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  • UN SR on Violence Against Women Seeks Input on Technology-Facilitated Violence, Harassment & Abuse
    – 2017-11-02 –

    CIPPIC contributed to Citizen Lab's submission to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, Dubravka Šimonović, who is seeking best practices for addressing technology-facilitated violence, harassment and abuse against women. The submission highlights the need to acknowledge the real-world harms that flow from technology-facilitated abuse—harms which are too often disregarded or trivialized. The atmosphere created by such abusive conduct operates at to exclude women and girls from critical digital spaces, can have professional consequences and can leverage technical capabilities to wage long-ranging and persistent harassment campaigns. Often, technology-facilitated abuse does not, however, fall neatly within existing causes of action or criminal prohibition, which poses a challenge for those seeking to leverage legal powers to find relief from such abuse. The online platforms on which technology-facilitated abuse too often plays out present an equally challenging landscape for women and girls facing online abuse. Voluntary mechanisms adopted by these platforms to address online abuse are opaque, highly inconsistent, and continue to fail those who attempt to rely on them. Other private actors compound technology-facilitated abuse of women by actively feeding a robust commercial stalkerware market that facilitates violent and harassing conduct and allows for pervasive surveillance of women by abusive partners. Citizen Lab's submission can be read at: https://citizenlab.ca/2017/11/submission-un-special-rapporteur-violence-women-causes-consequences/

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  • CIPPIC Comments on Resumption of TPP Negotiations
    – 2017-10-30 –

    CIPPIC today filed with global Affairs Canada its comments on the resumption of negotiations over the Trans Pacific Partnership. The withdrawal of the United States from the TPP offers an opportunity to improve the agreement and address some of the more problematic provisions of the previously-concluded trade agreement. CIPPIC's Comments focus on:

    • process & transparency;
    • problems with the Investor State Dispute Mechanism (ISDS);
    • digital trade and privacy issues; and
    • balance in the intellectual property provisions.

    11/07/2017 UPDATE: In response to reports that some TPP-11 states were considering freezing several provisions of the TPPA, including problematic provisions on data localization, cross-border privacy and ISDS, CIPPIC submitted a followup letter to the Honorouable François-Philippe Champagne, the Minister of International Trade, calling on Canada to support a freeze of these provisions in APEC meetings taking place this week. As the letter points out, all of these provisions were concessions to the United States and have not been shown to benefit Canada in any way. As the United States is no longer a party to the TPP, the provisions should not be included in any finalized version of that agreement.

    Image Credit: Jason Garber, CC-BY-NC-SA 2.0, May 2, 2006, Flickr

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  • Prominent Individuals and Organizations Object to Chelsea Manning's Refusal of Entry into Canada
    – 2017-10-23 –

    CIPPIC has helped organize letters from over 40 prominent individuals and organizations supporting Chelsea Manning's legal team in its bid to reverse her refusal of entry into Canada. As CIPPIC points out in its own letter of support, the whistleblowing activities which formed the basis for Ms Manning's sentence in the United States have been integral to debates surrounding many matters of public interest—including a casual disregard for civilian life in the Iraqi and Afghanistan wars and a program of extra-judicial assassination targeting senior Taliban and Al-Qaeda officials. These disclosures could not be shown to have caused any direct damage, and Ms Manning's sentence for her crime of conscience has since been commuted by former US President Barack Obama. Refusing Ms Manning entry into Canada on the basis of her conduct is an injustice that should be reversed. The campaign was spearheaded by independent researcher Lex Gill. CIPPIC's letter can be read here: https://cippic.ca/uploads/20171012-LT_GoC_re_Chelsea_Manning.pdf

    Image credit: CC-BY 2.0, Jackie: Flickr

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  • CIPPIC Submission on Copyright Board Review
    – 2017-09-29 –

    CIPPIC's submissions to the Copyright Board's consultations on Options for Reform focuses on five key reforms: 

    • adopt shorter timeframes;
    • implement case management;
    • implement a streamlined evidentiary process;
    • extend tariff length to 5 years and eliminate tariff retroactivity; and
    • allow for interveners in tariff proceedings.

    CIPPIC suggests that, regardless of the specific approach to reform ultimately adopted by the Board, addressing these five issues would create for greater certainty in the marketplace, improve the efficacy of decision-making, and make tariff proceedings quicker, less wasteful, and less costly.

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  • CIPPIC Files Intervention in Supreme Court Defamation Jurisdiction Case
    – 2017-09-14 –

    CIPPIC has filed its factum in Haaretz v Goldhar, an online defamation matter before the Supreme Court of Canada addressing the question of jurisdiction for online expression accessible over the internet in Canada.  CIPPIC's factum focuses on the role access to justice and forum shopping considerations play in judicial decisions on jurisdiction.  Professor Jeremy de Beer and Marina Pavlovic crafted our argument.

