The following Op-Ed by PEN Canada President Grace Westcott appeared in the Toronto Star on July 29, 2023. Since then, Meta (the parent company of Instagram and Facebook) has announced that it has begun to remove access to Canadian news — and the ability of its Canadian users to share Canadian news — from its platforms.

Web giants are threatening to mute Canadian journalists

July 29, 2023. A whole world of disinformation is at your fingertips on Google and Meta. Quack remedies, conspiracy theories, fake news manufactured by bot farms in Russia and China, are a click away.

But if you are looking for reliable, fact-based Canadian news, or long-form essays by our country’s leading thinkers and writers, well, that’s harder to find, and about to get a whole lot harder, courtesy of Facebook.

With ruthless disregard for Canadians’ welfare, Meta, like a kind of digital despot, has responded to legislation passed by the Parliament of a sovereign nation by punishing that country’s citizens. It is planning to deplatform and silence Canadian journalism on Facebook, in full knowledge that a large percentage of the population relies on that platform for delivery of Canadian news.

PEN Canada views this as an abusive attack by Facebook on journalists and our nation’s democracy, in the name of protecting its profits.

Google and Meta now hoover up more than 90 per cent of online advertising revenues in Canada, leaving crumbs for reputable media outlets. Canada’s Bill C-18, the Online News Act that became law on June 22, is intended to provide a legal framework to address this gross imbalance by requiring the platforms to negotiate ad revenue-sharing agreements with Canada’s news media. It is based on a successful model adopted in Australia two years ago, that has been a significant shot in the arm for that country’s news media.

The response of the web giants was as immediate as it was extreme. The day the act was made law, Meta announced it would block Canadian news for all Canadian users, rather than be subject to the act. Google made a similar announcement a week later, saying it would cut off not only Google News, but Google Search for Canadian news for Canadians. Indeed, earlier in the year Google had already carried out feasibility testing to do so.

Unlike Facebook, Google is continuing to talk with the government, to discuss ways the act through regulations can address some of its concerns. Google is well aware that removing Canadian news would degrade and distort its service at a time when it faces increasing competition from AI-based search models. Let us hope that good sense prevails.

Facebook, however, seeks to make an example of Canada. It would prefer not to be obliged by law to bargain with news organizations to compensate for the access to news that lends value to its business.

To protect its business operations against such laws, Facebook is willing to make Canada the battleground and Canadians the victims, to fight our legislation. Similar legislation is pending in several other jurisdictions, including the state of California and in the U.S. at the federal level, where the bipartisan Journalism Competition and Preservation Act almost passed in the Senate last year. Indeed, Sen. Amy Klobuchar is currently cheering Canada on, asking our government to stand firm against the platforms’ campaign of intimidation.

Governments around the world are watching and planning their own laws to force the platforms to return value to the news media. There is widespread recognition that authoritative, reliable, professional news is critical to democratic political culture, now more than ever.

Whatever the alleged faults of the Online News Act, they are nothing to the damage Facebook’s drastic and abusive measures will do. This is not about lofty principles. This is about profit, and a refusal to share it.

Much has been made of the so-called “link tax,” and how “paying for links” will “break the internet.” These are misnomers, slogans and exaggerations. The act does not tax links, or mandate payments for links. It simply requires the platforms to negotiate fair payment for making available Canadian news from news media organizations by a variety of means, including links.

The evidence of actual damage is all in the other direction: the well-documented damage suffered by the news media due to the migration of ad dollars to the platforms.

Both Google and Meta have built businesses worth many billions of dollars based on the value of links. In so doing, they have been draining our professional news media of the ad revenue that allows them to perform an essential democratic function: providing reliable public interest and political information.

Facebook should be under no illusion that Canadians will accept being held to ransom for our own news. This is patently the behaviour of a bully. The blame for this move lies squarely at Facebook’s door.

Grace Westcott | President, PEN Canada

The post Meta silences Canadian journalism appeared first on IFEX.

Update on 6/23/23

RSF congratulates Canadian parliamentarians for not giving in to Meta’s blackmail and passing the Online News Act on June 22nd. It is regrettable, however, that Meta immediately responded by following through on its threat to pull all news content from their platform in the country. Just as it did in Australia, Meta is letting the world know that it prefers to remove information rather than pay for the journalistic content it profits from.

28 March 2023 – Meta is threatening to cut off access to news media on its Facebook and Instagram platforms if Bill C-18 (known as the “legislation concerning online communication platforms that make news content available to persons in Canada”) is passed in Canada. This bill, which is currently being debated in Parliament, implies, among other things, that the platforms negotiate compensation with and for the news media publishing their content on them. Believing that this bill is unworkable and dangerous for its economic survival, Meta has not hesitated to brandish the threat of banishing journalistic content if it is adopted.

RSF deplores this act of blackmail, which directly threatens the survival of Canadian media and, at the same time, access to news and information, one of the pillars of democracy.

