You Might be Interested In

If you’ve been following our Consumer Privacy Public Consultations, you know we’ve just completed the two sessions on Online Tracking and will be moving to the topic of cloud computing in Calgary next month.

And if you were following the consultation in Montreal via webcast, you may have noticed that our webcast connection cut out parts of the panel on Online Identity and Reputation, cutting out some of the opening remarks made by panellists Amy Buckland, Manon Arcand and Janic Tremblay.

One enterprising colleague managed to capture some of the remarks with the camera on her iPod(!). We’ve also posted the video on our YouTube page. As the audio is taken directly from the microphones in the room, the simultaneous translation feed is unavailable, but we’ve provided a short summary in English of what we recorded in French.

The full archived webcast of our Montreal consultation is now available online. If you haven’t already seen it, the archived webcast from our first consultation in Toronto is already available. As well, I encourage you to check out the conversation around our consumer privacy consultations on Twitter – hashtagged #priv2010 with full archives available here and here. We’ve been pleased with the level of engagement around them so far and we hope it continues.

I know. It’s kind of boring when I only post excerpts from our more formal publications. In some cases, though, the traditional news release and backgrounder nail the issue and the details.

We’re ” … hosting consultations with Canadians on issues that we feel pose a serious challenge to the privacy of consumers, now and in the near future.

The topics to be explored include the online tracking, profiling and targeting of consumers by businesses, and the growing trend towards cloud computing.

The aim of this consumer consultation is to learn more about such industry practices, explore their privacy implications, and find out what privacy protections Canadians expect with respect to these practices. The consultation is also intended to promote debate about the impact of these technological developments on privacy, and to inform the next review process for the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA).

The centerpiece of the consultations will be a series of single-day panel discussions [in Toronto, Montreal and elsewhere] involving a range of participants, including representatives of industry, government, consumer associations and civil society. In order to canvass the broadest possible range of views in preparation for these events, we are also welcoming written submissions.”

More details on the public consultations can be found elsewhere on our site.

We’re looking for an Information Technology Research Analyst – and the competition is open to the public. You can find a detailed list of requirements at jobs.gc.ca, but we can boil it down to these three basic requirements:

• a university degree in computer science or information technology (or a suitable combination of education and experience, for all you hacker dropouts)
• an overwhelming interest in emerging technologies and an impulse to tear them apart
• an ability to analyze the pieces piled up before you and explain their importance to non-technical people.

It would help if you were obsessive about a technology in particular, like video surveillance, RFID and locational technology, information security, the convergence of surveillance systems and biometrics, or mobile technology, but it’s not mandatory.

The position is based in Ottawa, and it’s full time. Cubicles are involved. We can understand if you bring a moderate amount of cynicism about bureaucratic processes and unnecessary hierarchies to the job – although we think you’ll find our Office less burdensome than most federal or provincial agencies.

This Web 2.0 thing is all about collaboration, so here’s what we’re asking of you, dear readers. We want your help in creating  T-shirts we plan to give away at conferences and workshops. We want these T-shirts to be privacy-themed, attractive, and witty. We would like to enlist your help in designing them – by either sending us your best witty privacy-themed tagline, or by coming up with your own original design. The best designs will be chosen for our T-shirts, and the winning designers will get- well, a T-shirt. We’ll accept any and all submissions by next Tuesday, March 25. Send your taglines and artwork to dguerrero@privcom.gc.ca. Good luck!

Welcome to the official blog for the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. With this tool, we hope to make the activities of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner more accessible to Canadians and to increase contact between the Office and Canadians interested about privacy issues and legislation.

As an Officer of Parliament, the Privacy Commissioner has a mandate to protect the privacy rights of individuals and promote the privacy protections available to Canadians.

While we are optimistic about the usefulness of this blog as a channel for communication on privacy issues, we ask for your patience and understanding as we find our footing online.

For instance, we know that there will be limitations to what we can accomplish with this blog. We will not be able to discuss complaints or investigations launched under either of our two Acts. If you wish to send us a complaint, we will continue to ask that you submit your complaint by mail.

While this blog has been created to help build links and stimulate discussion on privacy issues of interest to Canadians and other privacy stakeholders, it is not to be considered a source of authority on the interpretation of the Privacy Act or the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act.

We also have to be clear that a hyperlink to a news article, an academic study or a blog post does not indicate endorsement of that opinion, statement or fact by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner or the Privacy Commissioner herself.

Other than that, we’re awfully hopeful about our new blog.