blogcutter

This is Data Privacy Week. Or, if you prefer, Data Protection Week. Here are a few practical tips from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada:

​​​​​https://www.priv.gc.ca/en/about-the-opc/what-we-do/awareness-campaigns-and-events/privacy-education-for-kids/fs-fi/day-quotidien/

Data Privacy Week and Data Privacy Day (January 28) are marked simultaneously in many countries around the world, particularly in the Northern Hemisphere. The Southern Hemisphere and Asia/Pacific regions also devote a day and/or week to data protection and privacy, but at different points in the year. For example:

https://iapp.org/news/a/an-obscure-brief-and-unfinished-history-of-data-privacy-day/

https://www.thedrum.com/news/2024/01/25/happy-data-privacy-week-here-are-the-top-global-privacy-changes-expect-2024

So what I'd like to discuss here is this: Is this all just fine words or does it really make a difference in the grand scheme of things? Here's an interesting perspective on the issue from multimedia journalist Chiara Castro, writing on the TechRadar site:

https://www.techradar.com/computing/cyber-security/data-privacy-week-is-it-time-to-rethink-our-approach-to-privacy

For starters, I'll acknowledge that raising general awareness is a great start, although there's a lot more work to be done.

I do think it behooves us to take individual responsibility for protecting our own and our families' personal information and privacy as far as we are able. But that's not always easy!

If you consider the public, quasi-public and private institutions that we rely on just for day-to-day living like, for example, home heating, electrical and water utilities, educational institutions, health care institutions, financial institutions, grocery stores and other retail outlets ... increasingly the only way we can even interact with them is online! I find it particularly galling when government outlets like the Passport Office or the income tax folks or even the second-hand bookshop at the Ottawa Public Library will not accept cash. You know, the currency that the Canadian government itself issues and that states clearly right on it "This is legal tender in Canada." Nor do they in many cases accept or issue personal cheques, everything being done by credit or debit card or direct deposit or withdrawal.

It seems to me that if institutions (particularly public institutions) are going to require us to make every single essential transaction online, they ought also to have the safeguards in place to protect us from the inevitable online scammers and spammers and cowboys (is that politically correct?) and otherwise nasty people out there who are poised to take advantage of society's least privileged and most vulnerable people. Isn't that why we elect governments in the first place? Of course, we only elect the governments of our own jurisdictions and therein lies part of the challenge when it comes to enacting fair laws and policies.

The other question I have is: Privacy for whom?

Ideally, access to information and privacy laws are developed in tandem with each other. Sometimes that happens, sometimes not.

Increasingly, though, privacy is used as an excuse for not making information public, even when the person or people in question have voluntarily waived their right to privacy either in their own interests or in the interest of justice for a broader community.

I could go on, but I think I've captured the essentials here.

Life at home in the 'burbs has started to feel vaguely surreal lately.

This past week, a fresh-faced young woman carrying a rainbow-patterned folder came to our door one evening. She said she was with a local film group who wanted to do some filming involving a white bungalow "like this one". I politely told her I wasn't interested. She then asked if she could leave me a sheet of paper with the details, just in case I changed my mind. "No thanks, don't bother," I told her and shut the door.

The previous week, two tough-looking guys came to the door and handed me a leaflet. They claimed to be with a group called "BACA", which stands for Bikers Against Child Abuse, and said they were in the neighbourhood "doing something for someone" and not to be alarmed if we saw them around and heard their motorbikes.

In other words, they were trying to forestall what might be very legitimate concerns and objections to the "work" and supposedly good deeds they do. This appears to be a U.S.-based group that originated somewhere in Texas, although they have chapters in a number of Canadian cities too.

I'm already creeped out by the lack of privacy in a world dominated by social media, Google maps, Google Streetview, Google-everything-else, Facebook This, Twitter That, phone scams from phony Microsoft and Canada Revenue Agency officials, and so on ad nauseam. At a recent library conference, I picked up a cloth bag from the Privacy Commissioner's Office that bears the message "No thanks, I prefer not to give you my e-mail address" so clearly I'm not alone in my concerns.

Come to think of it, I guess we're NEVER alone in this wired world. And therein lies the whole problem. Twitching lace curtains I can cope with. But how can I on my own expect to stand up to the entire cyber-universe?