“This recurring blackmail is intolerable. It is unacceptable to threaten journalism with banishment. Meta should seek to show that it is able to play a positive role in the fight against disinformation and for access to pluralistic information, rather than trying to influence public policies that might jeopardise its economic interests.”

Vincent Berthier, Head of RSF’s Tech Desk

This is not the first time Meta has done this. The company already used this weapon to twist the arms of legislators in Australia and the United States in response to proposed laws requiring platforms to pay media publishing on their services.

Google has not made any explicit threat, but its Canadian branch announced in early February that it was conducting a test run of a potential response to C-18’s adoption and its impact on links to news in Google Search and Discover in Canada.

According to Reuters, these tests – conducted on 4% of Canadian users for five weeks – limited their access to news content. Aside from the unacceptably arbitrary nature of this temporary restriction on access to news, the test bodes ill for future access to news and information via Google if C-18 is passed.

The post Meta uses unacceptable blackmail threat to oppose Canadian Bill C-18 appeared first on IFEX.

First of all, thank you Honorable Members for this opportunity.

I am here tonight on behalf of IFEX, a global network of groups defending freedom of expression and information in all its forms. Our aim is to increasingly leverage this work in the form of press freedom, access to information and safety and justice for journalists, among other rights.

Like everyone, we see the expansion of authoritarianism in all its forms. Information is being weaponized in ways that has a profound impact on people and is creating a kind of information chaos. In our network alone, we’ve seen how misuse of access to information legislation, internet shutdowns, misinformation, attacks on media and of course the murder of journalists is becoming routine. When those targeted directly with online disinformation and smear campaigns are women, the form the attacks take is usually gendered and often results in self-censorship.

The aim is to silence these voices, and it is doing just that.

We can see this played out in the current context. Immediate action is required in the most urgent situations, Ukraine/Russia, Afghanistan, Belarus, Ethiopia, Myanmar, Nicaragua and Sudan, just to name a few. It is imperative that coordinated systems of emergency support for journalists at risk and their families are created, something where we see Canada is already moving in the right direction. But we must continue to increase our effectiveness.

And to be effective, these systems should include providing emergency visas that have simple and secure methods of submission and, in the absence of such, they must expedite the processing of visas for journalists and their families, as well as ensure safe passage. Key to the success of any intervention is effective coordination with local and international civil society organisations working to protect and evacuate journalists.

We see that media freedom has never been more crucial. Democracies cannot survive and flourish without free, independent and pluralistic media. We need to reverse engineer the current branding of the media as fake news and the enemy of the people as normal. It has been the lexicon adopted around the world – language mimicked and acted upon that includes continued verbal and physical attacks on the media with total impunity. This has had a profound impact on press freedom and journalists in particular. And be sure, no country, including Canada, is exempt from this trend.

The narrative needs to be countered forcefully with words and actions. Outside of intervening in urgent situations, the government must play a significant, ongoing role in reinforcing the need for press freedom and respect for journalists in its own national context.

There is also the need for accountability. The criminalisation of journalism and abuse of law by state actors has to end and we call on multilateral relationships and institutions to ensure that those who attack the media face real consequences for their actions – otherwise attacks against the press will continue to escalate and any standards championed by Canada will remain empty.

Within these relationships, Canada must be visible by being connected and committed to international mechanisms. Engage in coalitions, fund and acknowledge the benefit of international institutions in upholding press freedom, and be present and vocal in support of their efforts.

Canada’s leadership as co-chair of the Media Freedom Coalition and current chair of the Freedom Online Coalition, as well as the Community of Democracy Working Group on Enabling and Protecting Civil Society, are already very positive and welcomed examples of this.

At IFEX our network of over 100 member organisations in more than 70 countries actively advocate for freedom of expression and information as a fundamental human right – many do so in very dangerous circumstances. The targeted repression of press freedom advocates and journalists, and attacks on communities and institutions, see accepted norms being increasingly undermined and weakened.

We have been called on to do more direct support for our members, across all regions, who find themselves increasingly under attack by authoritarian states focused on shutting down the voices of civil society and threatening dissent at any price.

Organisations whose offices and staff are targeted and harassed with no other aim but closure and erasure need to be supported, funded and engaged with – because these are the voices that call for accountability and if these voices are shuttered it will leave a vacuum for democracy.

We know these issues are complex. IFEX’s members and allies around the world have been working on them, doing grassroots advocacy, publishing reports, indexes and offering solutions and campaigning for years. They are a rich pool of knowledge that could inform Canada’s policies and discussions with nuance and a national and global perspective. As part of your efforts in focusing on press freedom we would welcome being a conduit to these sources.

Governments and civil society groups need to continue to find ways to collaborate, to be at the table together.

Thank you

N.B. The above presentation was delivered by IFEX Deputy Executive Director Rachael Kay to the Canadian House of Commons Subcommittee on International Human Rights. Other organisations and individuals presenting were:

As an individual:

• Nazanin Boniadi, Actress and Ambassador, Amnesty International United-Kingdom
• Matthew Leung, Former Reporter, Ming Pao Daily, Hong Kong

Rappler

• Maria Ressa, Chief Executive Officer and President

Journalists for Human Rights

• Rachel Pulfer, Executive Director

Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights

• Judith Abitan, Executive Director

The Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong

• Mark Clifford, President

The post Human Rights in Repressive States: The situation of human rights defenders, journalists and media organisations appeared first on IFEX.

