News Archive: 2018

Proportional representation isn't all about the data

By Colin Bennett, Opinion, Times Colonist , November 4, 2018

Cambridge Analytica was a symptom of a pervasive belief that elections are now won with data, says Colin Bennett, a political science professor at the University of Victoria. He contends that these practices are far less common in countries that have multi-party systems rooted in elections based on proportional...

Questions remain over political party data practices after recent testimony, says expert Colin Bennett

by Laura Ryckewaert, The Hill Times , November 5, 2018

Little has been learned and questions remain after the recent and unprecedented House committee appearance by representatives from Canada’s major political parties, who spoke about and took questions on parties’ collection, use, and protection of personal data, says University of Victoria professor and privacy expert Colin Bennett. Read...

Call For Papers: Data-driven Elections

The Big Data Surveillance (BDS) project, centered at Queen’s University, and funded by a Partnership Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), in collaboration with the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia (OIPCBC) is organizing a research workshop on “Data-Driven Elections: Implications and Challenges for Democratic Societies” to be held in Victoria, B.C....

eQuality Lesson Plans for the Disconnection Challenge

Teens Talk Tech: Social Media and Families in the Digital Age was hosted by the Surveillance Studies Centre , along with The eQuality Project , the Ontario Secondary Teachers Federation District 27 , and the Kingston Frontenac Public Library . Valerie Steeves, University of Ottawa, and Valerie Michaelson, Queen's University discussed...

Is Sidewalk Labs doing enough to protect privacy? No

By David Murakami Wood and Bianca Wylie , Aug. 28, 2018, Opinion, Toronto Star. Before we answer the question of whether Sidewalk Labs is doing enough to protect privacy, we have to ask what Sidewalk Labs is up to in Toronto in the first place. Read more.

Are Data Driven Elections Ethical? – Some Lessons from the UK

By August 13, 2018, Opinion, Globe and Mail.

A data-driven election can be ethical

In the run-up to the 2019 federal election, there needs to be far more transparency about how personal data is captured, processed, mined,...

David Lyon recognized

Congratulations to Queen's Professor David Lyon who was recently recognized with an Outstanding Contribution Award by the Surveillance Studies Network for his scholarly and intellectual contributions to the field. Read more: Surveilling Surveillance, Tuesday, July 17, 2018, Queen's Gazette

Funding awarded for 'Educational Media: Privacy in the Age of Big Data'

Congratulations to David Lyon, David Murakami Wood and sava saheli singh at the SSC on being awarded $70,000 from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) under its Contributions Program for the project titled 'Educational Media: Privacy in the Age of Big Data'. For more information see the OPC funding...

  • 2018.05.14

Election bill does little more than reinforce the status quo

By May 7, 2018, Opinion, iPolitics

Buried in the Liberals’ massive overhaul of Canadian elections law, revealed last week, were some provisions about privacy protection. Political parties are now mandated to have privacy policies, to display them on their websites and to lodge them with Elections Canada. Read...

Statement to House of Commons

By Colin Bennett, April 26, 2018 to the Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics: Cambridge Analytica, Facebook, AIQ and the Data-Driven Election

The current controversy concerning Cambridge Analytica, Aggregate IQ and Facebook has raised to public and media attention a number of interrelated issues, that need to be carefully distinguished: Read More

Watch the meeting...

Facebook: A mass media micro-surveillance monopoly

By Andrew Clement and David Lyon, April 23, 2018, Opinion, The Globe and Mail By blowing the whistle on Cambridge Analytica’s dodgy dealings with political campaigners in the U.S. and the U.K., Canadian Chris Wylie has given the social-media anthill a well-deserved kick. We’re now getting a rare glimpse into the hyperactive but hidden world of online-data trafficking –...

New Book: The Culture of Surveillance: Watching as a Way of Life

By David Lyon, Polity Press , March 2018

From 9/11 to the Snowden leaks, stories about surveillance increasingly dominate the headlines. But security and police agencies or internet and phone companies are not the only players. Surveillance is not only 'done to us' - it is something we do in everyday life. We submit...

Cambridge Analytica shows the perils of ‘voter analytics’ industry

By Colin Bennett, Opinion, iPolitics , March 21, 2018

Recent revelations about the practices of the British company, Cambridge Analytica (CA), raise a larger set of questions about democracy: Should “Big Data” be playing a role in our elections? Should the “micro-targeting” of precise...

Facebook’s data scandal highlights risks of Canada’s weak internet sovereignty

By Andrew Clement, Contributed to The Globe and Mail , March 25, 2018

Canadians are rightfully troubled by recent news of Cambridge Analytica's abuse of Facebook data for psychographic profiling and political manipulation. The threats to personal privacy and democratic governance exposed in this case are not an isolated...

Sidewalk Labs’ Toronto waterfront tech hub must respect privacy, democracy

By Andrew Clement, Opinion, The Toronto Star , January 12, 2018

Sidewalk Toronto can potentially set an exemplary standard for digital governance with its experimental Quayside neighbourhood. But the project should proceed no further than its planning period if it cannot achieve basic principles of organizational responsiveness, transparency and accountability. Read More...

Student Internship at the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia

*Note: This opportunity is restricted to graduate students involved in the Big Data Surveillance Partnership Grant at Queen's University, University of Ottawa, University of Victoria, Laval University, and University of St. Andrews, Scotland.

1) CONTACT INFORMATION: Applications to be addressed to: Bradley Weldon, Acting Deputy Commissioner Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for BC Address: 4th...

Welcome sava saheli singh

SSC and BDS extend a warm welcome to new Postdoctoral Fellow sava saheli singh . sava begins her postdoc at Queen's in January 2018. She will be developing innovative multi-media teaching and learning materials related to Big Data Surveillance, led by David Lyon and David Murakami Wood.

Watch: Shoshana Zuboff 'The Age of Surveillance Capitalism'

See the public lecture of Shoshana Zuboff, Charles Edward Wilson Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, from her Principal's Developement Fund visit to Queen's University on Thursday, November 9, 2017. The video of the public lecture is now available here . For more information about the event, see here .

Congratulations to Joan Sharpe and Emily Smith

On receiving a Special Recognition for Staff Team Award at Queen's University, for their work at the SSC, presented during the Principal's Annual Holiday Reception. See: story and photos here.