The University of Ottawa Law & Technology group presented a multi-disciplinary symposium on 19 September 2007 entitled, "National Security, Surveillance Technology and Human Rights in Canada."

Read more about @title...

The Surveillance Project announces its SP Seminar Series Fall 2007 lineup.

Research Roundup Tuesday, October 2nd, 12:30-1:30pm - D-528

Daniel Trottier PhD Candidate, Department of Sociology Queen's University Towards a Ubiquitous Surveillance: Facebook and Peer-to-Peer Monitoring Thursday, October 4th, 12:30-1:30pm - D-528

Elin Palm PhD Candidate, Department of Philosophy The Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden Strengthening Employees' Negotiating Power - The Importance of Contextualized Consent. Thursday, October 18th, 12:30-1:30pm - D-528

Simon Kitto Read more about @title...

Americans are fast approaching a total surveillance society - a "midnight" of lost privacy. And it's only six minutes before the hour.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has created a "Surveillance Clock" -- a graphical dramatization of just how close we are getting to the midnight of a true surveillance society.

Americans above a certain age probably remember the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists' "Doomsday Clock." Created in 1947 and used throughout the Cold War, the Doomsday Clock dramatized the threat of nuclear war by moving its hands closer or further away from "midnight" as the threat of nuclear war with the Soviets ebbed and flowed. Read more about @title...

Martin French, PhD Candidate, Department of Sociology, Queen's University,

"Public Health Surveillance: Health In-formation in Ontario"

Thursday, September 20th, Mackintosh-Corry Hall, Room D528, 12:30 to 1:30 pm.

This seminar presents research into public health surveillance practice in Ontario, focusing specifically on the implementation of the integrated Public Health Information System (iPHIS). iPHIS, it turns out, is much more than a tool which aids public health workers with case management and epidemiology. Indeed, iPHIS has changed the very nature of public health work. This seminar discusses some of those changes, and considers their implications for public health, and for health itself. Read more about @title...

Will be held at RSM Erasmus University, Rotterdam, the Netherlands on October 11-12, 2007

The world of the 21st century is, more than ever, global and impersonal. Criminal and terrorist threats, both physical and on the internet, increase by the day. The demand for better methods of identification and access control is growing, not only in companies and organisations but also in the world at large. Identity management is put under pressure, due to the growing number of frauds who want to hide their true identity. Read more about @title...

Call for papers; Graduate and undergraduate students from all disciplines are invited to submit an abstract for The Student "I", a student conference on October 25, 2007 at the Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa, Canada.

Preceding the Revealed "I" conference hosted by researchers from On the Identity Trail, this day-long student conference brings together students from around the world, selected through a peer review process, to present research relating to identity, privacy, anonymity, technology, surveillance, and other related topics engaged by the On the Identity Trail project (idtrail.org) . Read more about @title...

New Surveillance Studies book from Polity is now available.

Congratulations to David Lyon on his new book, Surveillance Studies: An Overview, now available from Polity Publishers. Read more about @title...

Privacy Rights In A World Under Surveillance;

Tuesday, September 25, 2007; Sheraton Hotel, Montreal.

A one-day workshop organized by the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group (ICLMG) in cooperation with Canadian and international civil rights and privacy organizations ahead of the 29th International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners in Montreal.

Panelists:

• Simon Davies - Privacy International
• Alexander Dix -Berlin Data Protection and Privacy Commissioner
• Ben Hayes - Statewatch
• Gus Hosein -Privacy International

Read more about @title...

Susan Sproule, "Defining and Measuring Identity Theft in Canada", McMaster University, Thursday, April 26th, 12:30-2:00pm, D-528.

Susan Sproule and Norm Archer have been involved in a program of research on identity theft funded by the Ontario Research Network in Electronic Commerce (ORNEC). This program has brought together researchers from academic fields as diverse as business, law, and computer science, with subject matter experts from both the private and public sectors. This talk will describe the approach that was used to develop a common understanding of the problem domain that could be used by this diverse group of stakeholders. It will also present some preliminary findings from a consumer survey that was conducted in December 2006. The survey was designed to determine the incidence rate and characteristics of identity theft in Canada. It also asked respondents to indicate their acceptance of various measures that consumers, businesses and governments might take to protect personal information from loss or theft. Read more about @title...

James Dutrisac, MSc Candidate (Supervisor: David Skillicorn), School of Computing, "Counter-Surveillance in an Algorithmic World", Thursday, April 19th, Mackintosh-Corry Hall, Room D528, 12:30 to 2:00 pm. Queen's University

Currently counter-surveillance focuses mainly upon either subverting the process of collection (e.g. wearing a rubber mask), or subverting the action (e.g. changing one's name to suggest a different ethnicity).

However, both of these approaches ignore a considerable part of the surveillance process, the analysis of the surveillance data. It is the analysis of surveillance data that allows for the building of the models that are used to sort people and objects. This work consists of two major components, the first of which is the delineation of the stages of surveillance, of which we argue that there are three: the collection, the analysis, and the action. In the next phase of this research we consider exactly what counter-surveillance means at the analysis stage. To do this, we explore how data may be manipulated to subvert analysis. We analyse three data-mining techniques, classification using both decision trees and support vector machines, and the development of association rules using the a priori algorithm. Each of these commonly used algorithms have unsuspected and significant vulnerabilities that may be easily exploited. Read more about @title...