By Rebecca Redelmeier/CPJ Audience Engagement Associate

“Fake news.” “Go home.” “You’re the virus.” These are just a few of the insults that protesters have hurled at Evan Solomon, a reporter at national Canadian broadcaster CTV, and his colleagues as they have covered demonstrations against COVID-19 restrictions in Ottawa.

The protests – which began in Canada’s capital in late January to counter vaccine mandates for truckers – are now targeting border crossings in other parts of the country and interfering with supply chains, prompting Ontario premier Doug Ford to declare a state of emergency Friday.

But as reporters seek to cover these developments, they are being threatened in the streets and online. The incidents mirror the experiences of journalists in the United States and Europe, who have been shouted at and even assaulted while reporting on anti-vaccine protests.

CPJ spoke with Solomon, who also hosts a program on the radio platform iHeartRadio, and Elizabeth Payne, a reporter at the Ottawa Citizen, to learn more about the situation on the ground and what reporters are doing to protect themselves. The interviews have been edited for length and clarity.

What has it been like reporting in Ottawa?

Evan Solomon: I’m out there every day doing stand ups with them [the protesters] and speaking with them. It’s very passionate. There’s lots of yelling. You have anger and frustration at the vaccine mandates and the imposition of what many people think is an infringement on their civil rights and civil liberties. People will threaten you, people will throw things at you – that’s all happened to me. If you have a big news camera, then you’re a target. If you have a light, then you’re a target.

I would say 90 percent of the time I feel safe during the day. But any journalist out there, all of us, are almost always yelled at. “You don’t tell the full story.” “How do you sleep at night?” “You’re all liars.” [Protesters] also film you the whole time.

I’m a 6-foot-4 white guy. That’s important because a lot of these protesters are also white men. It’s hard for them to intimidate me because I’m a big person. But there are a lot of female reporters who get significantly more harassment than I do – verbal and online. They get horrific messages, dirty messages, chauvinist messages, racist messages.

On January 29, a protester threw a beer can at you. What happened?

Just before I did a live hit, as I was speaking, a guy ran up and drilled a full beer can at me and missed my head by about six inches. It hit our camera equipment, one of those big hard shell camera cases, and blew up in the case. We actually had a security guard and there were lots of police around, and the security guard saw the beer can and yelled at me to duck. I didn’t hear him though because the horns of the protest were so loud.

What steps have you taken to protect yourself while covering the protests?

Now, when [CTV] journalists are filming outside, we have to have a security person with us. We’re all using DSLR cameras, which are small cameras, so we do not bring tripods, we do not bring lights. You make sure you’re mobile in case things get out of hand. Our colleagues at CTV Edmonton have peeled off the stickers from their cars that identify them.

How does it feel to have to take these precautions?

The idea that I am a journalist in a G7 democracy, and my company says I can’t do my job without a security guard – in Ottawa, Ontario – that’s pretty remarkable.

There’s a general sense that attacking journalists is now normal. It has become acceptable to harass journalists. We saw during the Trump era the president of the United States actively saying, “You are fake news, you are the enemy of the people.” That raised the temperature in the U.S. and certainly we’re seeing it raised in a similar way here in Canada. We’re seeing an echo of it.

What do you think is fueling threats against journalists in Canada and what should be done to try to end them?

I think there’s a lot of people who do not feel represented in the media. They have not heard their own voice. And there’s been a business of peddling mistrust. There’s a war on truth and facts and doctors and scientists and governments and media. But our job is to keep hammering at the facts. Sometimes that’s very unpopular. But there’s not two sides of a fact, and we have to stick to those.

The job is to cover stories in difficult circumstances. We are in a difficult circumstance. There is not only a populist movement that has its own tools of media to counteract the established tools, but there’s a culture war based on truth and facts, there’s a heavy distrust of institutions and governments that is now part of the political process, and journalists have to cover that. The only weapons that we have are hewing closely to factual information and hewing closely to human stories that resonate.

“I have never experienced this before in my city. There’s a lot of people who have been threatened.” Elizabeth Payne

Have you seen anything like these protests in your 35 years covering Ottawa?

Elizabeth Payne: I have never experienced this before in my city. There’s a lot of people who have been threatened. I’ve concentrated a lot of my writing on the impact [the protests] are having on people who live [downtown]. People have been calling me and begging me to take any reference that may identify them out of stories and it’s because they’re getting death threats.

These streets are generally boring and dull. So there’s a bit of a cognitive dissonance. It takes you a little longer to assess a situation as potentially dangerous. If I was somewhere else perhaps I would be more on my guard. It’s unsettling and strange.

What are your safety concerns when reporting in the crowd?

