Privacy

The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered an equally urgent digital rights crisis. New measures being hurried in to curb the spread of the virus, from “biosurveillance” and online tracking to censorship, are potentially as world-changing as the disease itself. These changes aren’t necessarily temporary, either: once in place, many of them…

The GDPR, or General Data Protection and Regulation, is going into effect in May 2018 throughout the European Union (EU) and presents important legal changes and challenges for organizations and consumers alike. Interactions and relationships between customers and businesses are transforming; the GDPR shifts authority over customer data from the business…

As COVID-19 continues to spread, the data collected from those who are infected will increase greatly. As the number of infected individuals rises, so does the potential stigma associated with infection. As a result, companies that collect data indicating infection status – even incidentally – must handle that information in…

You check out Facebook to see if one of your friends or someone in your family has done something interesting. Your attention is drawn to a holiday advert. That’s a coincidence, you think, because just before you went to Facebook you had been searching internet for a holiday destination. But…

On this international Data Privacy Day, and after a year of severe abuses, it is worth reflecting on why it is essential to protect privacy.   Privacy is often cast as an abstract or undervalued concept associated with a desire to keep secret certain aspects of our activities or our…

European Citizens have a fundamental right to privacy, it is important for organisations which process personal data to be cognisant of this right. When carried out effectively, anonymisation and pseudonymisation can be used to protect the privacy rights of individual data subjects and allow organisations to balance this right to…

The RCMP has been quietly running an operation monitoring individuals’ Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media activity for at least two years, The Tyee has learned. The existence of Project Wide Awake has never been reported. And The Tyee investigation revealed that the RCMP has moved from a “reactive”…

There are two sets of reasons to care about your privacy even if you’ve got nothing to hide: ideological reasons and practical reasons. Ideological reasons Your privacy is a right you haven’t always had. Just like the right to interracial marriage, the right to divorce, female labor, the freedom of…