The possibility of having some form of biometric ID document in Canada has been in the news again recently. What is being considered? What are the implications of different options? The Canadian government has said little about what it is planning. Join us in person or online to hear the experts, to ask questions, and to make your views heard.

This forum includes a live, interactive webcast. See our website biometricIDforum.ca for more details about the forum and the issues. Read more about @title...

Location: Mackintosh-Corry Hall, Room D528 Time: 12:00noon to 1:00pm

*This will be a half hour film with time for discussion.

Part of a BBC2 series called 'The Money Programme'. The series has been made in partnership with... Read more about @title...

Zeinab Karake-Shalhoub American University of Sharjah, UAE Privacy and Trust in Electronic Commerce: An Agency Theory Perspective Thursday, May 25th Goodes Hall, Room 409 10:30am-12:00pm

"I use agency theory to ground my empirical analysis of more than 100 e-commerce firms in an examination of privacy and trust in e-commerce relational exchanges. Several trust-building measures, including privacy statements, the existence of a chief privacy oficer, and a trusted third-party seal of approval are identified; companies will then be evaluated based on an index of those trust builders. I will demonstrate that there is a positive relationship between management ownership and trust, and that managers who fail to protect the privacy and interests of their stockholders--as well as their own--will never gain customer loyalty." Read more about @title...

Globalization of Personal Data Applications for a Post-doctoral Fellowship are sought within a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC)-funded project on the Globalization of Personal Data at Queen's University in Kingston, Canada. This is a four-year international and multi-disciplinary collaborative project (2003-2007). It examines the causes and consequences of trans-border flows of personal information. A major international survey of attitudes to monitoring, profiling, and privacy is the central focus of the project. Read more about @title...

Many of you know Lynda as she has been working as a research assistant on the international survey since September 2005. Lynda successfully defended her PhD dissertation at Carleton University in April and has now accepted a GPD postdoctoral fellowship. She will continue to work on the international survey under... Read more about @title...

Volume 52, Issue 28, Page A18

Excerpt:

Watching the Watchers

In the burgeoning field of surveillance studies, researchers scrutinize the many ways in which human activity is monitored by government and industry

By PETER MONAGHAN

Walk anywhere in Manhattan's business districts, and almost every step you take will be recorded by surveillance cameras.

But you don't need a camera or a big city for surveillance. Anyone on a computer — from a farm outside Orem, Utah, to a resort on the Fijian island of Viti Levu — is most likely being monitored by electronic forms of surveillance that track consumer habits or calculate probable voting behavior. Read more about @title...

Dear Colleagues

The editors of the online journal Surveillance and Society are currently preparing to make Surveillance and Society a registered charitable company. This will enable us to give the journal a firm organisational basis and allow us to have a wider membership with an expanded portfolio of activities involving a greater number of people.

One of the requirements we have to fulfil to become a charity is to demonstrate the charitable nature of our activities. Read more about @title...

Workshop on Generating Collaborative Research in the Ethical Design of Surveillance Infrastructures

June 8-11, 2006, Austin, Texas.

Surveillance may be understood as a set of processes of identification, tracking, analysis and response which organize social knowledge, social relations, and social power. Surveillance mediates everyday life. For example, internet "cookies," shopping loyalty cards, and mobile phone numbers all individuate and identify us. These identifiers are used to index databases recording our web surfing activities, our purchases, and our movements. The databases are subjected to statistical analysis in order to produce knowledge of demographic categories, typical patterns, or suspect behavior. This knowledge is then applied back to individuals in the population in order to assign each to a particular niche market or risk group, and to act toward them accordingly. Thus, through surveillance, knowledge is created, categories and types are produced, individuals are assigned social identities, and actions are taken that articulate those identities within a larger social order. Read more about @title...