The largest issues related to privacy and security are so big and are cascading through the mind of society so rapidly that it is difficult to get our little individual minds around them. All we can do is sketch the monster emerging from the sea. The science fiction writer Vernor Vinge said at the NASA […]
Last week, my office was proud to host an important conference in Vancouver called Privacy and Access 20/20: The Future of Privacy. The conference sessions were thought-provoking, timely and prescient.As I looked back on the two days we spent together in Vancouver, some key themes emerged. The first, by a long shot, was the breath-taking […]
In late October, the Information and Privacy Commissioner for BC (the “Privacy Commissioner”) released a scathing report on the BC Government’s response to an access request filed with the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure regarding meetings about missing women and the Highway of Tears. The report (Investigation Report F15-03 – Access Denied: Records Retention and […]
Alan Westin famously described privacy as the ability of individuals “to determine for themselves when, how, and to what extent information about them is communicated to others.” Today, the challenge of controlling let alone managing our information has strained this definition of privacy to the breaking point. As one former European consumer protection commissioner put […]
Q1: What are the rules surrounding how Canadian governments use personal data? From @Camosun College students A1: Canada has provincial and federal privacy laws that set out rules government must follow when using personal data. Under BC laws, government must have clear legal authority to collect personal information. If BC law explicitly prescribes collection or […]
