Issues/Your Take

Geofence Warrants

A recent news article from Gainesville, Florida has brought additional scrutiny onto the practice of geofence warrants. Geofence warrants allow police departments to compel google to provide them with anonymized Google location data from anyone with a geographic radius within a a select window of time around the occurrence of a crime. If after reviewing […]

Chinese Government Censors Coronavirus Terms

In contrast to Jocelyn’s post where freedom of speech in North America has caused rumours about the coronavirus to rapidly spread, China holds a tight reign on what information can be shared about the virus. According to this CBC article, https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/china-coronavirus-censorship-social-media-1.5483535, China has strong legislation that mandates social media platforms to censor content that “undermines […]

Millions of tweets peddled conspiracy theories about coronavirus in other countries, an unpublished U.S. report says

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/02/29/twitter-coronavirus-misinformation-state-department/ This article discusses a really fascinating problem that is exacerbating the fear accompanying the coronavirus epidemic – misinformation disseminated over social media. As described in the article, approximately 2 million tweets promoted conspiracy theories about the coronavirus have been circulated since the outbreak. While some of the information being circulated online is accurate, MIT’s […]

Group Presentation: Cyberbullying, Social Media & the Law

Hi Everyone! Gaby, Kate, Leah and I will be presenting on cyberbullying on Tuesday. Our presentation is broken down into the following sections: 1) Cyberbullying in Canada This part of the presentation discusses how cyberbullying is a growing social problem. Canada has experienced two high profile cyberbullying cases – Rhetaeh Parsons and Amanda Todd. In […]

Huawei Is Winning the Argument in Europe, as the U.S. Fumbles to Develop Alternatives

Much like the UK, Germany appears to not be fully capitulating to American calls to have an outright ban on Huawei’s involvement in national 5G networks. Many other European nations are also expressing skepticism towards an outright ban. While they have indicated that they are willing to curtail the involvement of companies that are deemed […]

“Why Does the Radio Keep Playing the Same Songs?”

This was the question posed by my uncle over the Christmas break. “You know when I was your age, we didn’t have this zip-zap-app stuff, we heard it all on the radio! Disk jockeys must really be lazy these days.” * I didn’t have an answer for him at the time, but after some digging […]

Facebook’s launch of Facebook Dating in EU delayed due to data protection concerns

Facebook’s dating service, Facebook Dating, has decided to delay launching in the EU after the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), the national authority for the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), expressed concerns with the recent notification of the launch and the failure to provide a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA). Facebook Ireland only notified the […]

Response to Facial Recongnition Technology and Canadian Law Enforcement

This was a very interesting post. I was also reading about the controversies surrounding facial recognition software. Clearview’s Facial Recognition App Is Identifying Child Victims of Abuse by Kashmir Hill and Gabriel J.X. Dance. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/07/business/clearview-facial-recognition-child-sexual-abuse.html?searchResultPosition=4. This article discusses how it is being used in law enforcement (including in Canada) to identify the victims of child […]

Facial Recognition Technology and Canadian Law Enforcement

A previous post dealt with facial recognition technology and its privacy implications. What some members of the class may be unaware of is that certain law enforcement agencies in Canada have begun to use facial recognition technology, and others are planning to implement it. Notably, the Calgary police department have been using facial recognition technology […]

Michael Geist interviews Janet Yale (Chair of the Broadcasting/Telecom Review Panel)

https://lawbytes.castos.com/podcasts/1553/episodes/episode-38-debating-the-broadcast-panel-report-a-conversation-with-btlr-panel-chair-janet-yale I found this to be a frustrating episode. – I don’t understand the choice to focus on Canadians having choice at the level of an individual online media provider. Why does choice of content and discoverability of Canadian content need to be satisfied within Facebook or within Netflix instead of on the internet generally? […]