Virgil Cojocaru is a JD candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School. You are shopping online, surfing on Blockbuster. The next day one of your friends on Facebook messages you, “hey Dave, nice choice in movies!” What has just happened here? Some might argue this is just amicable banter between close friends. Others might quickly point […]
Three years ago, Netflix released a database containing the movie preferences of 480,000 users. Last year, Google released information on the viewing habits of millions of YouTube users to Viacom. In both of these and many other similar cases, the data was anonymized first—fields containing personally identifying information were removed. According to a paper by […]
This blog post reports on the report of findings made by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) against a US-based company called Accusearch, Inc., operating as Abika.com (Abika) for collecting and disclosing data on Canadian residents without their knowledge and consent. This decision is noteworthy since it recognizes the harm done to […]
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) recently launched a new web site called TOSBack which tracks changes to the terms of service and privacy policies of several popular websites. Among the tracked sites are Facebook, EBay, World of Warcraft, and various other social networking sites and internet service providers. Visitors can see a change log for […]
“Herdict.org- the Verdict of the Herd,” as introduced by ‘Shep the Sheep’ in this video, alludes to the phenomenon of real-time aggregation of information on the current status of the internet. The focus of this project is to rigorously enumerate the various instances of internet filtering taking place around the world by empowering the users […]
A six year quest of the Toronto Star has been finally put to rest by an Ontario Court of Appeal decision favouring a ‘freedom of information’ request filed by the Star. The landmark decision held that municipal government institutions, such as the Toronto Police Services Board (the “Board”), are required to produce electronically stored information that the public […]
In my last privacy post I identified certain cloud-computing privacy issues that may be regulated by the free-market. This post will outline a risk-based approach to analyzing privacy issues that laws and legislation may be required to address. A risk-based analysis is beneficial in that it changes how a problem is viewed and the type of solution […]
In a recent speech made at The CBA Canadian Legal Conference Expo, the Canadian privacy commissioner, Jennifer Stoddart, weighed in on the novel privacy concerns arising from advances in information technology. Of central concern in her speech is the widespread dissemination of personal information through online publication of judicial decisions. In some instances the names, […]
In August 2008, New Zealand judge, Justice David Harvey, made a ruling banning the publication of the names of two men who were charged with murder, on news websites. His main concern was the ability of jurors to Google the names of defendants before trials, and easily access information on their past criminal history. He […]
One of the comments I received on my last privacy post from Reshika Dhir rhetorically questioned whether users of cloud computing applications had a choice in not using these services to reduce their privacy risks. I agree with Reshika that many individuals in first-world countries have come to the point of technology dependence. To add […]