Science and Technology Law Commons^™

Electronic Devices At The Border: The Next Frontier Of Canadian Search And Seizure Law?, Robert J. Currie

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

Over the last several years the Supreme Court of Canada has developed its jurisprudence regarding the search and seizure of electronic devices, applying section 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in such a way as to assert and protect a significant amount of privacy in the devices and their data. Recent cases regarding the search of devices at Canada’s borders, however, do not reflect this case law. This is a situation made all the more complex by the generally attenuated expectation of privacy in the border context, and is worthy of inquiry.

Using a pending border case …

Aereo Dynamics: "User Rights" And The Future Of Internet Retransmission In Canada, Pradeepan K. Sarma

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

2014’s U.S. Supreme Court decision Aereo made waves in the entertainment and technology industry when it ruled in favour of a coterie of cable companies against an upstart start-up, Aereo Inc., retransmitting broadcast television over the internet. Little attention, however, has been paid to its ramifications to the Canadian broadcasting regime, with its vastly different regulatory scheme and an underlying objective to promote the dissemination of Canadian content. Complicating matters further is the 2012 Canadian Supreme Court decision Cogeco, where the retransmission of broadcast signals had been re-articulated as a ’user right’. This paper uses the Aereo decision as a …

Beyond Airspace Safety: A Feminist Perspective On Drone Privacy Regulation, Kristen Mj Thomasen

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

No technology emerges in a social or legal vacuum. The laws and norms guiding acceptable uses of new technologies help to shape the ways in which these technologies benefit or disadvantage different individuals and communities. Recently, the impact of drones on women’s privacy has garnered sensational attention in media and popular discussion. Media headlines splash stories from drones spying on sunbathing or naked women and girls, to drones being used to stalk women through public spaces, to drones delivering abortion pills to women who might otherwise lack access. Yet despite this popular attention, and the immense literature that has emerged …

Les Photos Prises Par Les Téléphones Cellulaires Sont-Elles Assez « Originales » Pour Être Protégées Par La Loi Sur Le Droit D'Auteur?, René Pépin

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

On considérait traditionnellement que l’originalité réside dans les choix faits par le photographe au niveau de la sensibilité du film choisi, de la vitesse de l’obturateur, de la mise au foyer, de la pose du sujet photographié , etc. Mais les caméras incorporées dans les téléphones cellulaires sont si perfectionnées que la prise de photo se fait de façon presque automatique. L’appareil fait seul la mise au foyer, le flash se déclenche au besoin, la vitesse d’obturation est optimale, le cadrage se fait presque seul, etc. C’est justement le grand avantage et le grand attrait de ces appareils. L’utilisateur n’a …

The Road To Artificial Super-Intelligence: Has International Law A Role To Play?, J.-G. Castel, Matthew E. Castel

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

Part I of this article deals with the road to artificial general super-intelligence.

Part II addresses the controls, if any, that should be exercised over the production and use of partially or fully autonomous machines of artificial intelligence before and after they become super-intelligent. More particularly, should there be legal and ethical limits to their use and to what extent should international law play a role in this connection?

Un Nouveau Code Pour Une Procédure Technologique: Mémento Pour Le Pr@Ticien, Antoine Guilman

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

Table des matières

Introduction.................................................................................................. 18

I. La transmission technologique des actes de procédure ................................. 22

(a) Le dépôt technologique des actes de procédure ................................... 23

(i) Un régime légal inédit : les dispositions du NCPC...................... 23

(ii) Un régime réglementaire inexistant : l’exemple de la Cour fédérale ...................................................................................... 26

(b) La signification technologique des actes de procédure ......................... 28

(i) Le principe : la signification de main à main .............................. 29

(ii) L’exception : la signification technologique................................. 30

(c) La notification technologique des actes de procédure..........................35

(i) La notification par un moyen technologique .............................. 35

(ii) La notification par …

Flying Robots And Privacy In Canada, Paul D.M. Holden

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

Drones have been a hot topic in recent years particularly when used in war and in domestic police operations. Drones have also attracted attention because of highprofile plans to use them for package delivery, among other things. While the glamourous and future uses of drones catch media attention, drones are already being used in the private sector for more mundane purposes including surveying, infrastructure inspection and real estate sales promotion. While the privacy threats of military and police drones are widely discussed, privacy concerns of private drones have attracted much less consideration.

