Privacy

Why are Canadian businesses often caught violating customers’ privacy rights, not protecting personal data they hold and victimized by data breaches? One answer is they don’t know they have to follow provincial and federal privacy laws. It may be even worse. “Frankly, judging by some of the phone calls we…

In new book, Roger McNamee offers ideas on how to solve the big problems created by Big Tech Roger McNamee, a longtime tech investor and one of the early backers of Facebook Inc., was a very early voice warning about privacy and data collection problems on the world’s largest social…

Parliament’s report into fake news raises many questions, but will the government act? Facebook is an out-of-control train wreck that is destroying democracy and must be brought under control. The final report of parliament’s inquiry into fake news and disinformation does not use this language, precisely, but it is, nonetheless, the report’s…

An independent report authored by a US government auditing agency has recommended that Congress develop internet data privacy legislation to enhance consumer protections, similar to the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The 56-page report was put together by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO), a bi-partisan government agency that provides…

ON THE INTERNET, the personal data users give away for free is transformed into a precious commodity. The puppy photos people upload train machines to be smarter. The questions they ask Google uncover humanity’s deepest prejudices. And their location histories tell investors which stores attract the most shoppers. Even seemingly benign…

SHOSHANA ZUBOFF’S “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism” is already drawing comparisons to seminal socioeconomic investigations like Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” and Karl Marx’s “Capital.” Zuboff’s book deserves these comparisons and more: Like the former, it’s an alarming exposé about how business interests have poisoned our world, and like the latter, it provides…

Designing for trust has become a popular topic. In fact, many organisations are beginning to pay more attention and dollars to the importance of customer trust. They recognise the relationship between customer trust and customer access is strengthening. Yet, as we called out in our 2017 playbook, trust is a variable outcome. It’s…

Wednesday, February 6, 2019 Dear will.i.am, We saw your piece in the Economist and were very excited to learn that you care about privacy as much as we do. At PI we expose government and corporate bad behaviours, we disrupt their plans, and identify a hopeful path forward. That’s why we very…

The Federal Competition Authority has issued its decision on the lawfulness of Facebook’s data processing. As its q&a document explains, you cannot extricate the interests of consumers, including their rights to privacy and data protection, from the responsibilities of dominant companies under competition law. We have consistently supported competition authorities taking action…

Facebook has been clobbered with a landmark ruling in Germany that could mean huge changes to the way it collects data for 32 million users in the country. Germany’s antitrust regulator has told Facebook it must stop forcing users to allow it to collect and combine their data from sources…