The Woman Who's Making Your Privacy Her Business

davecb writes "The woman who faced down Facebook and was dissed by Silicon Valley business boys as 'an old-fashioned scold' is really one of the early advocates for using the internet for access to information, and to open up government. The Globe and Mail has an interview with Jennifer Stoddart, the privacy commissioner of Canada, who went up against Facebook for all of us, and made them back down."

Comments

"The Woman Who's Making Your Privacy Her Business"

[Anonymous Coward]

My mom?

Re:For all of us?

[d6]

All of us in Canada at least. She seems to take her mandate seriously.

I'm starting to hate the internet

[Ozlanthos]

I'm starting to hate the internet. More and more it seems like the internet is turning into one big bug in the ass. I have to specifically opt out of fucking invasive bullshit toolbars that I didn't ask for, had no interest in, and no desire to have corrupting my machine. I got an idea for all you assholes who think that is the way to make money....HOWS ABOUT YOU WORK ON PROJECTS THAT MAKE US FREER RATHER THAN FURTHER CONFINE OR TRACK US??? Is it really so much to ask to be able to scan, upload, download, chat, skype, mud, "be on the web" without fear of being constantly surveiled? I'm not a tree. My psychological profile, shopping habits, surfing habits, political interests, are not "fruit" to be picked and sold on the market, and as such ARE NONE OF YOUR FUCKING BUSINESS!!! If I want your shit, I will use the most powerful investigatory tool humankind has ever invented, find it myself, and possibly even buy it! If what you had to offer was worth having I might even buy it again. But, until that point, LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE!

-Oz

Re:I'm starting to hate the internet

[shadowofwind]

I think the problem is a lot bigger than the internet. It looks to me that the whole cultural vision that started with the European enlightenment has largely run its course, at least in North America. I can't comment on Europe, since I haven't been there recently. Its not that we don't have freedom - in many ways we have more now than ever. Its that the fire has gone out somehow, and its just momentum that's carrying us forward. The ideal of freedom was always pretty corrupt, a matter of freedom to enslave other people or steal their land. Now that corruption has overtaken it.

Not to be all gloom and doom: there will be another enlightenment. But I don't see it happening immediately. In America, the most ambitious and talented people seem to be recent immigrants from Asia and Eastern Europe. And it doesn't seem that most of the Asians think or care very much about freedom, at least not yet.

Re:Idealist

[twidarkling]

Except she doesn't want the government to have the power, she wants the people to have the power, since the government is supposed to receive power from the people. And this is Canada, we go for security through co-operation and support, rather than intimidation and manipulation.

Re:For all of us?

[Mashiki]

Honestly? For a privacy commissioner she's done a hell of a job. Taking her mandate seriously? I'd say so. Conservative, Liberal, NDP, Green, Bloc, small business, big business, internet related. NGO's, and so on. If you break the privacy act, you'll have her breathing down your neck fast. She's about as non-partisan, and pro-privacy as you can get.

Re:I, deal list

[VortexCortex]

governments should hoard information, at least in the traditional sense, to keep it hidden from other national governments. Unless you think every nation in the word should have the same information as every other

Nah, Governments shouldn't hoard information at all.

They should only keep "vital" information under wraps for at most 2 years, then make it all public (not hording, hording = "never gonna give you up")

The only exception I can see is for long term military planning. Do we really need to use deceit in our diplomatic affairs? What's wrong with stating our goals and working to those ends? (It's not like we're really confounding our "enemies" by keeping diplomatic secrets).

Unfortunately, under such an "idealist" information policy, everything will just get categorized as "military planning."

You know... Just like nearly everything currently finds its way under the "national security" umbrella, even though most info is not. Hint: ACTA was held under the "national security" umbrella, now it's not; Guess it wasn't a matter of "national security" was it?

Corrupt governments will always hide under the "national security" blanket, even if you rename it to "military planning" or "diplomatic privacy".

Re:For all of us?

[Cruciform]

With companies maintaining and sharing huge databases they can build a profile of you quite easily.

Consider the following situation, which parallels in in a way.

A friend's girlfriend loved to hang out in an IRC channel. She thought she was "stranger proof" because she limited the amount of information she shared in any one conversation. Some of the items she revealed were public, while others were revealed in "private" conversations. She (erroneously) assumed that some of the private conversations were with individuals sharing no connection with each other.
After hanging out in the channel for a couple of weeks she got a phone call -- from Australia. One of the channel members created profiles of other users and data mined their conversations in order to identify them. Coupled with the ability to search the net for the consistent use of handles that many become attached to, he was able to track down people rather easily.

For him it was a game. For others it's business.

We don't always know who owns the services we use, and rarely have any idea of who the data is shared with. If company A owns sites B and C, they have the data on you that both sites generate.

While he was working with a small group of people who were likely to share information with people they interacted with regularly, having a huge dataset encompassing thousands of your interactions with other sites is just as useful to a company with the means to examine the data.

And privacy policies don't mean squat without someone keeping them honest. Imagine how many sites out there use them as honey traps.

Re:For all of us?

[codegen]

You first have to pass some privacy laws with teeth before someone like Ms. Stoddart can do her job.