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  • Civil Society Groups Seek Dialogue on Cross-Border Sharing
    – 2017-09-13 –

    CIPPIC joined the BC Civil Liberties Association, Dr. Christopher Parsons and Privacy International in writing to Canada's two primary national security oversight bodies, SIRC and the CSE Commissioner. Drawing on an analysis of human rights transparency obligations, the letter notes recent efforts by these two bodies to examine cross-border data sharing arrangements entered into by the two agencies they oversee, CSIS and CSE, respectively. It then poses a few questions regarding the oversight bodies' respective abilities to find out about and assess information sharing arrangements, and regarding the processes by which information-sharing arrangements are formed. The letter constitutes the Canadian instance of an international campaign that sent comparable requests to national security oversight bodies in over 40 countries around the world. The objective is to gain a clearer picture of international data flows between national security agencies, and to establish a dialogue with national security oversight bodies on this matter. Read the letter here: https://cippic.ca/uploads/20170913-LT_re_intel_sharing_agreements-CA.pdf

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  • CIPPIC Joins in Letter to Council of Europe Regarding Proposed Expansion of Cross-Border Law Enforcement Data Access
    – 2017-09-08 –

    CIPPIC joined a number of civil society groups in a submission outlining concerns regarding a proposition by the Council of Europe to adopt a second protocol to its Cybercrime Convention with the objective of lowering current safeguards in place when law enforcement agencies seek access to data stored in foreign countries. The submission, which was spearheaded by our friends at EDRi, establishes a number of preliminary baseline requirements for any international instrument aiming to facilitate cross-border law enforcement access to data. While only a starting point, some of the minimum requirements in the submission will surely need to be addressed if the proposed second protocol is to have the legitimacy and global adoption its authors hope. These include:

    • Limiting the second protocol to addressing gaps left by a reformed MLAT regime
    • The need for competent and independent judicial authorization as a centre-piece to any cross-border data access regime
    • The data hosting state must be notified when a foreign law enforcement agency accesses data hosted within its territory
    • A right to challenge foreign data requests in the country of the affected data subject, and by that country's standards.

    In addition, as pointed out by the Electronic Frontiers Foundation in a comment on the second protocol, the proposal should not operate to lower existing protections such as Canada's prohibition on sharing digital identifiers without judicial authorization or the United States' requirement for probable cause-based production orders. Finally, the letter calls for a prohibition on data localization laws that are imposed without any privacy justification, for the primary objective of imposing often arbitrary and invasive surveillance obligations. For example, Russia has been taking increasingly aggressive steps in compelling global online platforms to host Russian data locally to facilitate invasive surveillance and censorship practices.

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  • CIPPIC Joins Civil Society Call for NAFTA Transparency
    – 2017-08-18 –

    CIPPIC has joined with dozens of civil society groups across North America to call on Canada, the United States and Mexico to call upon the United States, Mexico and Canada "to meaningfully reform trade negotiation processes to make them more transparent, inclusive and accountable".  

    NAFTA intellectual property and digital trade negotiations could potentially overhaul the normative approach of all three counties to these important areas of law.  Such discussions should actively seek civil society participation, not curtail it.  The August 18th joint letter, penned by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, specifically calls for:

    • public release of text proposals by governments before negotiations, with clear processes established for members of the public to comment on them;
    • consolidated versions of negotiating texts published between negotiating rounds;
    • locations and times of key meetings announced well ahead of time; and
    • the establishment of consultative trade groups that are broadly representative of both business and public interest stakeholders with a commitment to conducting deliberations openly.
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  • CIPPIC Submission to Global Affairs on NAFTA
    – 2017-07-18 –

    CIPPIC's submission to Global Affairs Canada on the re-negotiation of NAFTA calls for transparency and caution.  CIPPIC's letter groups its recommendations under three broad categories:

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  • Coalition Objects to Renewed Calls for Weaker Encryption Following 'Five Eyes' Ottawa Meeting
    – 2017-06-30 –

    A letter was sent today on behalf of coalition comprised of 83 leading organizations and experts from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States to their respective governments in reaction to renewed state calls for measures that would effectively weaken encryption. The letter responds to a ministerial meeting of the five governments' respective security officials hosted in Ottawa earlier this week, where possibilities for facilitating increased state access to encrypted data were discussed.

    The ministerial occurred under the auspices of the 'Five Eyes' - a surveillance partnership between intelligence agencies within the five countries, including Canada's Communications Security Establishment (CSE). It generated a joint Communique, which presented encryption as a serious barrier to public safety efforts and an impediment to state agencies wishing to access the content of some communications for investigative reasons.

    The coalition letter, which was organized by Access Now, CIPPIC, and researchers from Citizen Lab, called on the Five Eye governments to "respect the right to use and develop strong encryption" while urging broader public participation in future discussions such as the one that occurred earlier this week. Strong and uncompromised encryption has never been more important, as it protects our most sensitive data, our increasingly critical online interactions, even the integrity of our elections.

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