Last month, I wrote about the Sask Party’s choice to redefine “privacy” to apply to corporations under Saskatchewan’s securities legislation: Until now, privacy has been recognized under Canadian law as being an individual right. As Justice La Forest wrote, “An expression of an individual’s unique personality or personhood, privacy is grounded on physical and moral autonomy – the freedom to engage in one’s own thoughts, actions and decisions…” These core concepts – an individual’s unique personality, physical and moral autonomy, and freedom related to personal thoughts and actions – have no place whatsoever in discussing corporate interests.…(A) redefinition (Read more…)
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Executive chairman of Google, Eric Schmidt, recently went public with his concerns about ‘everyman’ drones getting into the wrong hands. Thinks they should be banned… might be a privacy threat. Guess Schmidt should know being a top exec of a company that some regard as one of the biggest privacy threats on the planet. Google has a cosy relationship with Barack Obama who knows all about drones, so we should probably pay attention. Schmidt thinks we need to be aware of the potential of drones to “democratize the ability to fight war”… and warns of drones being used (Read more…) Here, on how the Wall government is extending purely individual rights such as the right to privacy to corporations – and how that could lead to yet more corporate abuse in the future. For further reading…- The Hansard record from March 18 featuring Gord Wyant’s approval of corporate secrecy in the name of civil libertarianism is here (PDF, starting at p. 2747). – The Saskatchewan Information and Privacy Commissioner’s letter to Wyant questioning the “company’s privacy” language (among other parts of Bill 65) is here (PDF).- The Supreme Court of Canada’s seminal decision on the quasi-constitutional . . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: New column day Curated By: Obert Madondo | The Canadian Progressive | Feb. 27, 2013: Stephen Harper – world’s worst talent scout Sooner or later, the country is going to realize that there is something terribly wrong with Stephen Harper’s judgment. And sooner or later, the Conservative party is going to realize one-man bands are great until the tuba player runs out of breath. READ MORE 900ftJesus has some important questions for the Privacy Commissioner re: the new Harpercon plan to randomly audit EI clients for *gasp* fraud, via taxpayer-subsidized bureaucratic fishing expeditions (House calls? REALLY?): What information are federal employees told to gather through house visits? How is this information gathered? (silent observation, questions, questioning and/or observing people other than the client at the home? What information is included on any reports given to HRDC? What is the format of this information? To what use is this information put? How is the information applied? What privacy rating is assigned to this information? Who has . . . → Read More: bastard.logic: The War Comes Home Leading U.S. defence contractor, Raytheon, has developed RIOT, the Rapid Overlay Information Technology software programme that can gather, sort, digest and analyze all your social media telltales. It can even predict where you’ll be and what you’ll be doing in the future. The Guardian recently got their hands on a copy of this Raytheon video describing RIOT The most disturbing aspect to RIOT is how few people are likely to find it disturbing. If the majority acquiesce to the wholesale surrender of their privacy without a fight, and events of the past decade give no reason to . . . → Read More: The Disaffected Lib: You’re Toast. Raytheon’s RIOT Has Your Number This week Education Minister Jeff Johnson sent an email to about 30,000 teachers. This is frightening for two reasons. (1) It is an abuse of private information of citizens. As Liberal MLA Laurie Blakeman points out in a press release today it likely violates FOIP as Alberta’s teachers gave those emails solely for the purpose of registering [...] In the United Kingdom, music retailer HMV is on life support. Although HMV Canada’s parent company is mounting a rescue attempt, the brand responsible for 35% of the CD market in Britain may soon collapse, in large part due to the shift towards purchasing music online. While many consumers would rather buy their music from Apple or Amazon, software freedom activist Richard Stallman argues that there are serious repercussions to buying music online instead of in record stores. Danny Kelly says good riddance to HMV because it was sickly for some years before it died. I suggest however (Read more…) Around the world there is an increase in surveillance of individuals by private and public organizations. Artist Adam Harvey has devised a way to help people get some privacy back from electronic surveillance through his fashion line Stealth Wear. If you’re in London you can see the artwork at Primitive Art Gallery. In the spirit of fooling cameras – and messing with surveillance – Harvey has now come out in a set of hoodies and scarves that block thermal radiation from the infrared scanners drones use. Wearing the fabric would make that part of the body look black to a . . . → Read More: Things Are Good: Stealth Hoodie Protects Your Privacy This and that for your Thursday reading. - Murray Dobbin writes about the significance of Idle No More as a shift away from the presumption that First Nations’ interests are represented solely by elected officials: There are some fascinating similarities between the Idle No More phenomenon and the Occupy movement. Both reflect a political dualism: they are focused on the lack of democracy, justice and equality for ordinary people and they are implicitly (and with Idle No More explicitly) telling conventional movement organizations that are supposed to speak for them that they have failed. And it should come as no . . