Privacy

A basic human right

A Basic Need | Privacy Laws Outdated
Demand Privacy | Domestic Spying | Surveillance
Biometrics | Privacy Resources

A faceless hacker in a hoodie is surrounded by green computer code.

You protect your physical privacy with locks on your doors and curtains on your windows. Protect your online privacy.

Privacy is both a fundamental right in itself, and is instrumental to the exercise of other rights.
— Privacy Commissioner of Canada

Now we live in a world that is strictly bounded by our capacity to understand it, by our ability to keep up with the pace of technological change, and to manage the new risks and security challenges that come with limitless storage capacity, limitless transmission capacity, limitless data mining capacity.

We are bounded by our own limited capacity to understand, to imagine the implications of data flow and data aggregation, and our ability to teach.
— Privacy Commissioner of Canada

23+ alarming data privacy statistics for 2025.

Privacy a Basic Human Need

The issues are complex and have significant implications for our future as a free society.

Privacy is a multi-faceted concept. It's not one size fits all and is approached differently by governments, businesses, and consumers.
— Ghostery

Privacy is a basic human right according to the UN:

No one must be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honor and reputation.
— Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 12

Privacy is power over your own information, required for dignity and respect.

Maybe you feel you have nothing to hide? Consider the fact that if you don't control access to your posts, they're fully available to advertisers, spammers, cyber-stalkers, and other undesirables.
— PC Mag

If we accept as normal and unavoidable that everything in our lives can be aggregated, sold, or even leaked in the event of a hack, then we lose so much more than data. We lose the freedom to be human. We deserve better. You deserve better.
— Apple CEO, Tim Cook

Not About Hiding Something

Protecting your privacy doesn't mean you have something to hide. Privacy isn't about secrecy.

A lot of people assume that those who are under surveillance are quite deserving of that surveillance. That is not true.
— Mailyn Fidler

It Isn't About Secrecy Either

Privacy isn't about secrecy.

Don't confuse privacy with secrecy. I know what you do in the bathroom, but you still close the door. That's because you want privacy, not secrecy.
— Fábio Esteves

The implication is that citizens have no right to either.

The essence of freedom is precisely the fact that I am not obliged to disclose everything that I am doing, that I have a right to confidentiality and, yes, even to secrets; that I am able to determine for myself what I wish to disclose about myself.

The individual right to this is what makes a democracy. Only dictatorships want transparent citizens instead of a free press.
— Mathias Döpfners

[W]e're entering increasingly a quantified world where everywhere you go, everything you do, everyone your interact with and everything you are interested in is now being pre-judged. It is being collected and recorded and analyzed and assessed.

And not by humans, we don't have the benefit of human judgment here. An algorithm makes a decision about where you're desirable or undesirable, about whether the things you're doing are good or bad. And we don't know how that is being applied yet, but we do know once they have this information, we can't take it back from them under the laws as they are written today.
— Edward Snowden

Challenging the Myth

We not only have to understand that privacy is NOT about secrecy, but that is our right to demand privacy. Maybe we should be examining the motives behind those using the “nothing to hide” mantra.

"I have nothing to hide."
It's a phrase we've all heard, and perhaps even said ourselves, when privacy comes up. But it reveals a dangerous misunderstanding of what privacy is and why it matters.

Privacy isn't about hiding — it's about control. It's about having the freedom to decide who gets access to your data and how it's used. Over the last decade, that freedom has eroded. Today, governments, corporations, and hackers routinely collect and exploit our personal information, often without our consent.

Worse still, the narrative around privacy has shifted. Those who value it are seen as secretive, even criminal, while surveillance is sold to us as a tool for safety and transparency. This mindset benefits only those who profit from our data.

It's time to push back.
— Naomi Brockwell

Return to top

Privacy Laws Outdated

The laws that govern the ability of our governments and corporations to collect personal information are woefully out of date and severely inadequate to the task within a connected world.

The right to check your computers and devices at the border abuses an outdated law created when cross-border movement of documents was limited to the inspection of physical (paper) files.