There’s a lot of potential for things to go badly. That’s what’s nerve-wracking right now: you could be out there and you could be talking to people and stuff could suddenly start to shift. You really do have to look around and make sure you have something solid behind you. You don’t just walk into a crowd without thinking about where you are and where the egress may be.

I’m also not wearing a mask. I would wear a mask right now in crowds like I’ve seen here, but my decision not to wear a mask is because it’s a provocation to these people. That makes me less safe. I’m sure I’ve been exposed to COVID many times – you’re shoulder to shoulder with people. I’m triple-vaxxed, I’ve been very, very careful over two years about not getting COVID, and it wouldn’t at all surprise me if I did during this. I could wear a mask – no one has told me not to – but it would make my job a lot harder. I would be subject no doubt to harassment.

Read the full interview on CPJ’s site.

The post Threats, attacks, and insults: Canadian reporters on covering vaccine mandate protests appeared first on IFEX.

This is the first of two blogs that looks at the privacy rights that are available to Canadians and how they compare internationally. The second blog is available here.

As more companies go digital and tech giants such as Facebook and Amazon dominate our households and smart devices alike, the privacy of people in Canada is increasingly compromised. More than ever before, we continue to be the victims of corporate data breaches. Without our knowledge or our consent, our data becomes a transaction between organizations that hold our personal information and the third-parties they sell our data to. Given all these instances where we are often unknowingly vulnerable, are Canadian laws keeping up to protect us in an ever-evolving and exploitative digital landscape?

The answer is more nuanced than a simple yes or no. For starters, yes – laws exist to protect Canadians and their data privacy. The more crucial question is are Canadian laws protecting us enough? And, are we equipped with the mechanisms to take initiative and protect ourselves?

Current Canadian privacy laws fall short in protecting people in Canada and giving them agency over their own data. The Privacy Commissioner of Canada has little authoritative power to administer penalties to companies violating our fundamental right to privacy. And there is a lack of incentive for companies to make their privacy policies accessible and understandable. To delve into these dilemmas further, let’s explore how Canada’s current privacy laws protect us.

Canada’s Current Privacy Laws

Federally, the main statute set in place to protect Canadian privacy is the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). Under PIPEDA, there are fair information principles that include consent and accountability. While this statute is meant to protect our personal information, it is enforced by the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, who is not granted the authority to enforce penalties against companies who violate PIPEDA principles. Rather, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada acts as an ombudsperson who can only promote privacy rights but does not have any power to administer fines. Unfortunately, the absence of harsh punishments has prompted Big Tech companies such as Facebook to neglect improving their business practices to better serve the interests of people in Canada and their privacy. It is also important to note that PIPEDA protects the personal information of people in Canada in a commercial context, which excludes non-commercial instances where personal information might be exploited.

Bill C-11 was recently proposed in an effort to modernize and update PIPEDA. Bill C-11’s amendments were proposed in order to update commercial privacy rights to better suit a digital landscape. While these changes would provide more enforcement power to the Privacy Commissioner, Bill C-11 would have also expanded the number of instances where obtaining consent can be waived – such as when organizations are working with allegedly de-identified data. While de-identified data protects user anonymity, it is quite easy to re-identify that data in an era of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence. Bill C-11 also focused solely on a commercial context. As a result, the privacy practices of non-profit organizations and political parties were not covered nor included. With a focus on commercial organizations, user privacy was positioned as a consumer right rather than a human right. But shouldn’t the loss of security and lack of agency over one’s personal information position privacy as a human right?

PIPEDA and C-11 are both publicly available for people in Canada in order to learn more about how their data is managed and protected. To learn more about your data privacy rights, you can request access to your personal data through Data Access Request (DAR). If you submit a DAR, companies are required by law to grant you access to the information they have collected about you. Despite the ability to do so, very few people in Canada send DAR requests or even know what they are. Why is this the case? DARs are vastly under-promoted as a public resource. Not only are DARs under-promoted, but the absence of a uniform and accessible method to send DARs across companies deters people in Canada from having the opportunity to sufficiently use this right.

Barriers of Access to Canadian Privacy Laws

So if we have opportunities to weigh in on online consent or regain control over our data, why is it so difficult to exercise these rights? There are many barriers to accessibility that would need to be addressed to both modernize PIPEDA and allow it to be better employed in the best interest of people in Canada and their privacy. According to the Citizen Lab, a research lab based at Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, the primary barriers to requesting DARs are the costs associated with access and the identity verification procedures that are required for obtaining one’s personal data. For starters, many companies charge fees to individuals who wish to obtain their data. When affiliated costs aren’t an issue, the extensive identity verification processes pose other concerns. In the process of requesting one’s data, many individuals would have to provide even more personal information, such as phone numbers, email addresses, or ID photos. By verifying that the individual who is requesting the data matches the one on file, a person consequently compromises their privacy even further.

