Debates • Field Remarks • Information & Law • Lab Notes • Living between the lines • Notes • Observations

“Lawful access” bill: journalists discovering being targeted

A sudden tug of war between the Charest government and journalists caused a shock wave the echoes of which have rippled through throughout the Canadian journalistic profession. A jolt that could help realize how the “lawful access” bill introduced this Monday, Feb. 13 also concerns journalists and media organizations.

A threat

Last week, the Charest government announced that the Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions and the Sureté du Québec (provincial police force) would investigate on leaks to media related to the Ian Davidson case, a retired Montreal police officer suspected of attempting to sell lists of police informants to organized crime. Neither the Minister of Public Safety Robert Dutil, nor Premier Jean Charest have agreed to guarantee that journalists would not be investigated or wiretap. (more…)

Debates • Information & Law • Living between the lines • Notes • Observations

Winning against the “lawful access” bills: Two strategic intuitions

Are there actions we could start today in a decisive campaign against the adoption of so called “lawful access” bills by Canada? I came to answer “yes” while listening to a presentation by Antoine Beaupré, system administrator at Koumbit. It was during a public meeting entitled ” ‘Illegal access’ and the attack of internet freedoms”, on February 3, 2012, in Montreal.

Let’s remind us that the “lawful access” bills that already died three times because of dissolution of Parliament have not been tabled again yet. However, it is expected that the Harper government will go ahead. The latest versions of the legislation gave the police new powers to access data held by Internet services providers (ISPs). They allowed the mandatory disclosure of customer information without judicial oversight, as well as real-time monitoring across ISPs’ networks. All measures deemed unnecessary and dangerous, not only by civil libertarians, but by many police forces also. A detailed legal analysis was published recently by the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association.

The meeting was organized by Koumbit an IT workers coop that offers several services including web hosting: thus, it has already had its share of searches for information and of servers. Like many other businesses it that field, Koumbit fears the effects of the “lawful access” initiatives on the civil liberties of its customers and of all the citizens who use the Internet from anywhere in the world. Indeed, the opening presentation of Antoine Beaupré dealt with less the legal aspects of the bills as of their technical and political dimensions. (more…)

Field Remarks • Information & Law • Lab Notes • Living between the lines • Notes • Observations

Digital identities and assets in case of death or incapacity – A first summary

The text that follows both summarizes (but discussion is only just beginning) and complete previously published notes on the subject beginning with this one. This text is derived from my notes in preparation for the interview I gave to the La Sphère on the Première Chaine of Radio-Canada, February 4, 2012.

The personal story

As I became a grandfather in May, I thought it was a good time to review my will and mandate in case of incapacity. Except that I discovered that I had to ask my representatives or executors to handle lots of online accounts and digital documents. The large majority of my documents are to be found in digital forms: letters, records, invoices, contracts, tax documents, bank and accounting books, photos. These files are embedded in computers, hard drives, servers, USB keys, DVDs, data cards, media player protected by user names, passwords, and encryption keys.

As many of you, several dimensions of my life are carried on: (more…)

Field Remarks • Information & Law • Lab Notes • Living between the lines • Notes • Observations

What “easier to read” means? In regard to new Google “privacy” policies

Google wrote me seven emails, one of each of services I am registered in to tell me: “We’re getting rid of over 60 different privacy policies across Google and replacing them with one that’s a lot shorter and easier to read.”

That declaration brings me to three observations from following how the story unfolds this week:

First, the initial difficulty for the media, civil society actors, industry and members of Congress to determine whether or not this announcement corresponded or not to some changes in how  Google uses for our information and our user profiles, and if so which ones exactly.

Secondly, the difficulty to understand “easy to read” configurations: for example, the announcement tells me that I can choose, or not, to get personalized Google search results according to my interests as revealed by my uses of Google +, Gmail and YouTube: I have look in vain the configuration page, I never found the management panel for these configurations commands (anyone found them?). And even for those commands available, the description of their actual effects is often not that obvious, even to me for which studying such things are part of day job.

Indeed, thirdly, if Electronic Frontier Foundation is right, this is how I should manage this personalization:

“For individuals who would like to continue using Google products, but want to create some type of silo between Google search, YouTube, and other products, there is an option to set up multiple Google accounts. Users can set up two or more accounts as long as they have different Gmail addresses; however, individuals using this strategy to protect their privacy should be careful not to commingle-consider using separate browsers for each of your Google accounts. To be extra careful, users might want to use the Data Liberation tool to grab a copy of all of their data from a particular Google product, delete the data from the original account, and then upload that data onto the new account. For example, an individual might set up a secondary Google account for browsing and sharing YouTube videos. She could then download all of her existing YouTube videos to her computer, delete them from her primary Google profile, and then use a separate browser to upload them to a new secondary Google account. Unfortunately, this is a somewhat laborious process. To help users who wish to keep separate accounts, Google should make the process simpler and easier.” (Source)

In short, may be “easy to read,” but not to understand, and even less to help empower the users.