The Privacy Act, which oversees the [Canadian] government's use of your data, came into effect in 1983 — years before the Internet, or cell phones.
— OpenMedia

In Canada, privacy has been used as a shield against accountability. Governments have thwarted FOIA requests.

Privacy is about government not being able to see what citizens are doing. When it's vice versa, that's secrecy, not privacy.
— Journalism Professor Sean Holman

When the government demands its citizens be transparent while they are not, you have a dictatorship.

Big Business has moved into managing patients' health files, but privacy laws haven't kept pace. There's no question that corporations have been growing the parts of their businesses dedicated to collecting personal information in health databases.

Those databases would include some of the most sensitive information about people, details many would want to remain private, including about their mental health, addictions, sexually transmitted illnesses and whether they've had an abortion.
— The Tyee

Consumer Privacy Regularly Abused

Legislation surrounding personal privacy is regularly abused both by governments and by businesses. Canada's courts dismissed a privacy case against Facebook (a case successfully prosecuted in the U.S.) because Canada's privacy laws were deemed too weak.

Penalties are “a cost of doing business” rather than something that encourages accountability. Fines that may prevent an individual from violating privacy are meaningless to a large corporation or wealthy individuals.

Tim Hortons Got Away With Privacy Violations

Tim Hortons app was a massive abuse of personal privacy, but Canada's toothless privacy laws failed consumers:

The Canadian privacy watchdogs found that Tim Hortons violated federal and provincial privacy laws by using its app to collect "highly personal" information about its customers without their consent, calling out the company for a "mass invasion" of privacy.

Tim Hortons won't face any penalties in the case. That alone prompted the commissioners to call for tougher privacy regulations since only Quebec has the ability to impose fines when companies break privacy law.
— Financial Post

The Nova Scotia Government Releases Private Data

On this YouTube video, Privacy lawyer David Fraser recounts how the Nova Scotia government responded to the “accidental” release of unredacted personal information online because of government incompetence.

In the aftermath of a major screw up that saw loads of personal information posted online, the Nova Scotia government tried to discover who may have accessed or read the documents.

I was one of them, and they got my info from a website I use daily without a court order and then got an unprecedented court order from my internet service provider.
— David Fraser, Privacy Lawyer

In the process, the government obtained a lot of personal information, including which documents this privacy lawyer had accessed (even though he told them much earlier that he didn't keep any records). This would reveal the strategy of the cases he was working on, violating client-lawyer confidentiality.

Return to top

Demand Privacy

Have you ever wondered what a privacy bill would look like if it were written by industry and business groups who profit from the exploitation of our personal data? We're getting an idea from some of the incredibly destructive provisions in Bill C-27.
— OpenMedia

This new privacy legislation demonstrates how little our MPs and MLAs understand the concepts of privacy.

Privacy by design is the gold standard, but exploiting personal data is more profitable to corporations.
Good intent is assumed, but looser legislation is easier to abide by.

The last-minute addition of compromised AI legislation seems to water down the protection it offers when it comes to artificial intelligence data gathering and decision-making. After public consultations were over 38 pages of amendments encouraged by AI industries were added, weakening the protection AIDA was supposed to provide.

The government let long overdue privacy protections FAIL to pass in the last days of Parliament. Our privacy is non-negotiable! Canada needs a strong Consumer Privacy Protection Act (CPPA).

Surveillance Threatens Freedom of Speech

Surveillance is commonly associated with dictatorships where open expression of opinions is harshly punished.

The most common retort against privacy advocates — by those in favor of ID checks, cameras, databases, data mining and other wholesale surveillance measures — is this line: “If you aren't doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?”

[This] accept[s] the premise that privacy is about hiding a wrong.

It's not. Privacy is an inherent human right, and a requirement for maintaining the human condition with dignity and respect.
— Bruce Schneier: The Eternal Value of Privacy

The Canadian Liberal government's Bill C-26 provides for Draconian actions by governments including the removal of Internet access. The threshold is very small for such a drastic action. Unfortunately, this has become commonplace in modern “democratic” societies like Canada.

To understand the implications of such legislation we need only look to see what is happening in the UK where social media posts the government doesn't like can get you a longer jail sentence than rape.

