CLSI 2019 in Review
CLSI brings together academics, researchers, activists, and frontline workers and asks them to address some of the most pressing issues at the intersection of digital security and human rights.
Posts tagged “Transparency”
CLSI brings together academics, researchers, activists, and frontline workers and asks them to address some of the most pressing issues at the intersection of digital security and human rights.
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.
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.
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.
The DIY Transparency Report tool helps smaller organizations produce holistic transparency reports. Such reports comprehensively explain to customers, citizens, and government agencies alike how an organization can, and does, receive and respond to government requests. It does so by guiding organizational members through the process of developing a holistic report, while empowering them to customize their reports to reflect their organizational profile.
The report, authored by Postdoctoral Fellow Christopher Parsons, examines how contemporary telecommunications surveillance is governed in Canada. He concludes that serious failures in transparency and accountability indicate that corporations are failing to manage Canadians’ personal information responsibly and that government irresponsibility surrounding accountability strains its credibility and aggravates citizens’ cynicism about the political process.
Christopher Parsons, post-doctoral fellow at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab and managing director of the Telecom Transparency Project, has published a draft paper analyzing the effectiveness of the ‘transparency reports’ that Canadian telecommunications companies released in 2014.
Christopher Parsons was interviewed by a number of news outlets throughout April, loosely on the subjects of national security, critical digital infrastructure, and government transparency.
Canadians should demand more from government in reigning in electronic spying and cyber-policing. But we should also, as citizens, subscribers, and users, demand more from our internet and telecommunication service providers.