SSC awarded $2.5 million SSHRC grant

Queen’s University professor and Surveillance Studies Centre director David Lyon (Sociology) has been awarded $2.5 million from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for his research into the vulnerabilities generated by big data surveillance.

The Big Data Surveillance Partnership Grant will bring together national and international academic partners, along with non-academic partners from public policy and activism groups including the Office of the Privacy Commissioner and the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group. For a complete team list, see below.

The new project builds on the Surveillance Studies Centre’s previous project The New Transparency: Surveillance and Social Sorting (2008-2015), and its landmark study, Transparent Lives: Surveillance in Canada, which exposes nine key surveillance trends now intensified by big data. This new partnership will contribute to an updated grasp of emerging surveillance practices and trends and to ethical and policy engagement.

“The funding is crucial to our research work because while many across Canada are exploring how big data techniques can be used in areas such as health care, education, welfare or employment, very few are focusing attention on the questions of the ethics of big data or its social, economic, political and cultural consequences,” says Dr. Lyon. Partnership Grants support formal partnerships between researchers, businesses and other partners to improve understanding of critical issues of intellectual, social, economic and cultural significance.

Big Data Surveillance – Team List

Project Director:
David Lyon, Queen’s University

Co-Applicants:
Kirstie Ball, Open University, UK
Colin Bennett, University of Victoria
Kevin Haggerty, University of Alberta
David Murakami Wood, Queen’s University
Valerie Steeves, University of Ottawa

Collaborators:
Mark Andrejevic, Pomona College, USA
Elizabeth Denham, Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of BC
Andrew Clement, University of Toronto
Stéphane Leman-Langlois, Université Laval
Alice Marwick, Fordham University, USA
Monia Mazigh, International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group
Torin Monahan, University of North Carolina, USA
Christopher Prince, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
William Webster, University of Stirling, UK
Micheal Vonn, BC Civil Liberties Association

Partners:
BC Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA), Vancouver BC
International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group (ICLMG), Ottawa ON
Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC BC), Victoria BC
Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC), Ottawa ON
Centre for Research into Information, Surveillance and Privacy (CRISP), UK
University of Alberta, Edmonton AB
University of Ottawa, ON
University of Victoria, BC
Open University, UK
University of Stirling, UK

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David Lyon