Another important dilemma is if consent can be reasonably inferred when second parties are involved, like when a company shares your data with an external entity. Though there are particular instances where explicit consent is obtained from users, we should be questioning implicit requests for consent as well. While many companies present “Terms and Conditions” or other privacy policies that outline the sharing of user data with second parties, these texts are often long and complex, discouraging many users from reading them. For those who do decide to read the documents, the legal jargon used may leave them feeling even more confused and uninformed.

What Should Be Done Now?

By taking a larger stand to compel companies to modify their privacy practices, Canadian privacy laws such as PIPEDA will be able to do more to protect us and advocate for our consent in data collection practices. The time for legal reform is now, and it has never been more important to put people in Canada and their human right to privacy front and center.

Proshat Nouri is a fourth-year Media and the Public Interest student at Western University. With an academic background in network capitalism and political economy, Proshat has extended this research by working with OpenMedia to explore privacy legislation both in Canada and internationally, as well as legal reform to better protect Canadians and their data. 

Want to make a difference and improve Canadian laws? The OpenMedia community isn’t waiting around for the federal government to act. We’re speaking up to #DemandPrivacy and get the digital rights we need to protect ourselves. You can speak up by signing the petition to #DemandPrivacy!

The post Canadian privacy law has got you covered, but here’s why it simply isn’t enough appeared first on IFEX.

This is the second of two blogs that looks at the privacy rights that are available to Canadians and how they compare internationally. The first blog is available here.

What Are Canadian Privacy Rights?

With The Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), under its belt, the Canadian government has a tool in place to protect the personal information of people in Canada on a federal level. Under this privacy legislation, organizations are only obligated to obtain consent when collecting or using consumer data. Consumers are granted the right to access any personal information being held by an organization. Though PIPEDA has protective measures in place, there are significant shortcomings that prevent this act from requiring organizations to be more transparent about their data collection practices.

For starters, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada is not granted the authority to administer penalties to organizations for neglecting to obtain user consent or for misusing consumer data. Additionally, while Canadians have the right to access their personal information, Data Access Requests (DARs) are often highly inaccessible. They can be difficult to access on organizational websites and often lead to users having to provide more personal information in order to verify their identity. To gain a better understanding of the barriers of current Canadian privacy laws, this blog post is a great place to start.

Where Do Canadian Privacy Laws Stand on the International Stage?

To better understand the privacy rights that are afforded to Canadians, it’s worthwhile to take a look at the state of international privacy laws, particularly the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).

Implemented in May 2018, the GDPR is a groundbreaking piece of privacy legislation that has created uniformity among all European Union nations in how data privacy is addressed and handled. Not only does the GDPR protect EU citizens within their jurisdictions, but its penalties apply against organizations who violate the GDPR apply anywhere – so long as the personal data of EU citizens are involved and compromised. According to a GDPR website, an organization can incur punishments for exploiting user data if they “process the personal data of EU citizens or residents, or […] offer goods or services to such people” regardless of whether the organization operates within the EU. The fines administered to violating organizations are significant , reaching either €20 million or 4% of global revenue, whichever is higher.

The GDPR also establishes that consent must be freely given. When consent is to be given in a written declaration, the GDPR states that “the request for consent shall be presented in a manner which is clearly distinguishable from the other matters, in an intelligible and easily accessible form, using clear and plain language”. When a user is able to understand what they are consenting to, they are able to freely do so. With policies such as the “Right to be Forgotten”, an organization is obligated to immediately remove all existing data at the request of the user, a move that rightfully prioritizes user privacy over corporate interest.

Under the GDPR, a user can also opt-out of having their data sold by an organization. The GDPR defines pseudonymized data differently than raw data that contains identity markers. While organizations must still work to protect users and can be subject to penalties for the breach or misuse of data, those that use pseudonymized data are faced with a more relaxed approach than those who do not.

Similarly, the CCPA (also enacted in 2018), aims to provide more agency to Californians over their personal data. The act’s key principles include the right to know how your personal information is being used, the right to remove your personal information from an organization’s database, (with some limitations to this principle), and the right to opt-out from having your personal information be sold. According to the CCPA, personal information includes anything that can be reasonably linked to the user, such as a name, social security number, or email address. Key rights afforded to Californians under the CCPA include an “opt-out request” tab that all organizations must clearly feature on their website for users to opt-out of consenting to the sale of their data. Californians can also sue an organization, either independently or in a class-action lawsuit, if it can be proven that their personal information was subject to a data breach or that the organization failed to uphold the security measures necessary to protect them. Unlike the GDPR, the CCPA does not require businesses to provide clear and concise consent forms to users. Further, while the GDPR distinguishes between pseudonymized data and raw data, the CCPA does not.

While people in Canada also have the right to access their data, there are limitations to PIPEDA that do not provide users in Canada with the same degree of agency as their Californian and EU counterparts. Canadian privacy law is missing the tough penalties that would push organizations to protect user privacy. The Commissioner’s inability to administer fines or implement policies reduces the chance for privacy law reform in Canada. While class-action lawsuits for data breaches exist in Canada, the ability for an individual to sue independently for a data breach is not an option; people in Canada can not go head-to-head with organizations that are exploiting their personal information. While people in Canada have the right to access their data, opting out of the sale of their data is not an option. This places people in Canada in a form of ‘digital hostage’, keeping them confined to having their data exploited in exchange for the ability to use the organization’s service.

