Micheal Vonn

Former Policy Director

British Columbia Civil Liberties Association

Micheal Vonn is a lawyer and has been the Policy Director of the BCCLA since 2004. She has been an Adjunct Professor at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in the Faculty of Law and in the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies where she has taught civil liberties and information ethics. She is a regular guest instructor for UBC’s College of Health Disciplines Interdisciplinary Elective in HIV/AIDS Care. She has been honoured for her work in HIV/AIDS with both an AccolAIDS Award and a Red Ribbon Award, and she is the recipient of the 2015 Keith Sacré Library Champion Award for support, guidance and assistance given to the BC library community. Her publication credits include the Birkbeck Law Review, Surveillance and Society, Journal of Parliamentary and Political Law, and Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law. Ms. Vonn is a frequent speaker on a variety of civil liberties topics including privacy, national security, policing, surveillance and free speech. She is currently a collaborator on Big Data Surveillance, a multi-year research projected lead by Queens University. She is an Advisory Board Member of Ryerson University’s Centre for Free Expression and an Advisory Board Member of Privacy International.

Blog November 22, 2018

When is a Mayor Not a Mayor? Public vs. Private in Twitter Blocking

There’s been a ceasefire in the “legal Twitter war” between Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson and three people who sued him for blocking them from his Twitter account. The three plaintiffs argued that in blocking them, Mayor Watson was violating their constitutional right to free expression.

Micheal Vonn

Access-to-Information

Blog May 17, 2018

The Nurse’s Facebook Case that calls into question the reasonableness of the “reasonableness standard”

The Disciplinary Committee of the Saskatchewan Registered Nurses Association (SRNA) says that Carolyn Strom engaged in professional misconduct in her comments on Facebook and Twitter about her grandfather’s end-of-life care. Ms.

Micheal Vonn

Censorship

Blog January 11, 2018

“No-Platforming” should have No Place in a Public Library

The Toronto Public Library (TPL) Board kicked-off 2018 by bringing in a new policy on community and event space rental. While the new policy is meant to address discrimination and promote inclusion, it is infinitely more likely to quash debates on controversial topics, exclude minority voices and in doing so, distort the mission of the library to promote the free exchange of ideas.

Micheal Vonn

Censorship, Intellectual Freedom