[facebook and canadian privacy laws]

Time is up for Facebook to find a way to live up to Canada's privacy law after this country's privacy watchdog gave the social-networking website one month to close its "serious privacy gaps."

And if Jennifer Stoddart, Canada's privacy commissioner, isn't satisfied with Facebook's final response Monday, she has two weeks to take the California-based company to Federal Court in Ottawa to try and get a court order requiring it to change its business practices to comply with Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, the country's private-sector privacy law.

[...]

The privacy probe began last year when the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic at the University of Ottawa filed an 11-part complaint, alleging Facebook violated key provisions of Canada's private-sector privacy law.

In addition to an "overarching" concern relating to the "confusing" or "incomplete" way in which Facebook provides information to users about its privacy practices, Stoddart concluded Facebook's policy to indefinitely keep the personal information of people who have deactivated their accounts is contrary to the act.

[...]

But the bigger dispute over Facebook sharing personal information to companies that operate third-party applications on its site is another matter, he said.

In order to download popular games and quizzes, Facebook users must consent to share all their personal information, except their contact details. These companies, totalling nearly one million, operate in 180 countries.

Read more here: http://www.canada.com/technology/Facebook%20must%20satisfy%20Canada%20privacy%20commissioner%20Monday/1899277/story.html

[delayed canadian copyright reform]

A few weeks ago I wrote about the Canadian government's highly contentious plan to introduce copyright reforms...looks like the Canadian public has spoken out and managed to delay the bill:

"A controversial bill that seeks to reform Canadian copyright laws, expected to be introduced early this week, may be quashed after a groundswell of opposition erupted over the past week.

The government last week filed a notice indicating the bill would be introduced this week, leading industry experts to expect it to happen on Tuesday. But a spokesperson for Industry Minister Jim Prentice, who was to introduce the bill, said it would not happen on Tuesday and could not say if it would happen this week."

This delay seems to be in a large part thanks to Michael Geist's debate of the issue (on his blog, YouTube and through the Facebook group he started):

"Michael Geist, the Canada research chair of internet and e-commerce law at the University of Ottawa, has led the charge against the bill and has accused Prentice of caving in to lobbying from U.S. entertainment companies, who are seeking to curtail digital copying in all its forms. He has also accused the minister of ignoring the wishes of regular Canadians and for not including the public in his consultations.

Geist started a Facebook group to protest the bill a week ago, which more than 12,000 people have so far joined. On his blog Monday, Geist wrote that the group has resulted in hundreds of letters and phone calls to Prentice and other MPs from every political party.

"Something exceptional happened this past week. Fair copyright in Canada found its voice," Geist wrote. "It will be silent no more."

Here is an interesting comment from one of Geist's readers (Written by Dale Bolton on 2007-12-11 11:30:46):

"[...] The copyright cartels will not stop until we have to pay for every instance of anything that is used. EG, I am at work right now and we are listening to a radio. The RIAA would love to charge us for every instance of us singing along with the songs, and labeling it as an unauthorized performance/duplication.

In the states, those that have the money make the laws...I thought things were different here in Canada. Apparently the Conservatives are starting to show just how American they are by accepting all these bribes..er lobbying dollars and passing whatever legislation their American Masters tell them to.

Write your MP, let them know how you feel about this. SPELL IT OUT! Tell them that copy songs to their ipods, converting videos, making copies for your car, using your PVR/VCR to record tv shows, will ALL become illegal with the new legislation they are trying to push on us. The average person breaks copyright law 90+ times a day..think about it.

Canadian laws for Canadians..no American influence needed."

"The only people who like this bill are American companies who basically see this as an opportunity to overrule Parliament,” Cory Doctorow, former director of the San Francisco-based Electronic Freedom Foundation group and co-editor of tech blog Boing Boing, said. “If Parliament passes a law that says you’re allowed to copy a video to watch it later, that law goes away the minute there’s some technology that prevents you from doing it. So, it’s not surprising that American companies would support something that allows them to have this business model without all that pesky intervention from Canada’s government."

[digitally literate students = teachers' worst nightmare]

PAUL SHUKOVSKY AND NINA AKHMETELI at Seattle PI report how a student is battling a 40 day suspension from school because he posted a youtube video of his teacher. Not only was the video made without the knowledge of the teacher but the content is extremely inflammatory. The video libelliously raises various questions about the teacher including her hygeine habits (or lack of) while casting aspersions on her professional merit. While people watching the video (parents, students, etc...) might feel the video is warranted - is this really the "due course" for such complaints? The student has gone to court to appeal his suspension citing the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech.



Hot on the heels of this youtube video kafafel the bbc reports that Keele University has threatened all students with disciplinary action if any of them post defamatory comments on the internet on sites like Facebook and MySpace. The University says: "Students may face legal action from the members of staff concerned for defamation and harassment."

