Examinations of transparency and accountability mechanisms relevant to the relationship between corporations and state agencies regarding personal data and other surveillance activities.
The report finds that use of automated decision-making technologies to augment or replace human judgment threatens to violate domestic and international human rights law, with alarming implications for the fundamental human rights of those subjected to these technologies.
Critical analysis and insight that navigates the complex implications of ongoing encryption debates.
Canadians can learn new things about your personal data by requesting access to it from companies. What can be found out varies by company and there can be some hurdles to overcome before you get access.
In this post, we evaluate the Government’s explanation of some of the more problematic elements of Bill C-59 in its briefing notes. We ultimately conclude that while the government’s briefing material provides insight into some of the ways that the CSE might act following the passage of the CSE Act, the material itself does not resolve our concerns with the CSE Act.
The Citizen Lab and the Canadian Internet Policy & Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) have collaborated to produce a report which provides timely legal analysis, political context, and historical background on the Communications Security Establishment Act and related provisions in Bill C-59 (An Act respecting national security matters), First Reading (December 18, 2017).
Citizen Lab researchers and other signatories highlight Bill C-59’s troubling implications for cybersecurity and human rights as they pertain to Canada’s signals intelligence activities and Canada’s human intelligence activities.
By now, issues of digital surveillance, government interference online, and programmatic targeting by businesses are common parlour talk. From Snowden to the recent and ongoing cases of government spying in Mexico, these acts have become a reality of the digital age. But what ethical, legal, and political questions and consequences lie at the intersection of digital governance and big data?
As more companies increasingly produce transparency reports, a pertinent question presents itself: how effective are they in altering bahaviour of both corporations and governments? In a recent paper for Business and Society, Citizen Lab’s Chris Parsons examines this in detail.
In this post, we critically examine the Government of Canada’s proposal to indiscriminately access subscriber identity information that is possessed by telecommunications service providers. We conclude by arguing that the government has failed to justify its case for such access to the information.
This report investigates the surveillance capabilities of IMSI Catchers, efforts by states to prevent information relating to IMSI Catchers from entering the public record, and the legal and policy frameworks that govern the use of these devices. The report principally focuses on Canadian agencies but, to do so, draws comparative examples from other jurisdictions. The report concludes with a series of recommended transparency and control mechanisms that are designed to properly contain the use of the devices and temper their more intrusive features.