Surveillance Studies Centre

News Series on The Surveillance Society

Don Butler has written a week-long series on the surveillance society in the Ottawa Citizen , involving several members of The New Transparency Project .

See the following stories:

Surveillance Series, Ottawa Citizen 2009 by Don Butler

Part I: A very different world Since 9/11 the use of close-circuit TV cameras has exploded

Part II: Devil in the details When it comes to social sorting, you are what you eat, buy, surf, post

Part III: Social networking or social spying?

Part IV: Keeping tabs goes high-tech More and more, we're spying on each other — and it's getting easier

Part V: You've been targeted

New Privacy Advocates Website Launched

When surveillance practices emerge, who mobilizes against them, how, and with what effect?

The new Privacy Advocates website has been introduced to facilitate communication between individuals and groups that have emerged from civil society, as well as researchers and other people in the wider community.

The idea for this website originated from Professor Colin Bennett's...

IPSI Lecture Series - Colin Bennett

This presentation presents the major findings of a recent book by the same name (eds. Colin J. Bennett and David Lyon, Routledge 2008) and applies these lessons to the contemporary debates in Canada about identity cards and the enhanced drivers licence (EDL).

IPSI is once again pleased to present its Public Lecture Series, where notable speakers from the identity, privacy and security fields present their work and discuss contemporary issues.

Colin Bennett, November 17 at the Faculty of Information, 140 St. George Street, Bissell Building, Room 728, University of Toronto, Noon to 1 pm.

November 17: Colin Bennett, Professor, University of Victoria

Playing the Identity Card: Surveillance, Security and Identification in Global Perspective

Post-Doc Fellowship at Open University

The Open University Business School seeks a post doctoral researcher on a three year research project, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, beginning January 09.

The project is called ‘Taking Liberties: New uses of consumer data in the UK’, and aims to explore whether consumer data traditionally collected in marketing contexts is now being applied in security contexts. The project...

Lyon named Fellow of Royal Society of Canada

Congratulations to Professor David Lyon, who has been named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, one of 72 new Fellows and two Specially Elected Fellows.

Technocrime book now available

Congratulations to Stéphan Leman-Langlois, whose new edited collection Technocrime is now available from Willan Publishing.

New book on National Identity Cards

Congratulations to Colin Bennett, David Lyon and all the contributors on their new book Playing the Identity Card: Surveillance, Security and Identification in Global Perspective , now available from Routledge. The book is an edited collection of papers from an international research workshop on national ID card systems organized by The Globalization of Personal Data Project (GPD) in association with the Surveillance Project at Queen's University, Canada on June 7-8 2007.

"National identity cards are in the news. While paper ID documents have been used in some countries for a long time, today's rapid growth features high-tech IDs with built-in biometrics and RFID chips. Both long-term trends towards e-Government and the more recent responses to 9/11 have prompted the quest for more stable identity systems. Commercial pressures mix with security rationales to catalyze ID development, aimed at accuracy, efficiency and speed. New ID systems also depend on computerized national registries. Many questions are raised about new IDs but they are often limited by focusing on the cards themselves or on 'privacy.'

Public Forum July 16

Public Information Forum on Ontario’s proposed Enhanced Driver’s Licence

SP awarded OPC funds

The Surveillance Project has been awarded research funding of $50,000 from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (Ottawa) under its Contributions Program for a project entitled "Camera Surveillance

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