Category Archives: privacy

Oct 11 is international day of protest against surveillance

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That’s the title of my Slaw post today.   It reads:

Boing Boing has a recent post that refers to a day of protest being organized in the EU. Some excerpts:

An international protest against undue surveillance is being held next month on the 11th of October. It is ‘a broad movement of campaigners and organizations is calling on everybody to join action against excessive surveillance by governments and businesses’. We need to get this on the radar for the elections in the USA this year, the EU parliamentary elections next year and many more.

People who constantly feel watched and under surveillance cannot freely and courageously stand up for their rights and for a just society. Mass surveillance is thereby threatening the fabric of a democratic and open society. Mass surveillance is also endangering the work and commitment of civil society organizations.

My personal view is that most so called security measures, including CCTV is security theatre that does not have any significant effect on actual security. For those that say “if you are doing nothing wrong, what’s the problem”, take a look at this Washington Post article.

I look forward to the results of the Federal Privacy Commissioner’s research into public surveillance techniques and technology

Google reduces personal info retention times

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David Fraser points out that Google has announced that they are reducing the time before they anonymize IP addresses on their server logs from 18 months to 9 months.   That’s in reponse to privacy regulators.

Google’s blog entry on the point is a good read as it discusses the trade-off’s between privacy and the advantages they see from keeping the info longer. 

It states in part:

After months of work our engineers developed methods for preserving more of the data’s utility while also anonymizing IP addresses sooner. We haven’t sorted out all of the implementation details, and we may not be able to use precisely the same methods for anonymizing as we do after 18 months, but we are committed to making it work.

While we’re glad that this will bring some additional improvement in privacy, we’re also concerned about the potential loss of security, quality, and innovation that may result from having less data. As the period prior to anonymization gets shorter, the added privacy benefits are less significant and the utility lost from the data grows. So, it’s difficult to find the perfect equilibrium between privacy on the one hand, and other factors, such as innovation and security, on the other. Technology will certainly evolve, and we will always be working on ways to improve privacy for our users, seeking new innovations, and also finding the right balance between the benefits of data and advancement of privacy.

Read David’s post

Court ruling threatens to reveal YouTube users

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For the London Free Press – August 11, 2008

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An American judge’s recent order requiring YouTube to release information to Viacom in a US$1-billion lawsuit had many privacy advocates in an uproar – and rightly so.

U.S. District Court Judge Louis Stanton recently ordered Google to hand over all YouTube viewership records.

Viacom sought this order to determine whether pirated content is more popular than non-pirated content, which would indicate that YouTube has a financial interest in allowing this practice and encouraging the violation of copyright laws.

YouTube is owned by Google. Viacom is suing Google for not protecting copyrighted materials. The lawsuit deals with copyright and materials published on YouTube, a controversial subject to begin with.

Many privacy advocates publicly displayed their rage and frustration against the order. In a July 3 commentary, the Washington Post’s Michael Arrington writes, “Judge Stanton is a moron. And Google simply cannot hand this data over without facing a class action lawsuit of staggering proportions.”

Though other privacy advocates have not been as blunt, they have voiced their opinion in the media, including on YouTube’s website.

The reason for their frustration is that although Viacom is to use the information for the sole purpose of litigation, there is no assurance it would not use the information for other improper and unintended purposes.

The information to be handed over to Viacom included viewers’ login IDs and IP addresses, which could be used to identify those individuals, their searches and what they have viewed online.

Many advocates have suggested that there are other ways to satisfy the needs of the lawsuit without releasing the information and that those options should have been explored before the order was granted.

One option would have been to take information out of the data that could be used to identify YouTube users. The loud outcry by many privacy advocates may have had an influence on Google and Viacom’s decision to agree to this approach. In short, the agreement is that the information handed over to Viacom will not be usable to identify YouTube users either directly or by reverse-engineering.

Not everyone is of the view that the Google-Viacom agreement will resolve the privacy issues raised by the order. Some privacy advocates are still frustrated and believe the database cannot be made truly anonymous and that some private user information is bound to be released to Viacom.

Though Stanton’s order was granted in an American court, Canadian YouTube users are affected by this decision.

Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner Ann Cavoukian publicly urged Google to appeal Stanton’s ruling. She is of the view that users cannot be fully protected from the improper use of the information.

“It is not acceptable to allow copyright enforcement to come at the expense of users’ privacy,” she said.

There are two important lessons here. First, litigators and courts need to consider privacy issues when dealing with third-party information and limit its use as much as possible. Second, businesses should keep as little personal information as possible for as short a time as possible.

Seattle Camerahead CCTV protest

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Boing Boing has a post about a protest in Seattle tomorrow.  People upset at the growing number of CCTV cameras will walk around with huge CCTV cameras on their heads to bring atention to it.   The organizer is quoted as saying:  “The project not only raises the questions of who is watching who and who is watching the watchers, but also … why we are being watched at all”

I guess you could call this security theatre about security theatre.

Read the Boing Boing post

Privacy Commissioner commissions research into public surveillance

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The Federal Privacy Commissioner has initiated some research into public surveillance.   From the Privacy commissioner’s blog:

We’ve decided to commission research into how developments in public surveillance techniques and technology are affecting Canadians, individually and as a society. First off, Queen’s University will be examining the proliferation of surveillance cameras across the country, and report on the trends in the use of public surveillance – although it seems as if we are seeing more and more attempts to expand surveillance networks. As well, the University of Alberta will be taking a detailed look at whether privacy issues are being properly considered in the run-up to the 2010 Olympics.

I look forward to the results of that research.  I subscribe to the view that for the most part public CCTV is security theatre that does not have any significant effect on actual security.

Read the Comissioner’s post for more detail and insight into the issue.