A child r*pist avoids jail in Britain because the prisons are overcrowded.

Meanwhile people are being sent to jail for the crime of posting "offensive" things on social media.
— @PeterSweden on X

This was allowed because of the acceptance that it was better to allow grooming (rape) gangs to continue than to face the possibility of being called racist. The rape of young children was ignored on the orders of the current UK Prime Minister, Keir Starmer.

Britain's grooming gangs numbers:

250,000 girls were r×ped since 1980

They took place in over 50 cities

84% of cases were perpetrated by Pakistani Muslims

47 police officers were arrested, out of which 0 fired

Yesterday 364 Labour MPs voted to continue the cover up

— Dr. Eli David January 9, 2025

Recently Maggie Oliver revealed to the world the true reason why "Operation Augusta" was closed. In 2008 Prime Minister Gordon Brown sent out a circular to all Police Forces in the UK saying "Do not prosecute these rape gangs. These children are making a lifestyle choice."

At the time of that circular Keir Starmer, the current Prime Minister, was the Director of Public Prosecutions. Why should we expect him to do anything about it? He was part of the cover-up and corruption.
— @SpartaJustice on X

Just consider how Bill C-11 and Bill C-18 were promoted — the government disregarded the concerns of citizens in its zeal to control content on the Internet by treating it like cable TV.

Governments and police agencies are demanding an end to encryption. They want unrestricted access to our personal information without warrant or cause. Carney's Liberal government are no better.

Bill C-2 is supposed to be aimed at protecting our borders, yet it includes sections that are dangerous to personal privacy. It effectively bans handling $10,000 cash even if collected in smaller amounts (the $10,000 amount can gradually be reduced to zero later). It provides warrantless access to our mail (protected since 1867) and to our internet subscriber data.

Bill C-2, the Strong Border Act, criminalizes cash payments of $10,000 or more. Quebec's Bill 54 now empowers police officers to assume that people carrying more than $2,000 are connected to illegal activities and to seize the cash.

When cash is criminalized, governments, banks, and law enforcement can track and interfere with legitimate purchases and donations.
— Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms

The blatant harassment of individual creators testifying about their issues with Bill C-11 legislation in Ottawa was shameful as was Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez's continued references to “cat videos.”

Lobbyists from the big media companies, the primary beneficiaries of CanCon, faced no such abuse.

While many of the individual creators were already reaching foreign markets for Canadian content, these large corporations were failing to do so.

No Exposure to Opposing Viewpoints

Too often our news and social media presents only one point of view, our selection of media based upon what we already believe. It is this refusal to hear opposing viewpoints that is destroying democracy, not dissenting voices.

We should be extremely careful before rushing to embrace an Internet that is moderated by a few private companies by default, one where the platforms that control so much public discourse routinely remove posts and deactivate accounts because of objections to the content.
— Washington Post

Creativity and Personal Expression Stifled

Surveillance stifles personal expression. We don't feel as free to express our creativity when our conversations or Internet activities are being monitored.

Think of how you feel when your boss is standing behind you while you work or when a police car is following you in traffic.

I don't want to live in a world where everything I say, everything I do, everyone I talk to, every expression of creativity and love or friendship is recorded.
— Edward Snowden

Society Needs to Choose

We need to decide whether we want a free society or one that is controlled by those profiting from our lack of privacy.

We can have security OR surveillance but not both.
We can have security AND privacy. We can have both.

We need to choose between security and surveillance. It's just not possible to build electronic devices that keep data secret from everybody except, say, government officials trying to track the movements of terrorists. Everybody gets to spy or nobody gets to spy.
— Bruce Schneier on BBC

Nothing To Hide: The False Tradeoff Between Privacy and Security a book by Daniel J. Solove.
The eternal value of privacy an essay by Bruce Schneier.
Appeals court affirms NSA surveillance can be used to investigate domestic criminal suspects.

