Category: Canada
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In between worlds — thoughts from a short trip to Japan
Every time I come back to Japan I ask myself: could I live here again? I spent 8 years here. I met my wife here. Both of my daughters were born here. There is so much about this country that I enjoy. The infrastructure is great, the safety, helpfulness, richness of culture and history. Yet,…
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Letter from Tom Mulcair
Nice letter from Thomas Mulcair, leader of the Official Opposition and the NDP. It is with regards to this. After having my loyalty questioned in the House of Commons last week, I am glad somebody in Ottawa appreciates what we did.
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Undermining C-51
OpenMedia.ca organized an open letter about how C-51 will undermine Canada’s business climate: The challenge of being Canadian today is to uphold our values of openness, tolerance, and trust of others, while maintaining a very real understanding of the dangers of terrorism and the government’s need to protect us. But sometimes this balance is not…
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Bell rejiggers RAP, but will delete user data
The victories just keep piling up (see previous victory here). The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada ruled against Bell and it’s collection of personal data for targeted advertising under the Relevant Ads Program (RAP). The question then became: what is Bell’s next move? Well, there was a little back and forth here, so…
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A victory against Bell’s use of customer information
Michael Geist, law professor at the University of Ottawa, has criticized Bell Mobility’s Relevant Ads Program (RAP), saying it “falls short on privacy.” His main concern is that it is opt-out, but he also points out some of the other problems of a telecom provider mining and selling user data. Much is coming to light…
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Foreign Affairs: Cash but no plan
Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Canada announced $9 million dollars in funding in partnership with the Munk School of Global Affairs at U of T for something called the “Digital Public Square project.” The CBC dubbed the project an experiment in digital diplomacy. The Globe called it “direct diplomacy.” The coverage in the National Post,…
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Local startups! Protect our shared resource!
The internet is like the sea, a vast and shared resource that we all depend on. Unfortunately we do not have anything like UNCLOS to help protect that resource from the countries and companies that threaten it. So much of the innovation and content on the internet is the result of individual users like us.…
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Bell Mobility’s ad targeting table
My previous post showed an individual’s (ie. mine) parameters for ad targetting by Bell. @BenKlass posted that he dredged up from this CRTC report. I thought it would be interesting to include it here with my story for context.
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Bell’s 56 categories for ad targeting
BACKGROUND: On May 5th I sent Shaw Communications and Bell Mobility each a request for the personal information they have on me as per the Canadian Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). I used Citizen Lab research Chris Parson’s form letter which made it easy. You can read about the weird results from…
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Shaw follow up
Upon receiving some strange results when I asked Shaw Communications about what information they had on me, I followed up with their investigations unit to see if they were aware that they had released information about other people in my privacy request for information. Here are the relevant bits of the email: Upon investigation we…