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Privacy & Surveillance

Pervasive public and private surveillance made possible by new technologies challenges long-standing social norms of privacy and individual rights and civil liberties. Those using the technologies gain enormous power to make our everyday lives transparent to themselves while rendering their own practices increasingly invisible to those whose data they are appropriating. At the same time, the public has become increasingly reliant on the new information and communication tools for social participation, thereby increasing their transparency and dependency.

Blog January 21, 2026

The “right to be forgotten” arrives in Canada

The interests at stake in a recent investigation[1] by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (the “OPC”) can be evoked in two imaginative exercises. First, how would you feel if you had been accused of a crime, the charge had been stayed many years ago, but news articles about the incident were still easily accessible to anyone who typed your name into a search engine?
News June 19, 2024

Charter Rights Under Threat if Senate Fails to Fix Foreign Interference Bill: If they don’t act, we will, say CFE and 9 other civil society groups

In its rush to do, and to be seen to do, something about the very real problem of foreign interference, the House of Commons hurried through — in hours — a well-intentioned but deeply flawed Bill C-70: Countering Foreign Interference Act. Under enormous pressure, it appears the Senate will do likewise today.