This paper looks at the privacy risks of …

Book Review: Jonathan Clough, Principles Of Cybercrime, 2nd Ed (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), Christopher D. Ram

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

The past decade has seen an enormous explosion of scholarship on the subject of cybercrime, as technologies and offenders pose new challenges and law enforcement, government and academic experts struggle to keep up. The new, second edition of Professor Jonathan Clough’s book occupies a fairly substantial, but specific niche in this increasingly diverse and complex landscape. Principles of Cybercrime contains only a cursory review of the history and criminology of cybercrime, it does not deal at all with IT security, investigative or enforcement matters, and discussion of cybercrime as a global issue is limited to brief discussions of the 2001 …

Is There A 'Right To Be Forgotten' In Canada's Personal Information Protection And Electronic Documents Act (Pipeda)?, Michael Rosenstock

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

In this paper, I argue that PIPEDA could support a version of the right to be forgotten, subject to three important caveats. First, for search engines to meet the threshold applicability test under PIPEDA, their activities (i.e., crawling, indexing, organizing, etc.) must constitute the ‘‘collection, use or disclosure” of personal information. Ascribing such a role to search engines in information dissemination would likely require a court to distinguish the activities of search engines from hyperlinks on websites, which the Supreme Court in Crookes v. Newton determined did not involve control over content. Second, PIPEDA’s ‘‘all-or-nothing approach” means that if search …

Minding The Gap: Why Or How Nova Scotia Should Enact A New Cyber-Safety Act - Case Comment On Crouch V. Snell, Jennifer Taylor

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

Nova Scotia’s Cyber-safety Act was meant to fill a gap in the law. Where criminal charges and civil claims like defamation were unavailable or undesirable, the Act, it was hoped, would contain a substantive definition of cyberbullying, set out when it was actionable, and provide procedures for victims to obtain remedies. But the statute that was ultimately passed was too blunt a tool to address the problem, from both a substantive and a procedural perspective.

That helps explain why Justice McDougall of the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia struck down the entire statute as unconstitutional, in the recent case of …

Protecting The Privacy Of Canadians' Health Information In The Cloud, Adrian Thorogood, Howard Simkevitz, Mark Phillips, Edward S. Dove, Yann Joly

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

This article presents results from a year-long research project reviewing health privacy issues in the cloud, funded by the Contributions Program of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC). Section I provides a brief primer on cloud computing and its applications in data-centric health research and health care. Section II reviews Canadian privacy and health privacy laws and how they apply to CSPs. Section III identifies privacy risks arising from the technological, organizational, and jurisdictional complexity of cloud computing. Section IV argues that Canadian health privacy laws fail to address difficulties custodians face in balancing responsibilities with CSPs, …

The Coming Revolution In Class Action Notices: Reaching The Universe Of Claimants Through Technologies, Catherine Piché Dr

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

New technologies, social networking sites, blogs, and other interactive online platforms are playing an increasing part of North Americans’ lives. As of June 2017, Facebook had, on average, 1.32 billion daily active users and 2.01 billion monthly active users. Generation X spends the most time on social media, with approximately seven hours per week, while Generation Y comes in second, spending a little more than six hours per week doing the same. The heaviest users are female, who spend one quarter of their time online on social media,with males correspondingly spending 19% of their time doing so. Data on average …

Corporate Criminal Liability For Algorithmic Price Fixing In Canada, Theodore Milosevic

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

The use of computerized algorithms is increasingly common in the modern business environment. An algorithm can be defined as ‘‘a set of mathematical instructions or rules that, especially if given to a computer, will help to calculate an answer to a problem.” As noted in this definition, algorithms are particularly powerful tools when combined with computing power. The proliferation of computerized algorithms in business settings has occasionally led to unintended and injurious outcomes. This is perhaps most notable in relation to the algorithmic trading of securities. The 2010 ‘‘Flash Crash” of the United States (U.S.) financial markets, during which key …

Digital Evidence And The Adversarial System, Colton Fehr

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

Scholars have observed that the adversarial system tends to provide courts with only a ‘‘small snapshot of the technological whole,” which in turn forms the record upon which broader legal pronouncements occur. As a result, they contend that legislatures should be more proactive in making rules governing complex and rapidly advancing technologies, and that courts must show deference to these rules. Other scholars retort that, in practice, legislatures often fail to update obviously flawed and outdated privacy provisions. Whether due to special interest influence, majoritarian dislike of criminal suspects, or other institutional constraints, legislative responses have been wanting. As such, …

Individual Licensing Models And Consumer Protection, Lucie Guibault

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Copyright law is not primarily directed at consumers. Their interests are therefore only marginally accounted for, as the copyright rules exempt specific uses of works from the right holder’s control. This chapter examines the impact of digital technology on the position of consumers of licensed copyrighted content. While ownership of the physical embodiment of a work does not entail the ownership of the rights in the work, how does copyright law deal with ‘disembodied’ works? Whereas digital content is now commonly distributed on the basis of individual licensing schemes, what does it mean for consumers? Do they have a claim …

