Transparency and Accountability

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Examinations of transparency and accountability mechanisms relevant to the relationship between corporations and state agencies regarding personal data and other surveillance activities.

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Consultation on Draft Guidance for Police Services’ Privacy Obligations on the Use of Facial Recognition Technology

Algorithmic policing technologies, including facial recognition, have arrived or are coming to Canadian cities and provinces, and they are doing so quickly. We have identified a number of significant policy, practice, and legal deficits related to the use of algorithmic policing technologies in Canada, including imminent or foreseeable impacts to human rights and fundamental freedoms including the rights to privacy, liberty, and equality, expressive and associational freedoms, and others.

Pandemic Privacy Explained

On September 28, the Citizen Lab published an analysis of COVID-19 data collection practices. In this post, we discuss the significance of the findings with report authors.

Pandemic Privacy: A Preliminary Analysis of Collection Technologies, Data Collection Laws, and Legislative Reform during COVID-19

In this report, we undertake a preliminary comparative analysis of how different information technologies were mobilized in response to COVID-19 to collect data, the extent to which Canadian laws impeded the response to COVID-19, and the potential consequences of reforming data protection or privacy laws to enable more expansive data collection, use, or disclosure of personal information in future health emergencies.

Canada’s Proposed Privacy Law Reforms Are Not Enough: A Path to Improving Organizational Transparency and Accountability

Given our experiences, we have specific recommendations for how any federal commercial privacy legislation must be amended to better protect individuals from the predations and power of private organizations. In making our recommendations we have chosen to focus almost exclusively on the Openness and Transparency, Access to and Amendment of Personal Information, and Whistleblower sections of Bill C-11.