http://blog.privcom.gc.ca/index.php/2011/11/28/better-answers-through-better-questions/ Mon, 14 May 2012 15:12:43 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 http://blog.privcom.gc.ca/index.php/2011/11/28/better-answers-through-better-questions/comment-page-1/#comment-60613 J Jones Tue, 06 Dec 2011 14:13:51 +0000 http://blog.privcom.gc.ca/?p=2392#comment-60613 1. We (Canada) should not look to the USA for leadership on privacy issues but develop our own models. 2. There are consequences to not "hiding" our personal information including fraud, identity theft, and stalking. Protecting information is important for much more than hiding wrong-doing. 1. We (Canada) should not look to the USA for leadership on privacy issues but develop our own models.
2. There are consequences to not “hiding” our personal information including fraud, identity theft, and stalking. Protecting information is important for much more than hiding wrong-doing.

]]> http://blog.privcom.gc.ca/index.php/2011/11/28/better-answers-through-better-questions/comment-page-1/#comment-60387 Paul Darlaston Tue, 29 Nov 2011 14:26:32 +0000 http://blog.privcom.gc.ca/?p=2392#comment-60387 Mr. Solove takes us back to fundamentals that opponents love to dismiss. Shades of Justice Brandeis. I remember being an invited member of a panel on privacy many years ago. The audience was made up of systems auditors. First question from the floor restated the position taken by Scott McNealy, the co-founder of Sun Microsystems in 1999. McNealy was quoted as saying, "You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it"! Back then, there was a tiny piece of truth in his statement. There were very few privacy laws on the books, and none at that time covered the private sector that he was really speaking about. Fortunately, services like Google didn't exist then, or at least were only under development. Fortunately for Canadians, since then we have PIPEDA, a lot of substantially similar privacy legislation, and government and even private sector are beginning to take these seriously, thanks to your Office and those of your peers. The big challenge we seem to have going forward is that newer technologies now being adopted, are designed more for sizzle and convenience than for security. I mainly work in the Health Care world, where the big push seems to be for health care providers to use mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, and for sensitive personal health information to be considered fair game for storage in the internet cloud, where it could potentially be actually stored anywhere in the world and subject to unknown jurisdictional powers. Mr. McNealy may not have been totally right, but he certainly was prescient about the scale of the challenges that privacy practitioners face every day. Mr. Solove takes us back to fundamentals that opponents love to dismiss. Shades of Justice Brandeis.
I remember being an invited member of a panel on privacy many years ago. The audience was made up of systems auditors. First question from the floor restated the position taken by Scott McNealy, the co-founder of Sun Microsystems in 1999. McNealy was quoted as saying, “You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it”!
Back then, there was a tiny piece of truth in his statement. There were very few privacy laws on the books, and none at that time covered the private sector that he was really speaking about. Fortunately, services like Google didn’t exist then, or at least were only under development.
Fortunately for Canadians, since then we have PIPEDA, a lot of substantially similar privacy legislation, and government and even private sector are beginning to take these seriously, thanks to your Office and those of your peers.
The big challenge we seem to have going forward is that newer technologies now being adopted, are designed more for sizzle and convenience than for security. I mainly work in the Health Care world, where the big push seems to be for health care providers to use mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, and for sensitive personal health information to be considered fair game for storage in the internet cloud, where it could potentially be actually stored anywhere in the world and subject to unknown jurisdictional powers. Mr. McNealy may not have been totally right, but he certainly was prescient about the scale of the challenges that privacy practitioners face every day.

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