Remuneration Of Authors Of Books And Scientific Journals, Translators, Journalists And Visual Artists For The Use Of Their Works, Europe Economics, Lucie Guibault, Olivia Salamanca, Directorate-General For Communications Networks, Content And Technology (European Commission)

Reports & Public Policy Documents

Europe Economics and the Institute for Information Law at the University of Amsterdam were commissioned by DG Connect to undertake a study on the remuneration of authors of books and scientific journals, translators, journalists and visual artists (all groups are hereafter referred to as “authors”) for the use of their freelance works. The overarching objectives of this study are to analyse the current situation regarding the level of remuneration paid to authors in order to compare the existing national systems of remuneration for authors and identify the relative advantages and disadvantages of those systems for them. We also aim to …

International Law Enforcement Access To User Data: A Survival Guide And Call For Action, Kate Westmoreland, Gail Kent

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

Effectively accessing and using online evidence is a critical part of modern investigations and prosecutions, but also has significant implications for users’ privacy. The current system of international sharing of online data in criminal matters is a patchwork of domestic and international law that is slow, uncertain, and not well understood. This article provides an overview of the current system for foreign governments seeking user data from US-based Internet companies. After describing the way in which the system currently operates, it identifies problems with the system, and outlines the reform efforts that are beginning to emerge.

Possession Of "Extreme" Pornography: Where's The Harm?, Jonathan Clough

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

For decades, the traditional Western liberal approach to obscene material has been that while the availability of such material may be restricted, individuals are free to possess it so long as they do not distribute to others. Prior to the advent of the Internet, traditional means of control were effective in limiting the availability of such material. However, free of traditional restrictions the Internet allows easy access to a vast array of pornographic material, some of which challenges the most liberal of societies including images of child abuse, sexual violence, bestiality, and necrophilia.

In 2008, the UK became one of …

"Three Parent Babies": Techniques Explained, Objections Examined, Rebecca Carr

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

The UK Parliament has approved regulations, which come into force in October 2015, that permit the use of new treatment techniques to prevent the transmission of serious mitochondrial diseases from women to their children. The introduction of these techniques—which are not currently carried out in any country in the world—will fly in the face of the opposition that has been raised since discussions to permit clinical applications of the techniques first arose. After outlining some background to the techniques, this article briefly examines three of the objections that have been made against them: that the safety and effectiveness of the …

Leaving Dumb Phones Behind: A Commentary On The Warrantless Searches Of Smartphone Data Granted In R. V. Fearon, Jordan Fine

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

Given the incredible rate of smartphone technological evolution, is it about time the Supreme Court of Canada devised a special test to give law enforcement agents significantly more power to search through phone data without a warrant upon arrest of a suspect? In R. v. Fearon, the majority did just that. But this article argues the opposite is true: the increasing potential for immense privacy infringements when police search powerful and constantly evolving technological devices demands a greater limitation to police powers.

In recent cases, the Supreme Court has agreed with the position that limitations are needed concerning computers. Additionally, …

Freedom Of Expression, Discrimination, And The Internet: Legislative Responses And Judicial Reactions, Talia Joundi

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

In Part I of this article, I argue that cyber racism is inextricably linked with systemic discrimination. The definition of systemic discrimination relied on was first provided by Judge Abella in the Report of the Royal Commission on Equality in Employment (Abella Report), which states that systemic discrimination points to practices or attitudes that can result in inequality of opportunity for individuals or groups. The Supreme Court of Canada has since adopted this definition, and in some instances, has acknowledged that systemic problems require systemic remedies. The purpose of this discussion is to demonstrate how situating cyber racism within the …

An Introduction To The Intellectual Property Law Implications Of 3d Printing, Michael Rimock

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

Put simply, 3D printing allows people to print physical objects that are scanned, downloaded, or created digitally. There are an astonishing number of uses, benefits, and advantages associated with 3D printing. However, as with any new technology with so much potential, 3D printing presents a number of threats and challenges to many who benefit from the way manufacturing currently operates. While 3D printers will likely have a tremendous economic and socio- cultural impact, the following will provide an overview of some of its implications relating to intellectual property law. I will begin by briefly discussing the history of 3D printing …

The Cycles Of Global Telecommunication Censorship And Surveillance, Jonathon Penney

