Whoever owns the camera has access to the surveillance
The benefits of facial recognition technology (FRT) are everywhere. In medical settings, therapists utilize facial scans to diagnose autism early. In the public safety sector, officers use FRT to apprehend dangerous criminals. The technology offers undeniable advantages, but privacy concerns and limitations must be addressed. When your iPhone takes a picture instead of asking for…
How many breaches must we read about before we take action to protect our customer information?
I’m astonished that major data breach stories are still occurring and generating unnerving headlines. How many of these instances do we have to read about before we finally take at least basic action to protect our customer information? As a result of an attack, adult dating and pornography website company FriendFinder Networks exposed the personal…
I'm thinking I would have better luck taking my chances with fraudsters
What do we do when efforts to preserve our privacy are more of an intrusion than the potential lack of privacy? Take banks. We can all be the victims of identity theft and fraud. We need to be careful. So do banks. A generation ago, a few pieces of ID got a check cashed. No…
This useless app has only contributed to the chaos at our major airports
Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland thinks her government is too humble. At least that’s what she said when a reporter asked her why travellers are still forced to fill out the ArriveCAN app before entering Canada. After extolling the virtues of national humility, Freeland went on to take credit for saving 70,000 lives by enacting…
Synthetic data based on records ensures confidentiality
A University of Alberta researcher is developing an inventive solution to a problem plaguing health-care research around the world: how to make data-driven decisions without compromising the privacy of personal medical records. Dean Eurich, professor in the School of Public Health, is academic lead on a project that has successfully created a “synthetic data” set that…
Harassment such as that experienced by Rempel Garner and Trudeau must be immediately condemned
Canada’s federal election campaign just passed the two-week mark. Alas, we’ve already witnessed an invasion of the privacy of some politicians in public and private spaces. There was the Aug. 27 disruption of a Liberal rally in Bolton, Ont. Dozens of protesters, ranging from government critics to opponents of COVID-19 masks and vaccine passports, yelled…
Vaccine passports violate freedom-of-movement rights. And it would let authorities know people’s habits, a violation of privacy
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, many countries have imposed restrictions. Vaccine passports are the latest and perhaps most dangerous of these restrictions. The rest of the world imported the lockdown strategy first used in China, restricting businesses classified as non-essential. Vaccination has been presented as a way to return to pre-COVID-19 times, but it has…
As the world’s favoured search engine, dominant email service and most popular video provider, Google has immense power over public opinion
“The Google of today is a monopoly gatekeeper for the internet,” reads the U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit against the tech giant. The document filed on Oct. 20 alleges the company has used exclusionary agreements to block out competitors. Google accounts for 80 per cent of U.S. internet searches and 30 per cent of U.S.…
U of A computing scientist Omid Ardakanian is working on software to make buildings more comfortable while cutting emissions, lowering costs
For most of us, office cooling and heating systems are like wallpaper: you only really notice them if they catch fire. For Omid Ardakanian, office buildings offer potential energy savings on a skyscraper scale. “My obsession, if you want to call it that, comes from the sensors in these buildings,” said Ardakanian, a computing science professor…
Fear often trumps any proportionality or civil-liberties concern. After the virus passes, surveillance tools will remain
Crises are the perfect breeding ground for authoritarians and social engineers. The extreme measures governments have rolled out to contain the COVID-19 pandemic remind us that fear often trumps any proportionality or civil-liberties concern. Since it originated in Wuhan, the crisis has exposed the spread and depth of the Communist Party of China’s mass-surveillance apparatus.…