The Time for Canadian Privacy Law Reform is Now

So what changes are necessary for Canadian privacy law to keep up with other international privacy laws? For starters, providing more enforcement power to the Privacy Commissioner of Canada will allow punishments to be rightfully imposed on large tech giants such as Facebook or Google when they misuse or compromise user data. Personal agency over one’s data must also be improved, which may include more accessible DARs that can be found on any organization’s website. Following in the footsteps of the GDPR, the request for immediate removal of personal data should also be considered in order to protect user privacy. Consent materials should be more concise and easy to comprehend, so that they are more likely to be read and understood by the user. There should be a distinction between pseudonymized and identifiable data. By imposing the same penalty regardless of the nature of the data, organizations may be less compelled to pseudonymize a user’s data. This extra measure would promote user privacy.

With reform in place, Canadian privacy law will be better equipped to protect its citizens and provide them with the mechanisms to negotiate how their data is handled. With the implementation of both the GDPR and CCPA as proof, the possibility of a more rigid and strongly enforced data privacy act can be in our future. The only barrier standing in its way is the failure of the Canadian government to act.

Proshat Nouri is a fourth-year Media and the Public Interest student at Western University. With an academic background in network capitalism and political economy, Proshat has extended this research by working with OpenMedia to explore privacy legislation both in Canada and internationally, as well as legal reform to better protect Canadians and their data. 

Want to make a difference and improve Canadian laws? The OpenMedia community isn’t waiting around for the federal government to act. We’re speaking up to #DemandPrivacy and get the digital rights we need to protect ourselves. You can speak up by signing the petition to #DemandPrivacy!

The post It’s time for Canadian privacy law reform, so where do we go from here? appeared first on IFEX.

Today marks the one-year anniversary of Bill C-11, the federal government’s attempt at reforming private sector privacy legislation, currently covered by the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). Although initially branded as a groundbreaking step towards finally protecting individual privacy concerns in Canada, C-11 failed to address major areas of privacy concern and saw significant criticism from privacy advocates. The Bill never moved beyond first reading, and officially died when the federal election was called this past summer.

Bill C-11 had many shortcomings, including that the bill failed to classify privacy as a basic human right. Without this protection in place, the government is sending a clear message that business interests supersede individual rights. Bill C-11 was ripe with loopholes, yet the government refused to engage with stakeholders to introduce the necessary reforms, instead letting it die on the table.

OpenMedia is calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Innovation, Science, and Economic Development (ISED) Minister François-Philippe Champagne to address the deficiencies of the Bill and to reintroduce legislation that has adopted the widespread critiques. The Canadian public must finally be protected from corporate privacy violations and ubiquitous data collection. If the government is serious about reigning in big tech, privacy law reform should be the number one item on their agenda when the house resumes next week.

“The need for privacy law reform has never been more urgent,” said OpenMedia Privacy Campaigner Bryan Short. “It took years to get C-11 introduced. But instead of doing the work to fix it, the government just abandoned it. Our politicians have failed us – and it’s time for them to make things right. One year later, people in Canada are no closer to increased online protections from corporate interests. We can’t afford to wait. Minister Champagne must revisit federal privacy law reform and introduce enhanced powers for the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. The rules in place in Canada are inadequate to protect us, and we need the tools necessary to protect the privacy of Canadians.”

There have been no updates on Bill C-11 since November 2020. With Minister Champagne’s recent reappointment to the position, it’s up to him to determine if the government will finally tackle privacy and bring forward real policy change.

Over the course of the last year, more than 12,000 messages have been sent to federal MPs by members of the OpenMedia community, urging lawmakers to strengthen Bill C-11 by assigning human rather than commercial rights to personal information; and nearly 7,500 members of the OpenMedia community have signed a petition calling for greater enforcement powers for the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.

The post OpenMedia calls for government to introduce improved privacy law reform on one-year anniversary of failed bill appeared first on IFEX.

The CAJ is extremely concerned about two Canadian journalists, Amber Bracken and Michael Toledano, who were illegally arrested on Nov. 19 and remain in custody three days later. The CAJ demands their immediate release, the return of their belongings, and for the RCMP to drop all charges.

More than 40 news outlets and press freedom organizations have signed on to the below letter, calling for Canada’s public safety minister to take immediate steps to investigate and correct the RCMP’s actions and to ensure that going forward, journalists’ right to report will be protected.

Dear Minister Mendicino,

As we write this letter, two Canadian journalists are being held by police under your jurisdiction for doing their jobs. 

This moment demands your involvement to immediately release journalists Amber Bracken and Michael Toledano, and to bring about a swift resolution respecting journalists’ fundamental rights. The national police force has repeatedly acted well beyond the law when dealing with members of the media, in defiance of court rulings. We ask you to exercise your oversight responsibility to correct these serious violations forthwith. 

