Data Privacy/Protection Day 2015 Roundup: Some Hopeful Developments, More Reports of Sweeping Surveillance

Data Privacy Day (a.k.a. Data Protection Day) 2015 marked a range of developments - some good, some bad, all significant. Data Privacy Day is celebrated annually to commemorate the world's first data protection treaty: the Council of Europe's Convention 108. This year, the day began with a series of startling revelations from CBC [1], which released documents acquired through former NSA Analyst Edward Snowden detailing a comprehensive electronic surveillance program that monitored various file upload sites around the world. The program, implemented by Canada's foreign intelligence agency, CSEC, involved combing through its comprehensive meta-data-bases in order to identify individuals uploading or accessing 'questionable' documents on sites such as Megaupload and Rapidshare. Visitors to such documents are then subjected to intense meta-data-scrutiny in order to find their identity through such things as Facebook and email login cookies. Aside from the millions of documents tracked by the program daily, the program demonstrates an immensely invasive capacity that can emerge from mere analysis of the metadata held by CSEC and its Five EYEs partners. Far from acknowledging these concerns, we expect more of the same, with State promises to introduce expanded lone wolf surveillance powers this Friday.

Some tentatively promising developments from APEC also came this week. CIPPIC had endorsed a letter [2] sent by a number of privacy groups in late December pointing to several issues with APEC's certification of TRUSTe as an accountability agent capable of overseeing compliance with APEC obligations for the purpose of receiving personal data transfers from other APEC member states such as Canada. This week, APEC and TRUSTe addressed a number of the concerns, but left a few (particularly those relating to conflicts of interest between TRUSTe board members and some of the commercial organizations it is tasked with overseeing) outstanding.

In brighter news, the Mexican data protection authority announced [3] it would be officially signing the International Principles on the Application of Human Rights to Communications Surveillance [4] (IPAHRCS-es for short!), designed to provide comprehensive suggestions on how to conduct electronic surveillance in a targeted and privacy respective manner. The IPAHRCS have now been endorsed by over 480 international organizations, experts and government officials. An eventful data privacy day, for better or worse!