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Internet censorship and surveillance is on the rise globally and cyber-warfare increasing in scope and intensity. To help understand these new threats commentators have grasped at historical analogies often with little regard for historical complexity or international perspective. Unfortunately, helpful new works on telecommunications history have focused primarily on U.S. history with little focus on international developments. There is thus a need for further internationally oriented investigation of telecommunications technologies, and their history. This essay attempts to help fill that void, drawing on case studies wherein global telecommunications technologies have been disrupted or censored — telegram censorship and surveillance, high …

Signing Your Next Deal With Your Twitter @Username: The Legal Uses Of Identity-Based Cryptography, Jillian Friedman

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

This article will look at the legal framework for electronic signatures under Canadian law and through the UNCITRAL Model Law on Electronic Signatures and evaluate the potential use of identity-based cryptography as a type of electronic signature. While most jurisdictions permit electronic signatures to replace their handwritten predecessors, the criteria of validity for an electronic signature range from liberal to restrictive. Public key infrastructure (PKI) cryptography schemes are considered to meet the juridical conditions of a legal signature under more rigorous legislation that requires an electronic signature to possess certain security attributes. In common law jurisdictions, digital signature schemes such …

"Records Management Law" - A Necessary Major Field Of The Practice Of Law, Ken Chasse

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

‘‘Records management law” will be a necessary area of specialization because: (1) electronic records are now produced by most commercial, communication, transmission of data, and social, formal, and semi-formal interactions; (2) therefore they are the foundation of many kinds of legislation; (3) records are the most frequently used kind of evidence in legal proceedings; and, (4) electronic records are as important to daily living as are motor vehicles, and will become more important. But the legal infrastructure of statutes, guidelines, and case law that controls the use of electronic records as evidence is very inadequate because it ignores these facts: …

Technological Neutrality Explained & Applied To Cbc V. Sodrac, Cameron J. Hutchison

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

This article explores technological neutrality in the factual context of CBC v. SODRAC, heard before the Supreme Court of Canada in March of 2015 with decision pending at the time of publication. After outlining the history of the case in the first part, this article concludes with an application of the principle of technological neutrality, as non-interference, to the case. The only result coherent with the Supreme Court’s prior case law is to not treat non-usable or dormant incidental copies as reproductions under the Act. The status of permanent copies that serve a useful and identifiable purpose, e.g. archived copies, …

Access Of Evil? Legislating Online Youth Privacy In The Information Age, Agathon Fric

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

This article seeks to address what constitutes youth online privacy, how youth conceive of their privacy, whether their privacy needs protecting, and, if so, how youth privacy should be regulated online. First, the article begins by rooting the issue of online youth privacy in the current social, technological, economic, political, and legal context, drawing on social science research to demonstrate both the threats and opportunities created by technology for youth privacy.

Second, the analysis focuses on the relative strengths and weaknesses of current federal legislation as the primary law governing the collection, use, and disclosure of youth’s personal information through …

Combining Familial Searching And Abandoned Dna: Potential Privacy Outcomes And The Future Of Canada's National Dna Data Bank, Amy Conroy

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

This article aims to respond to the government’s request by explaining the nature of that relationship and by arguing that the combined use of familial searching and analysis of abandoned DNA would present a serious risk for genetic privacy. The risk is particularly acute given that it would effectively circumvent the existing justification for the NDDB, leading to inclusion of individuals whose DNA profiles have not been uploaded directly onto the data bank. To substantiate this main argument, this article proceeds in three parts. The first describes the current Canadian law on familial searching and the ongoing interest in amending …

With Great Power Comes Little Responsibility: The Role Of Online Payment Service Providers With Regards To Websites Selling Counterfeit Goods, J. Bruce Richardson

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

This article will explain the current avenues for intellectual property rights holders to make use of existing anti-counterfeiting policies made available by financial companies dealing in electronic payments, and argue that current policies, while helpful, are not sufficient. The article will conclude by demonstrating that policy makers have options to intervene and regulate the use of online payment services, either directly through legislation or indirectly through facilitating “best practices.”

The Song Remains The Same: Preserving The First Sale Doctrine For A Secondary Market Of Digital Music, Marco Figliomeni

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

This article will explore the origins and rationale for the first sale doctrine. A review of the most recent American case law shows the court rejecting the doctrine’s applicability in a digital sphere. I suggest that in spite of the court’s rigid interpretation of the U.S. Copyright Act, formulating a digital first sale doctrine is a matter better left to lawmakers. A flourishing digital secondary market can promote competition and innovation while making content more accessible to the public, but its endorsement requires an appreciation of its adverse effect on the primary market for copyright owners. The article fast-forwards to …