As you are aware, Amber Bracken and Michael Toledano were illegally arrested on Nov. 19 while reporting on the construction of a contentious natural gas pipeline in Wet’suwet’en territory in northern British Columbia. They were within the court injunction area – which court decision after court decision has affirmed journalists’ right to access – when the RCMP took them into custody and confiscated their belongings and equipment. 

The RCMP stated the reason for arresting the two was because they had “embedded” with the protestors, which has never been illegal in Canada. Newfoundland and Labrador Supreme Court Justice Derek Green affirmed these rights when he found in favour of journalist Justin Brake who faced criminal and civil charges after spending several days inside the Muskrat Falls site covering a protest that shut work down at the dam in 2016. The civil charges were dismissed in 2019 by Justice Green. The criminal charges, too, were subsequently dropped. 

Both Bracken and Toledano are journalists that have spent considerable time reporting on the land disputes associated with the construction of the Coastal GasLink project. Last year, Bracken was one of three journalists awarded with the CAJ’s Charles Bury Award for her outstanding contributions to journalism reporting on the Wet’suwet’en crisis for The Narwhal. Bracken was specifically selected for the award for protecting the public’s right to see events unfolding at Wet’suwet’en despite threats of arrest in 2020. Toledano has been living in the Wet’suwet’en territory for the past three years as a member of the media to create a documentary called “Yintah,” which will air on national television in 2022.

The arrests of Bracken and Toledano are just the latest instances of Canadian police detaining journalists who are simply trying to do their jobs. This past Thursday, the RCMP detained independent filmmaker Melissa Cox, who was later released without charges. This incident marks the second time Cox has been detained while covering a land dispute related to the Wet’suwet’en territory. Previous charges of mischief and trespass were thrown out of court last summer. In addition to Cox, law enforcement also arrested Indigenous journalist and podcast host Karl Dockstader who was covering a land dispute in Ontario. Those charges were later withdrawn. 

At Fairy Creek, journalists were also repeatedly threatened and detained by RCMP officers. The situation became so egregious that, in August, the CAJ and a coalition of media intervened in the issuance of an injunction, asking the courts to remind law enforcement of the rights of media. 

In two scathing written rulings, B.C. Supreme Court’s Justice Douglas Thompson determined that the vast exclusion zones, affiliated checkpoints, and media restrictions set up by RCMP officers at the injunction area are unlawful and “seriously and substantially” impacted important liberties. Justice Thompson ultimately refused to extend the injunction when he issued his second decision in September, stating the way the RCMP continued to violate charter rights when enforcing the injunction was causing a “depreciation” of the court’s reputation. 

With 29 arrests over a two-day span, the decision to detain the press along with protestors represents a move by the RCMP to prevent the public from being informed about what is happening on the ground, during a standoff, which just recently, has included an RCMP vehicle striking an elder, the use of canines to effectuate arrests, and the continuous implementation of excessive exclusion zones.

It is crucial to acknowledge the context in which these detentions, of everyone from land defenders to media workers, are taking place. As Canada and its democratic and civic institutions contend with and promise to redress their roles in the oppression and dispossession of Indigenous people on their land, journalists have a unique and express duty to bear witness to and comprehensively cover news events of consequence. Federal agencies should see it in everyone’s collective democratic interest to not unlawfully impede residents’ access to information of great public concern. 

The story Bracken and Toledano are there to cover is not about press freedom. As the charter expressly guarantees anyone in Canada, including but not exclusively the press, the right of freedom of expression, their legally enshrined rights of access need be honoured so they, and all other media workers, can do the job of covering the story, and not becoming the story. 

The RCMP must be held accountable for their repeated violations of the rights of media in Canada. As the minister responsible for their oversight, we demand that you take immediate steps to investigate and correct the RCMP’s actions and to ensure that going forward, journalists’ right to report will be protected in this country. 

CC: The Right Honourable Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada

The Honourable Mike Farnworth, Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General, Province of British Columbia

Brenda Lucki, Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police

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VOTE NOW! If a single telecom dynasty is going to rule us all, let’s pick a better one than the Rogers family

The OpenMedia community is currently locked in a heated debate: Would a family of raccoons or the A&W Burger Family do a better job than the Rogers family in overseeing most of Canada’s home Internet and wireless services?

Right now, the family of raccoons have a healthy lead over the other candidates – including the Jonas Brothers and the 1983 Edmonton Oilers. But if you don’t want to be ruled by clever trash pandas, there’s still time to make your pick! Head over to OpenMedia’s Twitter or Facebook polls to cast your vote for who you think should take over from the Rogers family; because if we’re going to live with a single telecom dynasty to rule us all, we deserve a better one than Rogers.

I know what you’re thinking: absurd, right? Absolutely. But even appointing a few crafty raccoons to the Rogers board is less absurd than letting a singular, chaotic family dynasty rule over a massive portion of Canada’s home Internet and wireless services – and potentially even expanding their rule with the pending Rogers-Shaw buyout!