Learning More

More about why privacy matters:

Canadian Privacy Law blogs developments in privacy law.
Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms defends the constitutional freedoms of Canadians through litigation and education.
A Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal comic examines government back doors as privacy abuse.
Get honest answers to the questions that have been bugging you about technology.
Glenn Greenwald: Why privacy matters — TEDGlobal October 2014.

Return to top

Domestic Spying

We're being spied upon constantly by our governments and by businesses. Virtually everything about citizens is collected and stored including their online activities. Everyone is considered guilty.

The “official” purpose for the NSA collection of personal phone records is to prevent future terrorist attacks. Following the attacks on September 11, 2001 we've been faced with unprecedented attacks on personal freedom by governments worldwide.

Although poorly understood at the time, one of the biggest long-term impacts of the September 11 attacks was expanded surveillance in the United States and other democracies, by both public and private sectors.

The stakes are high. If democracies fail to turn the future of global surveillance in their favor, digital authoritarian competitors stand ready to offer their own model to the world.
— Nicholas Wright

Legal Interpretations Flawed

The resulting surveillance is incredibly invasive to our privacy and often legal interpretations are themselves abuse of the law rather than protection for citizens. The law has been weaponized against us.

[A] federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia held that individuals have no reasonable expectation of privacy in a personal computer located inside their home.
— EFF

This abuse of privacy cannot be justified unless viewed through the lens of a totalitarian society and secret police. The public is no safer from terrorist threats than it was prior to the start of widespread surveillance. It has resulted in NO significant reductions in terrorism.

No serious, verifiable evidence has been produced by the proponents of compulsory suspicionless [bulk] data collection to show that the data mining and profiling by means of the bulk data in general… is even suitable to the ends supposedly being pursued — let alone that it is effective.
— BCCLA

We have not yet seen any evidence showing that the NSA's dragnet collection of Americans' phone records has produced any uniquely valuable intelligence.
— Senator Ron Den

More often than not, common criminal acts that could have been discovered anyhow were the net benefit. At the same time, the costs to democracy and our privacy have been significant. This loss of our privacy is unacceptable.

If you're willing to sacrifice some freedom to feel safe, you deserve neither.
— Thomas Jefferson

Say “NO” to Secret Courts

While the collection of evidence based upon a warrant issued by a judge in a public court can be seen as justice because it is both open and can be challenged. The same can't be said about secret courts. The collection of information on innocent citizens based upon warrants issued by secret courts just in case it may be useful in the future is hard to justify.

The basis for this widespread abuse of privacy? A U.S. court decision that stated that if third parties have access to your information, a warrant shouldn't be needed for the government to access it. In other words, because big tech had access to our communications, the government felt justified in demanding access then using that data against us.

Return to top

The Surveillance Economy

The traditional marketplace with list prices has been replaced with a surveillance economy where access to private data is exchanged for “free” goods and services. Unlike the up-front cost of purchased products or services, this new model simply collects information without revealing either the value or the cost in terms of privacy. It is a one-sided bargain.

Data Brokers Sell Your Information

Data brokers scrape the Internet for bits of information then combine it to create a profile for sale to anyone willing to pay for it.

Unfortunately, the accuracy of this information is neither verified nor easy to check. When combined with the cryptic algorithms used to determine eligibility for loans or jobs, this can unfairly penalize your chances.

The Myth of "Anonymous" Data

Companies collecting our data often say that they “anonymize” that data. They do this by stripping the identifiable parts of the data and, hopefully, grouping it with other sets of data before releasing it to the advertisers and others they sell it to.

However, it is all too easy to combine other factors to fill in the blanks and de-anonymize that data.

For data brokers dealing in our personal information, our data can either be useful for their profit-making or truly anonymous, but not both.

Practically speaking, there is no way to de-identify individual location data since these data points serve as unique personal identifiers of their own.

And even when location data is said to have been anonymized, re-identification can be achieved by correlating be-identified data with other publicly available data like voter rolls or information that's sold by data brokers.

One study from 2013 found that researchers could uniquely identify 50% of people using only two randomly chosen time and location data points.
— EFF

On their own, each data point says very little about you. But when you combine all that information, it suddenly becomes possible to gain insight into your political beliefs, your religion, gender, sexual preferences, financial status, and even whether you are about to get married or want to get pregnant.