 

 

Hands off LSAT students’ fingers

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For the London Free Press – July 7, 2008

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A recent decision by the Privacy Commissioner of Canada found that taking finger/thumb prints from those writing the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) is a privacy breach and must be stopped.

The LSAT, a standardized test provided by the Law School Admission’s Council (LSAC), must be written by every prospective law student in Canada and the U.S. The test results are one of the criteria law schools use to grant entry to students.

Since 1974, the LSAC has collected the finger/thumb prints of test takers “to assure the authenticity of test scores and to protect the integrity of the testing process.” It’s used as a measure of ensuring the person writing the test is who he/she says they are.

The privacy commissioner found that the loss of privacy outweighed the benefit, and ordered the practice to cease under the provisions of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA).

The Commissioner considered this four-point test:

- Is the measure demonstrably necessary to meet a specific need?

- Is it likely to be effective in meeting that need?

- Is the loss of privacy proportional to the benefit gained?

- Is there a less privacy-invasive way of achieving the same end?

She felt that not only did fingerprinting not effectively meet the stated purpose, they were never actually used for the intended purpose.

LSAC took the position that since it was a Delaware corporation headquartered in the United States, the privacy commissioner had no jurisdiction over its activities.

The privacy commissioner found, however, that there were sufficient Canadian connections to make LSAC subject to the provisions of PIPEDA, at least to the extent it operates in Canada.

Fifteen Canadian law schools are members of the LSAC. One of the 18 voting members of the board of trustees is from a Canadian school, one of the four permanent standing committees is from a Canadian school and the president of the Canadian Law School Admission Officers sits on the board of trustee and participates in LSAC discussions.

LSAC also took the position that since it is non-profit, and PIPEDA only applies to commercial activities, that PIPEDA did not apply.

The commissioner’s report stated that:

LSAC’s status as a non-profit, non-stock, membership-based organization is not determinative. The Act applies to organizations, defined in section 2 as including “an association, a partnership, a person and a trade union.” There is no exemption for non-profit or member-oriented organizations. To the contrary, the definition of “commercial activity,” namely, “any particular transaction, act or conduct or any regular course of conduct that is of a commercial character, including the selling, bartering or leasing of donor, membership or other fundraising lists,” makes clear Parliament’s intention that the Act apply to commercial transactions that non-profit, membership-based organizations might engage in.

This decision is not surprising.

It’s good to see that PIPEDA is being applied to protect the way even a foreign party deals with Canadian individuals.

Face recognition among tools to guard technology

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For the London Free Press – June 30, 2008

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The Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner’s 2007 annual report outlines the efforts undertaken by the IPC in promoting privacy enhancing technologies.

Some IPC initiatives include: privacy by design, secure technologies, biometric encryption and private face recognition.

One way the IPC promotes data security is to offer guidance for effective privacy design. The idea is to consider privacy issues early in the design of new technology and address them as part of the design. The IPC stresses that minimizing the quantity of personal information sought will minimize the likelihood of the data being lost or misused.

The IPC also encourages individuals to get involved in managing their own personal information.

In the report, the IPC supports the use of secure technologies, such as encryption. The idea behind encryption is that collected data will be unintelligible unless a decryption tool is used.

“As long as the passkey is kept secure, the encrypted data cannot be viewed in ‘plain text’ format, even if intercepted,” commissioner Ann Cavoukian says.

Privacy commissioners are strong advocates of encryption. The challenge, of course, is to manage the passkeys.

Using fingerprints or iris scans to recognize and verify someone’s identity, a technology referred to as biometric encryption, is also recommended by the IPC. But while accepting that BE improves the security of information systems, the IPC also has voiced concern with this type of technology; specifically, the ramifications if this type of technology is misused.

For example, because of the nature of the data collected by BE, there’s always the potential for discrimination or identify theft. The key is to use the technology without creating a master database of actual fingerprints or scans, as the consequences if that was ever compromised would be huge.

One of the most interesting initiatives discussed by Cavoukian in her 2007 report is private face recognition (PFR). This technology is being explored by the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp., but has not come into effect.

PFR makes use of facial biometrics in identifying an individual. Ontario Lottery and Gaming is looking at whether this technology should be used to assist gambling addicts.

Once implemented, this technology would be part of a voluntary exclusion program.

Individuals who opted into the program would be barred from entering casinos after their faces were scanned into the system.

As pointed out by Cavoukian in her report, the University of Toronto undertook research in 2007 to determine whether a system should be developed in which BE is integrated with PFR.

Regardless of which program is adopted, Cavoukian has ensured the Canadian public that the IPC will continue to do more work in this area and to advocate for privacy enhancing technologies.

The Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, 2007 annual report is available at www.ipc.on.ca.

Everyone has a role to play regarding privacy

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David Fraser has 2 posts on his Canadian Privacy Law Blog that together emphasize that to be effective, an organization’s privacy officer must have support at the highest levels of the organization, and must be able to influence various areas within the organization.

The first is a study that found that 87% of data breaches are the result of incompetence and carelessness.

The second is a study that shows there is a large disconnect between marketing departments and those charged with overseeing privacy compliance. It showed that if you ask privacy executives and marketing executives about limitations on sharing personal information, the privacy executives thought they were doing far less sharing than the marketing executives did.

One scary aspect of this is that it suggests that while privacy policies are well intentioned – internal compliance with them can sometimes be questionable.

Tips to avoid identity theft and fraud

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Inside CRM has an article entitled 50 Ways to Take Back Control of Your Personal Data that is a good list of best practices to protect personal information. Many of the references contain details relevant only to those that live in the U.S., but the theories apply anywhere.

As we might say in a contract, these apply to Canada, mutatis mutandis.

Read the 50 Ways article