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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?
Blog April 16, 2021

Commercial DNA Technologies, Algorithmic Tools, & Secrecy Threaten Fairness in Trials

The increasingly rapid rate of technological innovation has disrupted many spheres of life, but few with higher stakes than forensic evidence. Yet the private sector tools that generate this evidence are far from flawless, and commercial secrecy can confound attempts by those accused of crime to challenge the case against them, leading to devastating consequences for individuals.
Blog September 27, 2019

New Hotline to Assist Students Approached by CSIS Addresses a Problem Neither New nor Unprecedented

Co-Authored by Nader Hasan On November 12, 2018, the University of Toronto’s student newspaper, The Varsity, reported that Muslim Student Association executives had been regularly receiving surprise visits from RCMP and CSIS agents regularly since 2016. Since the events of 9/11 in the United States, security and intelligence officials have taken an interest in Muslim Students Associations (MSAs) across universities in both Canada and the United States.