News

  • CIPPIC in the SCC on Crown Copyright Case
    - 2019-03-28 -

    On Friday, March 29, CIPPIC will appear as an intervener before the Supreme Court of Canada in the hearing of Keatley Surveying Ltd. v. Teranet Inc., SCC Case No. 37863.  The case addresses the scope and reach of “Crown copyright” and will impact many mass digitization projects and open government initiatives.

    This case stems from a class action involving the management of the Province of Ontario’s electronic land registry system. The public is currently able to obtain copies of land surveys and other documents through this system for a fee, but no money is distributed to the surveyors who prepared the documents in the first place. The case is being brought forward by Keatley Surveying Ltd. on behalf of approximately 350 land surveyors whose plans were scanned and made available online.

    CIPPIC's intervention argues that the government cannot take away authors’ rights by republishing other peoples’ work. CIPPIC says that Crown copyright “is not a way for the government to expropriate, in a formal or colloquial sense, other people’s copyrights,” and “invites a more common-sense approach” to interpreting Crown copyright.

    Professor Jeremy de Beer and CIPPIC Director David Fewer are acting for CIPPIC.

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  • Decision in R v Jarvis Offers Robust Account of Privacy in Voyeurism Cases
    - 2019-02-14 -

    The Supreme Court of Canada today its decision in R v Jarvis, a voyeurism case where a high school teacher used a pen cam to surreptitiously record multiple videos focused mainly of the chest and cleavage area of several female students and one female colleague.

    The majority of the Ontario Court of Appeal acquitted the defendant, 2017 ONCA 778, finding that while the photos were taken for a sexual purpose, the young women he targeted did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the school setting where the photos were taken, an essential element of the voyeurism offense.

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  • Supreme Court set to release landmark decision on sexual privacy in R v Jarvis: Join Our Discussion
    - 2019-02-12 -

    The Supreme Court of Canada is set to release its decision on a much anticipated case addressing privacy, equality and sexual violence this Thursday, February 14, 2019.

    On the day of its release, the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law will host a discussion on the decision at 4:00 pm in Room 570, Fauteux Hall, 57 Louis-Pasteur Private. All are welcome to attend.

    On April 20, 2018 the Supreme Court heard R v Jarvis, SCC file number 37833 a voyeurism case where a high school teacher used a pen cam to surreptitiously record multiple videos focused mainly of the chest and cleavage area of several female students and one female colleague. Jarvis was acquitted at trial. The Court of Appeal upheld that acquittal in R v Jarvis, 2017 ONCA 778, finding that while the photos were taken for a sexual purpose, the young women he targeted did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the school setting where the photos were taken, an essential element of the voyeurism offence.

    The central question before the Supreme Court was when do people have a reasonable expectation of privacy? Is it only when they are shielded from public view? When they are dressed modestly? Or can privacy be understood in a more nuanced way?

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  • CIPPIC Joins Mozilla-Led Call for Facebook to Follow Through on its Elections Transparency Promises
    - 2019-02-12 -

    CIPPIC has joined Mozilla, Access, Reporters Without Borders, and several other organizations in an open letter calling on Facebook to live up to its transparency promises. The letter calls out Facebook for blocking transparency tools employed by ProPublica, demanding that the platform provide API access to its promised political transparency tools.  As is now widely acknwoledged, Facebook and its various communications platforms have been leveraged by a wide range of political actors-both foreign and domestic-in their efforts to disrupt democratic processes in a number of jurisdictions around the world. Disinformation campaigns have become an instrumental force, evident in the UK's 'Vote Leave' referendum, the 2016 US Presidential elections, and the 2018 Brazilian elections which propelled far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro to the presidency.

    Against this backdrop, Facebook has undertaken various efforts to address these challenges. This has included a third-party academic body empowered to provide select academic researchers with access to elements of its content under controlled conditions. Among these is a novel 'open advertisement' mechanism designed to let individuals see all advertisements sent by a single entity through its platform. This tool is designed in part to address so-called 'dark advertising', where political actors send highly individualized and micro-targeted messages to different people based on their data-intensive profiling. Currently, only intended recipients see any given advertisement, allowing political actors to send conflicting or even discriminatory messaging with relative impunity. The problem is that Facebook has refused to provide API access to its open advertising platform, making it functionally difficult if not impossible to conduct the type of meaningful analysis necessary to meet the challenges posed by its services to democratic processes. Not only has Facebook refused to provide API access, but it has actively blocked existing tools used by ProPublica to supplement the shortcomings of its own transparency mechanisms. Meanwhile, a recent CBC study, which leveraged Twitter's API-enabled political messaging transparency tool, analyzed over 9 million tweets to demonstrate significant foreign influence in Canadian discussions surrounding pipelines and immigration. With upcoming federal elections in 2019, Canada cannot afford to be complacent about this issue.

    UPDATE: Facebook has responded by committing to develop and roll out an open API for its political advertising archive. This positive step towards transparency has been met with cautious optimism.

    Image Source: Yomare, "Hand Puppet Snowman", May 22, 2015, Pixabay, Pixabay License

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  • Summer 2019 Internship Program at CIPPIC
    - 2019-01-30 -

    CIPPIC Summer Internship Program offers outstanding law students an unequaled opportunity to work on cutting-edge research and advocacy issues relating to law and technology.

    CIPPIC advocacy involves submission of briefs to government and other policy‐makers, intervention in precedent‐setting cases before judicial and quasi‐judicial tribunals, provision of public legal education resources, publication of reports, participation in multi‐stakeholder policy-making forums, provision of expert testimony before parliamentary committees, and advising under‐represented organizations and individuals on relevant public interest issues.