But I would not blame only Google in particular. The whole industry has made little development in how to present reliable, verifiable, readily understandable pictures of what actually happens with one’s personal information to begin with. Policies writing and configuration design are still organization centered and dominated by jurists and engineers. In Canada, almost half of adult population has low literacy levels and certainly as much does not understand much about information processing. These are the users who should be the communication targets. And that means much more than simply providing “easy to read” wording…

 

Field Remarks • Information & Law • Lab Notes • Living between the lines • Notes • Observations

The Chambre des notaires corrects its position on the management of digital identities and assets

Earlier this week, I reported that Antonin Fortin, Director of Communications and Assistant to the President of the Chambre des notaires du Québec (CNQ, notaries’ professional corporation), wrote about management of digital identities and assets in case of death or incapacity:

We are talking about a complex, relatively new and evolving phenomenon. In addition, the CNQ cannot substitute itself to the legislator and “create” law in this matter. To our knowledge, there is no guide to meet your expectations.

(My translation)

Having been invited to an interview on the subject on La Sphère radio show on Radio-Canada’s Première Chaine on Saturday, February 4, I wanted to get confirmation that this response did represent the official position of the corporation.

On the phone, Mr. Fortin told me that he read again my emails and then realized that he had not properly understood what was their subject-matter. He said that the official position of the Chambre des notaire would rather be that it asked Mr. Salvas Bertrand, a notary who works mainly in training and is interested in this subject, to study the issue and quickly formulate recommendations. These could possibly take the form of advices, guides and training contents.

Specifically, Antonin Fortin said he had forwarded my emails and my proposals to Mr. Salvas.

That is reassuring. Indeed, is the mission of a professional corporation not precisely to protect the public?

Field Remarks • Information & Law • Lab Notes • Living between the lines • Notes • Observations

The Chambre des notaires abdicates management of digital identities and assets

Last week I reported that my notary declared that she was unable to help me manage the components of my digital of identities and assets in case of death (will) or inability (mandate).

I also described calling the legal information service of the Chambre des notaires du Québec (notaries’ professional corporation). The answering notary found my questions quite relevant and about pressing issues. However, she told me that the corporation had no available guide, checklist, standard clauses for will or mandate in case of incapacity, nor specific training to its members about these issues.

After publishing this article, I wrote to Jean Lambert, president of the Chambre des notaires (CNQ). I briefly described my situation and actions I took before asking the following questions:

Are there any guides, checklists, model provisions or tips on these topics?

If not, what are you waiting for to help us to live and die peacefully in this twenty-first century?

Response from the Chambre des notaires

In the absence of Mr. Lambert, it was Mr. Antonin Fortin, director of Communications and assistant to the president who responded: (more…)

Communications • Information & Law • Lab Notes • Living between the lines • Notes

I Create and Give a Whole New ‘Information and Law’ Course in January

Was UQAM so desperate that it finally came to offer me this course? Because if I am indeed a jurist by training, I still remain a non-practicing and non-believing one. Enough joking. I accepted to create and teach a course officially entitled Droit de l’information (Information Law), never offered before. This course is part of the LLB program, but is offered to students in all programs. Indeed, currently 12% of students enrolled are from Communications.

I suggested – and it was agreed – that the scope of the course be expanded into a sort of  ‘Information & Law’ course, almost and ‘Information Society and Law’ one. So rather than covering one by one, some special legal institutions (intellectual property, access to information, freedom of press and libel, privacy and others), I propose instead to explore:

• all of legal realities through the perspective of information and of an information society, and conversely,
• the realities of information and of information society as they are regulated by laws, norms and standards of all kinds.

I have yet to produce a detailed course outline. However, at the time I am writing this, the first objective would be to get students to acquire certain knowledge and skills to work in an information society, including:

• detect the presence of information in any considered human activity;
• reconstruct how the information is handled, who are those involved, what types of relationships (including legal) develop between whom through such information handling;
• identify the relevant legal institutions and the different sources of norms potentially applicable to a particular information handling;
• raise the social and ethical issues of this handling;
• detect the informational dimension in any legal document (law, contract, court, legal communication, norm or standard);
• communicate about the legal dimension of handling information, including lay citizens and users.

Students in law will be especially encouraged to develop the ability to legally qualify a human activity involving the handling of information.

Rather than switch from one field law to another, the course’s plan will rather follow, week after week, the consecutive life cycle stages of information from its initial creation to various uses, including personal decision making.

This course will also insist on:

• basic knowledge in information science and management, linguistics and related fields, and
• methods to properly document information practices.

The course will be held on Monday evenings from January 10, 2011. There is still room for students. I therefore make this a formal invitation. Welcome to all!