will incorporate a private browsing feature. According to CNET, Microsoft registered two trademarks in July which point to privacy functionality in the browser - ClearTracks and Inprivate:The Cleartracks trademark involves "computer programs for deleting search history after accessing Web sites," according to the Microsoft filing. And the Inprivate trademark involves "computer programs for disabling the history and file caching features of a Web browser; and computer software for notifying a user of a Web browser when others are tracking Web use and for controlling the information others can access about such use."
Mac's Safari already has a private browsing mode while Firefox's PrivateBrowsing is in development. With all three, private browsing is envisioned as a temporary mode, that users will need to switch on at times when they do not want to leave behind a search trail.
Photo by: Sunside
Monday, February 18, 2008
Canada's Privacy Commissioner on Social Networking
This video, from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Jennifer Stoddart, wants users of social networks to pause and ask themselves the following questions before posting personal information online:
- What judgments or conclusions might others form with my information?
- Are there some details about my life I would like to keep personal?
- Who might view or purchase this information about me?
- Will this information reflect well on me a year from now? Five years?
- Would I want my best friend to know this?
- Would I want my boss to know this?
- Would I want my mom to know this?
For more information, visit the website of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Tracking Transience: Hasan Elahi's Life is an Open Book
In 2002, Hasan Elahi was detained at the Detroit airport when his name had mistakenly been added to the FBI’s terrorist watch list. An art professor at Rutgers University, it took six months of interrogation and nine lie detector tests before Elahi’s name was cleared.While Elahi’s website may seem radical, the reality is that many people are providing just as much personal information on the Internet in only slightly less overt ways. Whether twittering the details of your every waking moment, posting home videos onto MySpace, updating your Facebook status, paying your credit card online or making a purchase on E-Bay, all of these details could potentially be mined to form a clear picture of your identity.
Instead of looking over his shoulder and worrying that Big Brother is watching him, Elahi has placed himself under constant surveillance.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
January 28th is Data Privacy Day
To assist privacy professionals in their goal, the IAPP is providing some free materials, including a slideshow and handouts on teens and social networking: worthwhile reading for many parents too!
If you're a privacy professional, educator or just concerened about privacy awareness, you may want to consider using these for your own presentation or as a springboard for discussion.
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Fair Copyright for Canada
The new Canadian legislation will likely mirror the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act with strong anti-circumvention legislation that goes far beyond what is needed to comply with the World Intellectual Property Organization's Internet treaties. Moreover, it will not address the issues that concern millions of Canadians. For example, the Conservatives' promise to eliminate the private copying levy will likely be abandoned. There will be no flexible fair dealing. No parody exception. No time shifting exception. No device shifting exception. No expanded backup provision. Nothing that focuses on the issues of the ordinary Canadian.
Instead, the government will choose locks over learning, property over privacy, enforcement over education, (law)suits over security, lobbyists over librarians, and U.S. policy over a "Canadian-made" solution.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Facebook ordered to get tougher on privacy for children
In response to a spate of issues involving sexual predators using MySpace, Facebook began promoting itself as a safe online environment for children. To test their claims, investigators from the New York Attorney General’s office posed as teenagers and within a matter of days after posting their profiles on Facebook, had received numerous sexually suggestive messages from adults. Their complaints, registered using Facebook’s online form, went unanswered for weeks.As a result of their investigation, New York state prosecutors accused Facebook of false advertising and the New York Times reports that yesterday, Facebook was ordered to immediately post stronger warnings about the risks to children using the site and to provide a quicker response to thousands of complaints daily about inappropriate sexual messages.
The changes are part of a settlement with the New York attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, whose office last month announced that it had been investigating whether the Web site misled users by promoting itself as a place where minors were safe from sexual predators.
Mr. Cuomo said the settlement would serve as a “new model” under which law enforcement and Internet companies could work together to protect children and recognize that they share responsibility to police illegal activity online.
By using consumer-protection laws to tackle the thorny problem of Internet safety, Mr. Cuomo appears to be building on the tactics of his predecessor, Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who used state laws to prosecute fraud on Wall Street.
“Any site where you are attracting young people, you must assume you are simultaneously attracting those who would prey on young people,” Mr. Cuomo said in an interview. “Whether you are a shoe company or you’re an Internet company, consumer protection laws apply.”
Chris Kelly, Facebook’s chief privacy officer, stood beside Mr. Cuomo to announce the deal and called the settlement part of the company’s effort to grow while maintaining users’ sense of safety and community. “We actually think we’ll end up attracting more people” because of the new measures, he said.
The settlement also requires Facebook to hire an independent company to track its responses to complaints and to report twice a year to Facebook and the attorney general.
In an earlier post, I expressed concern about Facebook’s default “wide-open” privacy settings and their announcement that profiles would be made available to third parties and eventually over the Internet using an automatic opt-in model. I complained to Facebook about this practice and my particular concern about the risks to minors. While their response was timely, coming within a few days of my original complaint, it completely skirted my concerns about using a negative opt-out, as well as the issue of putting children at risk:
We appreciate your feedback and will take it into consideration moving forward. Please keep in mind that a public search listing is simply a basic search result that allows people to know that you have a Facebook profile even if they do not yet use the site. Your public search listing will only be available if you allow “Everyone” to search for you on Facebook and have the “Allow anyone to see my public search listing” checkbox toggled on. You can adjust these settings from the Search section of the Privacy page.If Facebook truly cared about their users' privacy, and particularly the privacy of minors, their user profiles would default to allow maximum privacy, allowing users to choose to opt in to make their profiles available for searching on the Web. In light of these kinds of policies and their response to valid privacy concerns, it’s encouraging to see the privacy practices of social-networking sites like Facebook coming under closer scrutiny, particularly with respect to the safety of children.
Also note that people who do not yet use Facebook will not be able to interact with you or view your full information without registering with the site. Your public search listing will not affect any of your normal Search privacy settings. A non-Facebook user viewing your result would see the same search result if they registered with the site.
Your public search listing will also eventually appear in search engine indexes, making it even easier for your friends to connect with you. To change this option, please go to the Search section of the Privacy page and deselect the option to “Allow my public listing to be indexed by external search engines.”
By more efficiently connecting people, we hope that we can make your experience more meaningful on the site. Let me know if you have any further questions.
Thanks for contacting Facebook,
Kristjan
Customer Support Representative
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Librarians: best knowledge managers for our new world
From the b.eye Business Information Network, Dr. Ramon C. Barquin has an informative article about the role that modern librarians can play in the brave new information world.If there is one profession that has traditionally been underutilized in terms of the contribution they can make to business intelligence and knowledge management, it is the librarians.
...Finding anything and making sense out of it as we move from intelligence to knowledge will be very challenging. ...I would take every major portal where navigation is a problem and give a group of librarians the job of improving it.
...That is where librarians can make a big difference. Give them the right tools, and they will become the best knowledge managers for our new world.
