Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Whither privacy?

At the Analytics: Big Data and the Cloud conference in Edmonton (2012), I attended a keynote speech by Dr. Gautam Shroff. He spoke of the many ways big data can be used, including data that many of us simply give away. Sharing the results of a study focusing on 68 hours of Twitter data, Shroff noted that it was possible to narrow down to one (randomly-chosen) Tweeter's home and work sites based on that individual's GPS-enabled posts.

My quick thoughts: Data of this sort (GPS, etc.) is often freely given away by users. Other data, such as the now much-discussed divorce of federal (Canadian) Member of Parliament Vic Toews, becomes public by virtue of the legal processes the data is embedded within. While governmental agencies and products such as the Alberta Netcare system are supposed to be kept secure from unauthorised access, how many of us pay attention to the virtual footprints we leave behind? Perhaps merely analysing publicly-available data allows our private lives to be more public than we imagine.




Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Happy anniversary, Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms!

Today marks the 30th anniversary of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, part of the Constitution of Canada. [The Charter affirms equality rights under Section 15, however this section did not come into effect until 1985, so happy 27th anniversary, Section 15!]

Section 15 (1) states that "Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to equal protection and benefit of the law without discrimination ...." However, the notion that every individual is equal is still being worked out. While cases such as Egan v. Canada (1995) helped established sexual orientation as analogous grounds for protection from discrimination, no such clarification yet exists for trans Canadians.

The La Forest Report –written in 2000 under the authority of the Minister of Justice and the Attorney General of Canada–affirmed that trans Canadians "are protected from discrimination on the ground of sex or the combined grounds of sex and disability" but also noted that transgender issues "remain invisible" and thus recommended the explicit inclusion of the phrase "gender identity" in the Canadian Human Rights Act.

To date, this recommendation has not been adopted.



Edited to add: Cross-posted at Dented Blue Mercedes.

Monday, April 16, 2012

Eventual second-post post

Gosh, has it really been three years already? Apparently so.