Category: privacy and surveillance
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Kashgar, 15 years later
I have been thinking of this very impressive New York Times photo essay of Kashgar, and how it has changed in the 15 years since I visited. Kashgar is an old Silk Road city in the westernmost reaches of Xinjiang province in Chinese Turkestan. A friend and I had crossed the Taklamakan Desert on a…
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Interac and your privacy
If credit cards are merely thin plastic behaviour trackers leaking your private information into a sea of marketers, cash seems the only way to maintain your privacy. What about debit? That is the question @dchymko had in response to my post on how I use cash pretty much exclusively these days. Daryl asks: [tweet 771027128183693312…
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C.R.E.A.M.
The War on Cash is an informative piece about the battle against the cashless society. I have been cash-only for a few years, mainly for two reasons: protecting my personal information and financial discipline. In the old days, a transaction would involve two parties: a merchant and a customer. Nowadays, barely a transaction is processed…
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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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“The means of information”
Cory Doctorow’s new book Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free is ostensibly a guide for creators on how to approach the Internet, and does so in an extremely informative, yet conversational manner. Furthermore it is concise, making it very accessible. When people ask me why I care so much about copyright and DRM, I will…
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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…