In many countries it's illegal to discriminate on the basis of characteristics like race, age, gender or religion. But companies can (and do) sneak in discrimination through the back door by using proxies for these characteristics. For example, your choice of social media platform reveals a lot about your age.
— Mozilla Foundation

Social Media

Social media is one of the most obvious examples of the surveillance economy and the relentless collection of personal data.

Personal information is collected and monetized by social media companies using facial recognition software, comparative and linked data (such as the Facebook "Like" button) and more.

The stream of Facebook privacy scandals may have you questioning how much the social network and other tech giants actually know about you. Here's a hint: practically everything.
— PCMag

Most, if not all, social media data is being stored outside Canada and doesn't have the protections afforded by Canadian law (minimal as that protection is).

The Email Connection

The fact that your email address is the primary user name when logging into your accounts provides a strong link to other data about that user.

Most Canadians now use webmail which is stored on servers in the U.S. or other countries. Your emails are scanned to profile you to serve more enticing ads, alter search results, and other purposes based upon the emails you send and receive if you're using Gmail, Yahoo! mail and similar services.

Even if they claim not to view your emails, the metadata (information needed to transport and store emails) will tell them a great deal.

Gmail with default settings seems to be able to sort your emails into categories. It must be viewing at least some aspects of those emails.

The Cell Phone Connection

Your cellular phone is constantly sharing personal information about you. While it is extremely handy to know where the nearest coffee shop or grocery outlet is located, that same location information is being shared with others.

We've voluntarily provided governments and corporations with massive amounts of private information that used to be cost-prohibitive to collect — and Canadians pay some of the highest prices in the world for that privilege.

Cellphones provide very precise 24/7 location data, so that your cell company always knows where you are. So do many of the apps on your phone as we discovered when Tim Hortons was caught tracking everyone using their app without permission.

Your cellular provider already tracks your physical location at all times: it knows where you live, where you work, when you go to sleep at night, when you wake up in the morning, and — because everyone has a smartphone — who you spend time with and who you sleep with.
— Bruce Schneier

We love cell phones. We love them to death. For all kinds of reasons. I mean, can you imagine?

Suppose twenty years ago Congress had proposed a law saying every citizen had to wear a radio transponder around his neck, all day and all night, so the government could track him wherever he went. Can you imagine the outrage?

But instead the citizens went right ahead and did it to themselves. In their pockets and purses, not around their necks, but the outcome is the same.
— Lee Child, A Wanted Man

Don't connect your phone to your car. Modern cars are a privacy nightmare.
Texas sues Allstate for using people's driving data for insurance rate hikes.
They hide secret code in your apps.

Capturing Private Data without a Warrant

Geofencing, stingray and other cell-tracking technologies reveal a lot about individuals that have nothing to do with the warrant (if one is even obtained).

If the government said you have to have a tracking device, for certain you would rebel. But the government doesn't have to say that because you do it willingly and they just get a copy of the data.
— Bruce Schneier on BBC

The Canadian government raised a stink when cell-tracking technologies were used near federal facilities in Ottawa. Our government is obviously more concerned with their privacy than ours.

Apple Treating Privacy Differently…Most of the Time

It doesn't have to be like that. As we move into an era where more and more personal data is required in order to provide services that require personal data like map services, health information tracking, etc. Apple wants to have your trust. They make their money on products, not by monetizing the data required to operate these devices.

[S]ome of the most prominent and successful companies have built their businesses by lulling their customers into complacency about their personal information. They're gobbling up everything they can learn about you and trying to monetize it. We think that's wrong. And it's not the kind of company that Apple wants to be.
— The Washington Post

A recent decision to build a backdoor into its iCloud and iMessage system that will use AI to look for child porn.

While that aim is admirable in its stated goals, if history repeats itself it will soon be an open door to all our private conversations and information.

That's not a slippery slope; that's a fully built system just waiting for external pressure to make the slightest change.
— Electronic Frontier Foundation

Child exploitation is a serious problem, and Apple isn't the first tech company to bend its privacy-protective stance in an attempt to combat it. But that choice will come at a high price for overall user privacy.