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links Independent ISP TekSavvy has been granted additional time to notify Canadians that they could soon be implicated as part of an ongoing copyright crackdown. Although TekSavvy is not a defendant in the ongoing court case, it’s re-assuring to see efforts made by a service provider to help Canadians understand and prepare for any charges filed. Learn more about these latest developments at The Huffington Post and read about the copyright laws that are infringing upon Canadian privacy in our blog post. Article by J. David Ellis for The Huffington Post Heading down to court Monday morning, I was concerned I . . . → Read More: OpenMedia.ca: Huffington Post: The fight for Canadians’ personal information heads to court Independent Internet Service Provider TekSavvy has announced that an American film studio is demanding personal information of its Canadian customers – a motion that follows recent changes to Canadian copyright law. In response, TekSavvy is taking a stance that aims to protect Canadian privacy – stating that it will not provide personal information without a court order. Help encourage this protection of Canadians’ privacy in making the switch to an independent ISP at OpenMedia.ca/Switch. Join us in becoming a monthly contributor to OpenMedia at OpenMedia.ca/Allies. Article by Daniel Tencer for Huffington Post An independent internet service provider popular . . . → Read More: OpenMedia.ca: Huffington Post: TekSavvy warns Canadians it has received requests for personal info
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy This is Big Brother, your own TV spying on you to serve big corporations so they can hawk their wares in advertising. This is really scary, Big Brother is a reality. I’m sure people like Vic Toews will be very happy, you will not be able to watch TV without being watched. This is one invention we don’t need, and I don’t think it should ever be used. . . . → Read More: LeDaro: Verizon – When You Watch TV, TV Will Be Watching You This was bound to happen. Inevitable. American cellular giant Verizon has filed a patent application for a device to watch you watching TV. Who is interested in watching you watch TV? Probably more people than you can imagine but TV advertisers would be near the top of the list. That’s certainly Verizon’s target group. [Verizon] has filed a patent, published last week, for a system designed to be used in the home to target advertisements at people. Using a combination of image and audio sensors, it would detect actions in your living room while you . . . → Read More: The Disaffected Lib: Maybe It’s Time to Get Out of Dodge by Theodoric Meyer | ProPublica Facebook hit the one-billion user mark last week, a little more than two years after it reached 500 million users. To mark the occasion, we’ve rounded up some of the best reads on Facebook and privacy. Facebook Raises Fears With Ad Tracking, The Financial Times, September 2012 Facebook has been working with a company [...] Privacy? That’s a thing of the past. The Surveillance State is the new reality and, barring massive government intervention, it’s here to stay. How are you liking that fancy Android cell phone? Don’t bother answering that, we already know. Taxpayer-funded programs have created malware for Android smartphones that can remotely take over your phone’s camera and use it to spy on you, according to reports in the Washington Times and PCWorld. …Researchers from the U.S. Naval Surface Warfare Center developed the software along with researchers from the school of Informatics and Computing at Indiana . . . → Read More: The Disaffected Lib: Is Your Cell Phone Giving Away All Your Secrets? This and that for your Tuesday reading. - The Star recognizes the danger facing anybody who tries to convince a Con MP to listen to constituents’ concerns – as the Cons don’t care enough to respond to specific appeals, but will be happy to use whatever information they can gather for future marketing purposes. - Meanwhile, Don Lenihan suggests we should be more concerned with properly regulating location-based data generally than the comparatively small amount of personal information collected by political parties. But I’m not sure how he draws a distinction between location information and other personal information – and . . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links Assorted content to end your week. - Althia Raj reports on the Cons’ concerted effort to undermine organized labour in Canada (along with anybody else who might object to putting the interests of dirty oil and dirty money above the needs of citizens): Behind the rhetoric about “union bosses” and “transparency” lies a strategy, political observers say, that stokes controversies and throws up red herrings in order to force key opponents on the defensive — in this case, Canada’s labour movement and the NDP. “The whole approach is not to push your guy but to totally demean and to discredit . . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. - Mike McBane and Stuart Trew note that Canada can’t afford to sign on to yet another massive giveaway to big pharma: An Ipsos Reid poll commissioned by the Council and the health coalition and released last week shows that what would normally be high support for a Canada-EU trade deal in principle (81 per cent) bottoms out to only 31 per cent when asked if CETA should extend patent protections for brand name drugs. Canadians clearly recognize the importance of trade to the economy, but they are not comfortable with those parts of . . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links Prominent Academics Respond to the TPP (via EFF) We asked several academics to let us know their thoughts about the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP). The TPP is a secretive, multi-national trade agreement that threatens to extend restrictive intellectual property (IP) laws across the globe and rewrite international rules on its enforcement… RELATED: The Canadian Progressive World joins global protest against ACTA Breaking news, as they say, Carleton University has apparently renegotiated the deal with Clayton Riddell. Carleton seems to be talking out both sides of their mouths, still. Originally, according to the Canadian Press and other sources Carleton proported the deal was “improper” and, the $15-million donor agreement for its showcase school of political management, fronted by Preston Manning, does not reflect the university’s academic policies and will be renegotiated. Yet, in their press release around the same time, said it was “an excellent academic initiative” and, An excellent faculty has been recruited, possessing the highest academic standards and (Read more…)
On Saturday the Ottawa Citizen ran a story called Pleas to help mentally ill son ignored, mother says. It was in Hugh Adami’s column, The Public Citizen. Complete with names and a photograph, this article provides detailed personal information about a 22-year-old man who lives in Ottawa’s shelter system. The information was supplied by his mother. The young man was quoted by Adami as saying he didn’t want his story in the paper. And yet there it is: his suicide attempts, his drug use, his paranoid schizophrenia, his bipolar disorder, his behaviour problems as a child, his anger management problems, . . . → Read More: knitnut.net: Ottawa Citizen outs mentally ill man This and that for your Tuesday reading. - Dave Coles writes that the Harper Cons are using their power to protect the privacy of international arms dealers, while at the same time demanding stringent reporting requirements for labour unions and their members: Labour unions are among the few institutions that can and do provide a counterbalance to the power of corporations. Yet the Conservatives are not requiring companies that bargain with trade unions to file detailed reports to the Canada Revenue Agency on their salary, political or lobbying spending. Additionally, they are not requiring other professional associations that collect fees . . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links In dictatorial regimes, tyrants rule by manipulating prevailing public emotions. They use the smallest emotional opportunity to create draconian laws that take away the people’s rights and freedoms. Public Safety Minister Vic Toews has certainly learned a thing or two from this modus operandi. He wants to use Luka Rocco Magnotta’s gruesome murder and dismemberment of Montreal student Jun Lin to revive Bill C-30, the Conservative government’s doomed Internet surveillance legislation. Don’t get me wrong. Magnotta’s crime is repugnant to the core. but equally repugnant is Toews’ attempt to use this particular crime to corner us into accepting the . . . → Read More: CANADIAN PROGRESSIVE WORLD: Vic Toews To Use Magnotta Murder Case To Revive Internet Surveillance Bill C-30 
 Bill C-30, Canada, Canada Politics, Conservative government, Federal Politics, internet, Internet Service Providers, internet surveillance, ISPs, Law and Order, Luka Rocco Magnotta, News, Online Surveillance Bill C30, opinion., parliament, privacy, Protecting Children from Internet Predatots Act, Public Safety, rights, Vic Toews |
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eaves.ca: Why Banning Anonymous Comments is Bad for Postmedia and Bad for Society
Last night I discovered that my local newspaper – the Vancouver Sun – was going to require users log in with Facebook to comment. It turns out that this will be true of all Postmedia newspapers.
I’m stunned that a newspaper ownership would make such a move. Even more so that editors and journalists would support it. We should all be disappointed when the fourth estate is unable to recognize it is dis-empowering those who are most marginalized. Especially when there are better alternatives at ones disposal. (For those interested in this I also recommend reading Mathew Ingram’s post, Anonymity
. . . → Read More: eaves.ca: Why Banning Anonymous Comments is Bad for Postmedia and Bad for Society