    Working closely with CIPPIC lawyers, interns learn how to be effective researchers, policy analysts, and advocates while contributing to public interest policy and law reform in such areas as copyright law, privacy, consumer protection, telecommunications regulation, net neutrality, free speech and civil liberties on the Internet. Interns may additionally have opportunities to attend conferences and workshops such as the CIPPIC summer speaker series and to participate in other aspects of the Centre for Law, Society, & Technology.

    UPDATE: The application deadline has been extended, the deadline for applications is now Monday, March 4, 2019

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  • Supreme Court of Canada Protects Digital Privacy in Shared Devices
    - 2018-12-13 -

    Today, the Supreme Court of Canada issued R v Reeves, 2018 SCC 56, a decision that further entrenches Canadians' privacy expectations in computing devices while adding important nuance to the Court's jurisprudence regarding information privacy protections in shared. The decision under appeal questioned whether police can seize a shared computing device on the third party consent of a co-user.

    As CIPPIC noted in its intervention, ably prepared by our co-counsel, Jill Presser and Kate Robertson, shared access to computing devices is routine feature of modern life. Often this shared access occurs without explicit individual awareness -- a trend only likely to increase with the plethora of emerging smart home devices. Allowing one roommate, partner or other co-habitant to unilateral waive privacy protection could allow the state to intervene into highly private spaces with minimal safeguards in place. Low-income individuals [para 44] and individuals subjected to technology-facilitated abuse [para 23] by their intimate partners could disproportionately face the brunt of these negative impacts. In rejecting such a paradigm, Madam Justice Karakatsanis (writing for the majority) correctly held that privacy rights must survive the pragmatic risk associated with such routine living arrangements:

    I cannot accept that, by choosing to share our computers with friends and family, we are required to give up our Charter protection from state interference in our private lives. We are not required to accept that our friends and family can unilaterally authorize police to take things that we share. The decision to share with others does not come at such a high price in a free and democratic society. [para 44]

    Reeves contributes to a growing body of jurisprudence elaborating privacy protections in shared or semi-public situations, which includes last year's decisions in Marakah and Jones, as well as upcoming decisions in R v Mills, SCC File No 37518,R v Jarvis, SCC File No 37833, and R v Le, SCC File No 37971.

    Image Credit: Marco Verch, "Aufkleber mit Passwort auf dem Laptop", July 24, 2018, Flickr, CC-BY 2.0

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  • CIPPIC Submissions in Copyright Review Focus on Restoring Balance
    - 2018-12-11 -

    CIPPIC's Submissions on Industry Canada's statutory review of the Copyright Act focus on the need to restore balance to the legislation in light of the expansion of owner rights and remedies in CUSMA, the Canada-United States-Mexico trade agreement signed in the summer of 2018.

    The 2018 review of the Copyright Act is an opportunity to address the needs of Canadian creators and Canadian content users, while strengthening the public domain. In light of the recent CUSMA treaty and its benefits for copyright holders and intermediaries, we ask the Committee to engage in this review with a view to restoring the essential balance at the heart of copyright policy.

    Read CIPPIC's submission:

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  • uOttawa grads offer CIPPIC's Submissions in SCC Standard of Review Hearing
    - 2018-12-06 -

    CIPPIC appeared before the Supreme Court of Canada on Thursday, December 6, on day 3 of the joint hearing on the standard of review in judicial review of administrative decisions.  uOttawa law alumni James Plotkin and Alyssa Tomkins represented CIPPIC in this hearing, and Mr. Plotkin gave oral argument.  CIPPIC's intervention focused on whether the rule of law requires courts to apply a correctness or reasonableness standard to jurisdictional questions.

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  • CIPPIC's Team Presents its Findings on Bike Counting
    - 2018-11-27 -

    How do we measure bicycle traffic in a way that respects citizens' privacy? CIPPIC's team working on a Sidewalk Labs Small Grant presented its findings today. Great work, Keri Grieman, Johann Kwan and Stephanie Williams! Key findings on best practices:

    • Use technologies that limit the collection of personal information
    • Store data securely
    • Limit data collection to only that which is needed
    • Ensure that partners or contractors follow collection restrictions
    • Notify individuals that their data is being collected.
    • Install counting devices when creating a new space
    • Hide or mask sensitive locations
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  • EFF White Paper Examines Nexus Between Cybercrime Laws, Human Rights & Security Researchers
    - 2018-10-18 -

    The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) released a timely white paper this week examining the negative implications and chilling effects that various cybercrime provisions throughout the Americas can have on coder's rights and specifically on security researchers. Entitled "Protecting Security Researcher's Rights in the Americas", the analysis explores a range of cybercrime regimes nominally intended in principle to criminalize unauthorized access to or disruption of computer systems. However, these laws have been framed so broadly as to impose a serious chilling effect on vital activity of security researchers. Drawing on the Inter-American human rights framework (of which Canada is a partial adherent), some national jurisprudence, and principles of criminal law, the paper argues for cybercrime regimes that accommodate beneficial security work. There must be latitude for non-malicious security testing, for the dissemination of critical security tools and for the responsible publication of discovered security breaches.

    Sadly, current laws are framed so broadly that they have had a serious chilling effect on socially beneficial security work. Those who discover security breaches face severe legal threats and sometimes even criminal consequences for attempting to bring these to host organization's attention. The result is that security breaches are increasingly likely to remain unresolved until they are discovered by someone seeking to exploit, rather than to merely expose. The paper, to which CIPPIC provided substantive contributions, calls for clearer standards to remedy this situation.

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