Apple can explain at length how its technical implementation will preserve privacy and security in its proposed backdoor, but at the end of the day, even a thoroughly documented, carefully thought-out, and narrowly-scoped backdoor is still a backdoor.
— Electronic Frontier Foundation

Current Trends Contrary to Privacy

Current trends in the U.S. are contrary to this protection and it will be an uphill battle. There are bound to be abuses by law enforcement of any tracking system.

Not only is this culling of data extremely profitable, but these companies spend a great deal of money lobbying for a relaxation of existing laws. Even politicians that should be protecting our rights want to know the demographics that will get them re-elected. The threat to our privacy is not as important to them.

No Privacy for Canadians in the U.S.

Private data for citizens of Lithuania, Estonia, Malta and the Netherlands receive greater legal protection from the U.S. than Canadians' data does. Canada is NOT designated as a “covered country” even though we share a huge common border and they are our largest trading partner and have some of the toughest copyright laws.

To make matters worse, a great deal of Canadian Internet traffic flows in and out of the U.S.

Return to top

Biometrics

Biometrics involves the use of unchangeable but unique physical identifiers such as fingerprints, retinas, facial recognition, DNA, etc. We're just seeing the beginning of the use of such biometric identifiers.

If you're using facial recognition to open your iPhone or a fingerprint scanner on your laptop, you're already doing so. Unlike many other methods of identifying people, their compromise is also impossible to fix.

Unlike your credit card numbers, biometric identifiers such as thumbprints, retinas, irises and faces can't be changed if the information falls into wrong hands through dark web sales or data breaches.

Once the information is out on the web, stalkers or others with evil intent can use facial recognition, for example, to gain access to your full electronic profile, including your home address, birth date, phone numbers and any other information that might been scattered online through endless data breaches.
— Chicago Sun-Times

A Threat to Our Privacy

There has been a massive growth of technologies that are threatening personal privacy. These include artificial intelligence, facial recognition, stalkerware and camera systems like The Ring.

The legal framework to protect your privacy has fallen far behind the technology. Much like other surveillance technologies, there is a lot at stake for the corporations that hope to make billions by gathering and marketing this very personal information.

Because they're a corporation, their responsibility is to their shareholders. They are looking at health care as a revenue generating opportunity, so they're looking and experimenting with all the different ways they might be able to make a profit out of health care.
— Marcy Cohen

We need to have controls over these sorts of identifiers, including clear permission to use them as well as the use intended for them.

DNA is Very Personal

DNA is another area where unique personal identifiers are involved. DNA tests have become popular ways to determine your family history but these companies are not being up front with what is being done with your DNA.

Unless you specifically opt-out, your DNA information is marketed for profit and you're not the only one that is potentially compromised. All those related to you may find they are being identified or tracked because of that DNA test you submitted.

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been seen and promoted as having huge potential for good. Unfortunately, those developing AI are focused on being first, risking our privacy in the process.

Facial Recognition

Facial recognition is often portrayed in a positive light on TV shows where the police use camera footage to identify and arrest the perpetrators of crime.

Facial Recognition Technology (FRT) has emerged as a powerful tool of significant interest to both law enforcement and commercial entities.

Used responsibly and in the right circumstances, it has the potential to offer great benefits to society. At the same time, facial recognition can be a highly invasive surveillance technology fraught with many risks.
— Privacy Commissioner of Canada

The Dark Side

[F]ace recognition may seem convenient and useful, but is actually a deeply flawed technology that exposes people to constant scrutiny by the government….
— EFF

Unfortunately, the truth is much darker. It's bad enough that you can be recognized in photo and documents everywhere. But this capability has been used to enlarge and improve the massive profile advertisers and governments have on you.

Combining seemingly innocuous information with trackable information (your IP address, email address, etc.) can create a profile that can be used to direct advertisements or for sale to information brokers. Using your photo for a profile picture or avatar may personalize your experience, but facial recognition software can relate the information to data found on other sites with the same photo.

