Wednesday, 25 July 2012
Monday, 23 July 2012
Twitter publishes its first "transparency report"
[ David Fraser repost ]
Kudos to Twitter for following Google's example and releasing its first "Transparency Report", which summarises the number of government requests for user data and government demands to take down user data. You can find it here and they've blogged about it here: Twitter Blog: Twitter Transparency Report.
For the first half of 2012, Twitter received 11 requests from Canada related to 11 user accounts and complied with 18% of them.
Kudos to Twitter for following Google's example and releasing its first "Transparency Report", which summarises the number of government requests for user data and government demands to take down user data. You can find it here and they've blogged about it here: Twitter Blog: Twitter Transparency Report.
For the first half of 2012, Twitter received 11 requests from Canada related to 11 user accounts and complied with 18% of them.
Tuesday, 10 July 2012
Reports share concerns over Bill C-30
[ Canton repost ]
For the London Free Press – August 9, 2012 – Read this on Canoe
Proposed federal ‘lawful access’ legislation designed to provide police greater accessibility to information comes under fire from both the federal and provincial commissioners
The Federal and Ontario privacy commissioners both recently released their annual reports. Their reports contained some common themes, even though the privacy laws they enforce and their application are quite different.
Both expressed concern about the proposed federal “lawful access” legislation, Bill C-30. It’s designed to provide police with much greater ability to access and track information about individuals through communication technologies such as the Internet and smartphones, without a warrant or any judicial authorization.
The law includes the ability to obtain a wide range of information, and will require Internet service providers to invest in systems to retain more information in case it’s later required for an investigation.
Both commissioners are concerned that the bill is too invasive and privacy unfriendly.
The commissioners also are concerned about the use of biometrics. Biometrics consists of personal information obtained through the scanning of physical features such as your face or your fingerprints.
The federal privacy commissioner has released a guidance document called Data at Your Fingertips: Biometrics and the Challenges to Privacy about the benefits and drawbacks of biometrics.
Ontario’s privacy commissioner stated “fortunately, privacy solutions exist, but they must be embedded early into the biometric matching system to be effective. When deployed properly, Biometric Encryption (BE) defeats many of the major privacy concerns surrounding the collection and (mis)use of biometrics: there is no retention of a biometric image or template, which significantly enhances security and diminishes the risk of data-matching against other databases. BE can be deployed with no meaningful loss of system functionality.”
In other words, don’t store the biometric image itself, and make sure that biometric identifiers cannot be reversed into the biometric image. After all, if a credit card number is compromised, you can get a new one. But if your fingerprint or iris scan is compromised, you can’t get a new one.
It’s crucial for any use of biometrics as an identifier to be designed with privacy and security issues in mind.
But designing privacy into new products and services is not just for biometrics. Both commissioners also talked about the importance of implementing privacy considerations directly into the design of any program or service where personal data is being collected or used. The federal privacy commissioner has on different occasions been critical of some social media providers, for example, for not considering privacy issues before launching new services.
The Ontario privacy commissioner has labeled this approach privacy by design that is a “pre-emptive approach that requires the integration of privacy considerations into new programs and databases from the outset, and not as an afterthought.”
The Ontario commissioner has written several papers on privacy by design that are a worthwhile read for anyone creating a new product or service that uses personal information.
http://harrisonpensa.com/lawyers/david-canton/
For the London Free Press – August 9, 2012 – Read this on Canoe
Proposed federal ‘lawful access’ legislation designed to provide police greater accessibility to information comes under fire from both the federal and provincial commissioners
The Federal and Ontario privacy commissioners both recently released their annual reports. Their reports contained some common themes, even though the privacy laws they enforce and their application are quite different.
Both expressed concern about the proposed federal “lawful access” legislation, Bill C-30. It’s designed to provide police with much greater ability to access and track information about individuals through communication technologies such as the Internet and smartphones, without a warrant or any judicial authorization.
The law includes the ability to obtain a wide range of information, and will require Internet service providers to invest in systems to retain more information in case it’s later required for an investigation.
Both commissioners are concerned that the bill is too invasive and privacy unfriendly.
The commissioners also are concerned about the use of biometrics. Biometrics consists of personal information obtained through the scanning of physical features such as your face or your fingerprints.
The federal privacy commissioner has released a guidance document called Data at Your Fingertips: Biometrics and the Challenges to Privacy about the benefits and drawbacks of biometrics.
Ontario’s privacy commissioner stated “fortunately, privacy solutions exist, but they must be embedded early into the biometric matching system to be effective. When deployed properly, Biometric Encryption (BE) defeats many of the major privacy concerns surrounding the collection and (mis)use of biometrics: there is no retention of a biometric image or template, which significantly enhances security and diminishes the risk of data-matching against other databases. BE can be deployed with no meaningful loss of system functionality.”
In other words, don’t store the biometric image itself, and make sure that biometric identifiers cannot be reversed into the biometric image. After all, if a credit card number is compromised, you can get a new one. But if your fingerprint or iris scan is compromised, you can’t get a new one.
It’s crucial for any use of biometrics as an identifier to be designed with privacy and security issues in mind.
But designing privacy into new products and services is not just for biometrics. Both commissioners also talked about the importance of implementing privacy considerations directly into the design of any program or service where personal data is being collected or used. The federal privacy commissioner has on different occasions been critical of some social media providers, for example, for not considering privacy issues before launching new services.
The Ontario privacy commissioner has labeled this approach privacy by design that is a “pre-emptive approach that requires the integration of privacy considerations into new programs and databases from the outset, and not as an afterthought.”
The Ontario commissioner has written several papers on privacy by design that are a worthwhile read for anyone creating a new product or service that uses personal information.
http://harrisonpensa.com/lawyers/david-canton/
Saturday, 2 June 2012
Adult Criminal Court Statistics
A report by Statistics Canada on Adult Criminal Court Statistics in Canada for 2010/2011 states caseload did not increase from the previous year -- roughly four hundred thousand. Two-thirds of the cases resulted in convictions.
Friday, 1 June 2012
federal judge outlines Gulf oil spill trial
In New Orleans, a federal judge outlines the Gulf oil spill trial that will take place next year following the judge's approval of the currently proposed $7.8 billion settlement between: (1) BP and economic loss victims; and (2) BP and medical loss victims.
Thursday, 24 May 2012
G20 reports available
The Office of the Independent Police Review Director's report on the July 2010 G20 Summit in Toronto is available here
A summary of the report and what's next can be found here.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)