News Archive: 2020

BDS Book Published!

Big Data Surveillance and Security Intelligence: The Canadian Case Edited by David Lyon and David Murakami Wood UBC Press December 2020

For more information about the book, see here .

Interview with Dr. Sachil Singh

Algorithms can cause biases – Meet Dr. Sachil Singh Postdoctoral Fellow by Phil Gaudreau, November 2020, School of Graduate Studies, Queen's University

An interview with Dr. Singh based on his critically-significant postdoctoral research into algorithms and racial-based surveillance in the healthcare sector found on the SGS website here .

Read the Surveillance Studies Centre Annual Newsletter

See the latest Surveillance Studies Centre (SSC) Annual Newsletter here .

An update on the collaborative work of the Centre and the Big Data Surveillance Partnership over the past year (2019 - 2020).

Listen to David Murakami Wood on Spark with Nora Young

Episode on 'The Politics of Technology', CBC Radio, September 11, 2020

U.S. feud with TikTok emblematic of rise of techno-nationalism, expert says ‘It’s about platforms. It’s about technologies,’ says David Murakami Wood According to cybersecurity researcher David Murakami Wood, the U.S.'s feud with China over TikTok likely stems, in part, from an attempt on the part of U.S. President...

David Lyon’s 'The Culture of Surveillance' translated into Italian

See: La cultura della sorveglianza by David Lyon, Settembre 2020 "Altro che Grande Fratello, siamo tutti controllori" di JAIME D'ALESSANDRO, La Repubblica , 08 Settembre 2020 Esce in Italia La cultura della sorveglianza, il saggio dello studioso scozzese David Lyon. "È un fenomeno generale, ormai ciascuno di noi è una...

New Publication: Japan: High and Low Tech Responses

By David Murakami Wood, in the latest publication from the Global Data Justice project based at TILT is an open access , edited collection on Data Justice and COVID-19: Global Perspectives , edited by Linnet Taylor, Aaron Martin, Gargi Sharma and Shazade Jameson andpublished by Meatspace Press....

Lecture: Japan and COVID-19, by David Murakami Wood

Queen's University, Contagion Culture Lecture Series Mindo, Face-Masks and Fax Machines: Japan and COVID-19 David Murakami Wood, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Queen's University

Watch the video

Abstract: In June 2020, the veteran right-wing Japanese government minister, Aso Taro, described the apparent success of the country in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic as the...

David Lyon earns prestigious Molson Prize

Congratulations to David Lyon, who has been awarded the prestigious Canada Council for the Arts Molson Prize (Social Sciences and Humanities) for decades of work in surveillance studies. Here is the official announcement and here is the story in the Queen's Gazette.

Here is the story in the Kingston Whig Standard. --...

Police and governments may increasingly adopt surveillance technologies in response to coronavirus fears

By Joe Masoodi , The Conversation, 23 March, 2020

Facial recognition software could be applied to managing people during pandemics.

The COVID-19 pandemic has dominated headlines with public fears mounting and governments around the world scrambling to find ways to control the spread of the virus. Many governments have declared national emergencies, with the Canadian federal government...

Collecting race-based data during coronavirus pandemic may fuel dangerous prejudices

By Sachil Singh , The Conversation, 27 May, 2020

Racially sorted patients are surveilled, often with negative consequences.

Brian Sinclair wheeled himself into a Winnipeg emergency room in September 2008 seeking assistance with his catheter bag. He had a bladder infection, but instead of receiving treatment, remained in the waiting room for 34 hours until his body...

Series on COVID-19 Response in Japanese

Midori Ogasawara has written a series of articles for Japan’s national newspaper Asahi Shimbun web magazine GLOBE+, in May 2020, available here . All are written in Japanese, but there are brief English summaries attached to get a sense of the series. All articles are so far about surveillance developing in response to COVID-19,...

The coronavirus pandemic highlights the need for a surveillance debate beyond ‘privacy’

By David Lyon, The Conversation, 24 May 2020

The coronavirus pandemic has stirred up a surveillance storm. Researchers rush to develop new forms of public health monitoring and tracking, but releasing personal data to private companies and governments carries risks to our individual and collective rights. COVID-19 opens the lid on a much-needed debate. Read More

The Surveillance Studies Centre COVID-19 Update

The SSC is hard at work during the global Coronavirus pandemic. The surveillance dimensions of efforts to slow the spread of the virus are tremendous and far-reaching. Indeed, they are not only global but planetary. At such a time, health-related surveillance is proposed and practiced with great urgency in the attempt to save lives, reduce suffering and to restore some...

Congratulations to Midori Ogasawara!

Dr. Ogasawara has been appointed as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Victoria , starting January 2021. Please also see her recent publications: Ogasawara, Midori. 2019. “The Daily Us (vs. Them) from Online to Offline: Japan’s Media Manipulation and Cultural Transcoding of Collective Memories”, The Journal of Contemporary Eastern...

David Lyon: Cellphone tracking might help stamp out COVID-19. But at what cost?

By David Lyon, The Ottawa Citizen , 6 April 2020

Recently, Toronto Mayor John Tory “misspoke” at a TechTO event regarding the possibility of using cellphone tracking surveillance in the struggle against COVID-19. Ottawa’s medical officer of health, Vera Etches, noted that officials want to know if people are heeding safe-distance advice and suggested location data from phones could...

Screening Surveillance wins SSN Arts Prize 2020

The Surveillance Studies Network (SSN) Arts Prize 2020 has been awarded to sava saheli singh for her short film series (co-produced with the Surveillance Studies Centre), Screening Surveillance (2019). Additionally, the committee awarded two honourable mention awards to Pip Thornton and Ray Interactive for Newspeak (2019), and Florian van Zanwijk for Vision Processor: EN471...

David Lyon to deliver annual Sorokin Lecture

51st Annual Sorokin Lecture, Department of Sociology, College of Arts and Science, University of Saskatchewan Surveillance: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow – From Occasional Encounters to Constant Immersion Professor David Lyon, Queen’s University Director, Surveillance Studies Centre; Queen’s Research Chair in Surveillance Studies; Professor of Sociology, Professor of Law, Queen’s University, Canada Thursday, February 6, 2020 7:00 pm Location: St. Thomas...

Data-Driven Elections: Papers Published

Papers delivered at the Big Data Surveillance (BDS) 2019 workshop on Data-Driven Elections , hosted by Colin Bennett and David Lyon in Victoria by project partner the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for BC (OIPCBC) , have been published in a special issue of Internet Policy Review , an international journal for...

Welcome Postdoc Dr. Sachil Singh

Dr. Sachil Singh has been appointed the new post-doctoral fellow at the SSC, starting January 1, 2020. He will be collating research findings from all three streams of the SSHRC-funded Big Data Surveillance (BDS) research project, led by Professor David Lyon, and will play a major role in organizing a final research conference, to take...