The Technology is Nearly Perfect

Facial recognition is nearly perfect and is now being deployed in businesses and government services around the world. There has been an explosion of the number of cameras in public areas — often accessible via the Internet.

Technologies like Clearview AI avoid the “inconvenience” of judicial oversight by allowing police to use a virtual lineup. Not everyone tagged by facial recognition is guilty. Remember, Clearview AI's images were collected without our permission.

Police use of facial recognition technology in Canada.
Discriminatoris an interactive documentary about the sinister side of facial recognition technology.

A report by Georgetown Law Center for Privacy and Technology estimates that about half of US adults — more than 117 million people — have their images logged in a facial recognition network of some kind.
— BBC

The British security industry association figures there are nearly six million CCTV cameras in the UK. That's one camera for every 11 people.
— Veronica Belmont

Chinese scientists have developed an artificial intelligence (AI)-enabling 500 megapixel cloud camera system able to capture thousands of faces at a stadium in perfect detail and generate their facial data for the cloud while locating a particular target in an instant.
— Global Times

Facial Recognition Errors Can Have Serious Consequences

Facial recognition technology is often biased along the lines of age, gender, race, and ethnicity. IRL episode 10 discusses the problems with facial recognition.

The following is just one example of facial recognition ruining an innocent man's life.

In 2014, Steven was living an ordinary life as a financial broker in Denver.

In the month's before a couple of bank robberies had taken place in Denver. There was a video clip from a security camera and it played on the local news. Three people who thought it could be him phoned in a tip…so the cops came for him.

Steven spent months in jail before his lawyer proved it wasn't him. Proved he was at work when the robberies took place. They let him go.

A year goes by and then he's arrested again. This time, the cops were sure it was him. They were wrong. More evidence proved he wasn't the suspect.

Again, he was a free man, but the damage was done. You can't keep a job in the finance industry when you've been accused of robbing a bank. Because of what's happened Steven Talley is currently homeless.
— Veronica Belmont

Stalkerware

Stalkerware sold as a method of monitoring your child or your employee's use of a company-owned phone (the only legal uses). It is more commonly used to track your spouse (nicknamed “spouse-ware”).

Invasion of Privacy

Whether your motives are pure or otherwise, this is an invasion of privacy. The fact that the data is often stored on insecure servers should cause you to rethink its use.

It is Spyware

Stalkerware is spyware and is now marked for removal by Kaspersky and other security software vendors. Learn more…

Return to top

Privacy Resources

These organizations have more about privacy and related issues:

Electronic Frontier Foundation. Founded in 1990, EFF champions user privacy, free expression, and innovation through impact litigation, policy analysis, grassroots activism, and technology development.
OpenMedia runs campaigns around specific privacy issues where you can add your voice in calls for government officials to act.

Related Resources

On this site:

Found this resource useful?

Privacy

A basic human right

Privacy a Basic Human Need

Not About Hiding Something

It Isn't About Secrecy Either

Challenging the Myth

Privacy Laws Outdated

Consumer Privacy Regularly Abused

Tim Hortons Got Away With Privacy Violations

The Nova Scotia Government Releases Private Data

Demand Privacy

Surveillance Threatens Freedom of Speech

No Exposure to Opposing Viewpoints

Creativity and Personal Expression Stifled

Society Needs to Choose

Learning More

Domestic Spying

Legal Interpretations Flawed

Say “NO” to Secret Courts

The Surveillance Economy

Data Brokers Sell Your Information

The Myth of "Anonymous" Data

Social Media

The Email Connection

The Cell Phone Connection

Capturing Private Data without a Warrant

Apple Treating Privacy Differently…Most of the Time

Current Trends Contrary to Privacy

No Privacy for Canadians in the U.S.

Biometrics

A Threat to Our Privacy

DNA is Very Personal

Artificial Intelligence

Facial Recognition

The Dark Side

The Technology is Nearly Perfect

Facial Recognition Errors Can Have Serious Consequences

Stalkerware

Invasion of Privacy

It is Spyware

Privacy Resources

Recommended Reading

Recommended Documentaries

Related Resources