Author Archives: Christopher
Transparent Practices Don’t Stop Prejudicial Surveillance
Drawing from lessons around privacy codes and those around Canadian ISPs’ surveillance practices, I argue that transparency constitutes a necessary but insufficient measure to mitigate prejudicial surveillance practices and technologies. We must go further and inject public values into development cycles while also intentionally hobbling surveillance technologies to rein in their most harmful potentialities. Continue reading
Respecting User Privacy in WordPress
In this post, I’m going to do a few things: first, I’m going to quickly recount why Automattic is not respecting user privacy by including Quantcast in its Stats plugin. Next, I’ll argue that reasonable users are unlikely to realize that third-party tracking is appended to the Stats plugin. Finally, I’ll discuss how you can protect your web visitors’ own privacy and security by installing a terrific plugin developed by Frank Goossens. Continue reading
Recommended Books from 2011 Readings
In what follows, I offer a list of the ‘best’ books that I read through 2011. Some are thought-provoking, others were important in how I understood various facets of the policy process, and still others offer interesting tidbits of information that have until now been hidden in shadow. For each book I’ll identify it’s main aim and a few points about what made the book compelling enough to get onto my list. Texts are not arranged in any particular ranking order, and all should be available through your preferred online book seller. Continue reading
The Anatomy of Lawful Access Phone Records
The aim of this post is to make clear just how much information is contained in a single lawful access “phone record”, demonstrating that the government is seeking information that grossly exceeds what is contained in the white or yellow pages today. As a result, I first provide an example phone record that resembles those in every phonebook in Canada and then offer an example of a lawful access record. Continue reading