Just tuning in? For weeks, the Rogers dynasty has been publicly acting out a Games of Thrones-style power struggle for control of the telecom giant, the largest in Canada. Their backstabbing and infighting as members of the board have been plastered over social media and the news, in plain view of the public, shareholders, and government officials alike. Moody’s Investors Service has even labelled the Rogers governance debacle as “materially credit negative” in light of the chaos.

This kind of dangerous instability puts all of our connectivity at risk – ESPECIALLY with the Rogers-Shaw buyout still on the table. Rogers is already responsible for managing too much of Canada’s home Internet and wireless services; if they’re allowed to purchase Shaw, they will be the country’s largest provider by far. That means more power over the Internet for Rogers than any other telecom company in the country.

No single provider should have that kind of power over our connectivity, but especially not one that treats its governance like a TV drama. Edward Rogers’ victory over the independent board of directors confirms what we knew all along – this is a family empire, not regular big business, with family members continuing to hold over 90% of voting shares. Stable, affordable Internet access is too important to be used as a pawn in this family dynasty’s game. It’s up to our government to make sure that it won’t be.

Even before the current family battle royale, the Rogers-Shaw sale was a gigantic threat to the future of affordable connectivity in Canada. We’ve published a helpful blog that explains why, but it isn’t that complicated – fewer competitors always means higher prices and fewer choices for us.

Canada’s Innovation Minister has the authority to block this buyout and cancel the unstable Rogers family’s plans to rule over more of our Internet – he needs to use it. Sign the petition to Minister Champagne: Stop the Rogers-Shaw deal NOW, and demand more Internet choice and affordability for people in Canada!

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Our submission to the department of Canadian Heritage explains what they have wrong in dealing with ‘online harms’, and how to fix it.

On September 25th, OpenMedia submitted a detailed response on behalf of our community to the government’s now closed call for input on their proposed approach to ‘harmful content’ online.

In our response, we explain how this dangerously misguided approach could make our Internet among the most censored and surveilled in the world. Informed by expert analysis and the voices of our community, we describe how it will lead directly to the removal of many lawful online posts in Canada, including important forms of protest and personal expression; a surveillance system of lawful speech on social media unprecedented in the democratic world; and direct silencing and over-policing of marginalized communities and voices. You can read our full submission by clicking here.

Our formal response follows OpenMedia’s Stop Canada’s Censorship Plan campaign, which empowered our community to submit their personal comments to the consultation. As of September 25, our tool has helped over 8,800 people speak out on this drastic and dangerous system.

Increasing Big Tech surveillance and censorship is not the answer

As we explain in our first blog analyzing the consultation’s proposals, if the government’s current proposal becomes law, we’ll see Facebook and Twitter deputized into being surveillance and censorship agents of the state, overzealously removing many of our lawful posts and reporting them directly to CSIS and the RCMP.

Why? Because our government’s proposed system harshly penalizes any online platform that fails to proactively detect and remove actually-illegal content within 24 hours – and all our legitimate posts will be so much collateral damage. It triples down on this harm by suggesting obligating platforms to report all removed posts directly and automatically to law enforcement.

A system this disproportionately balanced towards violation of our privacy and lawful expression simply isn’t fit for Canada.

There’s a potential role for government to play in making our Internet better. But this role must be developed following wide open-ended consultation, be carefully tailored and limited, and focus on empowering Internet users, not further empowering online platforms and the state.

Missed opportunities to ‘take on’ Big Tech

In our submission, we take the opportunity to remind our government of the many ways they’re failing to actually ‘take on’ Big Tech and defend people’s rights with their current approach.

As others have pointed out, the private data collection and surveillance model for advertising purposes at the heart of many modern platforms is a major driver of much of our online dysfunction. Not only does it require deep intrusion into and spying on our personal lives; it also incentivizes platforms to maximize our ‘engagement’ through time spent on their platform, so they can serve us more ads. Our satisfaction or welfare are not relevant to the business model in this system, and it shows in how we as users are treated, again and again.

OpenMedia is calling for treating these problems at the source, by disrupting the surveillance advertising model and empowering us as Internet users and citizens. This means passing a much strengthened version of stalled Bill C-11, giving us a meaningful and easy to use right to see, edit, remove, or transfer all of our data held by online platforms. It means requiring detailed transparency reporting to the public on how online platforms are moderating user content. And it means ensuring that independent researchers have the access to the anonymized platform data they need to better inform us of how the choices platforms make are shaping our civic conversations and lives.

What comes next?

Thank you to all of you who spoke out with us and made yourself a part of this important legislative process! This is just a start. We will continue to engage the government with our vision of an Internet that better protects user rights to privacy and freedom of expression.

The newly elected Liberal government has promised legislation on online harms in the first 100 days of their government. We hope the sharp criticism their proposals have received from many quarters will encourage them to reconsider their current plans, and seek a more genuinely open discussion and debate around online platforms and content moderation before moving forward.

Hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst, OpenMedia’s community will be ready to quickly engage as needed with any legislation proposed this fall.

You can view our final consultation submission here.

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