While students are becoming more digitally literate - using digital cameras, creating and manipulating videos, uploading them, sharing them - teachers must remain extra vigilant (while not quite becoming paranoid!) in the classroom unless they want to become the lastest teacher "forcibly retired" (as the youtube video claims is the case with Joyce Mong). Is this cyberbulling? The online harassment of teachers is causing some to consider leaving the profession because of the defamation and humiliation they are forced to suffer," the UK Education Secretary Alan Johnson says.

[no privacy online - online fingerprints are ba-ack]

New Software Can Identify You From Your Online Habits

IF YOU thought you could protect your privacy on the web by lying about your personal details, think again. In online communities at least, entering fake details such as a bogus name or age may no longer prevent others from working out exactly who you are.

That is the spectre raised by new research conducted by Microsoft. The computing giant is developing software that could accurately guess your name, age, gender and potentially even your location, by analysing telltale patterns in your web browsing history. But experts say the idea is a clear threat to privacy - and may be illegal in some places.

Previous studies show there are strong correlations between the sites that people visit and their personal characteristics, says software engineer Jian Hu from Microsoft's research lab in Beijing, China. For example, 74 per cent of women seek health and medical information online, while only 58 per cent of men do. And 34 per cent of women surf the internet for information about religion, whereas 25 per cent of men do the same.

While each offers only a fairly crude insight, analytical software could use a vast range of such profiles to perform a probabilistic analysis of a person's browsing history. From that it could make a good guess about their identity, Hu and his colleagues last week told the World Wide Web 2007 conference in Banff, Canada.

"It could make a good guess about your identity from your browsing history"

Hu's colleague Hua-Jun Zeng says the software could get its raw information from a number of sources, including a new type of "cookie" program that records the pages visited. Alternatively, it could use your PC's own cache of web pages, or proxy servers could maintain records of sites visited. So far it can only guess gender and age with any accuracy, but the team say they expect to be able to "refine the profiles which contain bogus demographic information", and one day predict your occupation, level of qualifications, and perhaps your location. "Because of its hierarchical structure - language, country, region, city - we may need to design algorithms to better discriminate between user locations," Zeng says.

However, Ross Anderson, a computer security engineer at the University of Cambridge, thinks the idea could land Microsoft in legal trouble. "I'd consider it somewhat pernicious if Microsoft were to deploy such software widely," he told New Scientist. "They are arguably committing offences in a number of countries under a number of different laws if they make available software that defeats the security procedures internet users deploy to protect their privacy - from export control laws to anti-hacking laws."

From issue 2604 of New Scientist magazine, 16 May 2007, page 32

[Cyber-bullying could lead to school expulsion in Ontario]

"Proposed changes to Ontario's Education Act announced Tuesday are designed to stop students from posting online attacks against other students or teachers.

At a news conference at Queen's Park, Education Minister Kathleen Wynne said the revamped act will add cyber-bullying to the list of offences for which students can be suspended or expelled from school.

"These amendments would ensure that there are strong consequences for inappropriate behaviour, and provide programs so students can earn their way back into the classroom and complete their education," she said.

Ontario Teachers' Federation President Hilda Watkins issued a news release Tuesday lauding the announcement.

"Yesterday's tragedy at Virginia Tech has everyone thinking about students and their safety at school," Watkins said.

"Teachers in Ontario are happy that the proposed legislation includes bullying, cyber-bullying and bullying of teachers as an infraction that could lead to suspension and/or expulsion. This behaviour is unfortunately spreading especially in cyberspace."

Continue reading the article at CBC News

[google...oooops we've done it again]

"Google has attempted to quell a dust-up over its new Pinyin Input Method Editor (IME), a tool that automatically converts Pinyin Roman entries to their Chinese character equivalents, by admitting that it used a database created by another company. Sohu.com, which offers a similar application, accused Google of lifting the database from its Sogou search engine after users discovered and began talking about the similarities.

In a post on the Google China blog, Google apologized for misappropriating the database. "We are willing to face up to our mistake, and offered an apology to users and to Sohu.com," said Google. According to the search giant, the database has since been replaced with a version culled from its own Chinese-language search engine.

The issue first surfaced on April 4, and on April 6, Google pulled the first version of its IME from its servers. However, the new edition failed to fix the issue, as users quickly discovered that the new version still relied on the troublesome database.

That same day, Sohu.com demanded that Google pull the dictionary offline and apologize for pilfering its database. Accusing Google of copyright violations, Sohu.com said it may proceed with legal action even if Google apologized.

A new version of the dictionary was uploaded to Google servers last night and Google does appear to have fixed the problem. According to the IDG News Service, Sohu.com says that Google's new dictionary now has a 79 percent similarity to its own dictionary, down from 96 percent in previous versions.

The issue is symptomatic of the problems Google has faced in China since deciding to set up shop behind the Great Firewall. Its core product, the google.cn search engine, significantly trails Baidu, a homegrown Chinese search engine. The company has also been the target of criticism for acceding to demands by the Chinese government to censor some search results, leading cofounder Sergey Brin to wonder if the company's decision to enter the Chinese market was the right thing to do."

Article from Ars Technica
By Eric Bangeman Published: April 09, 2007 - 11:49AM CT