On June 19th, I had the good fortune of being invited to give a dinner speech to all of the speakers at UofA’s annual access and privacy conference, Performing at the Speed of Change. Although I fully understood the drill – they wanted a lighthearted and entertaining 20 minute speil – something happened to me on the plane that turned into a Jerry Mcguire moment. I decided instead to take a more heartfelt look at a difficult and often unaddressed set of issues in privacy advocacy.
Read moreWe can reasonably be suspicious of sliding standards for subjecting Canadian citizens to searches by sniffer dogs -- or the next detection technology
Last Friday, the Supreme Court of Canada released two important privacy-related decisions, both addressing an increasing trend in which Canadian law enforcement agencies use police dogs to conduct random searches of public spaces.
In the coming years, dog searches are sure to be supplemented by electronic noses, sensor networks, artificial intelligence and other highly automated systems that can operate much more conspicuously and effectively than snoop dogs. If they are subject to the same legal standards set out by the majority of the Supreme Court last Friday, it will be the state and not its subjects who will be engaging in "an elongated stare."
Read moreDo oscar pistorius's prosthetic legs make him faster? that probably depends on whether you take two-leggedness as the baseline
In a few minutes, it will be midnight. I am sitting on the balcony of my rented san juan apartment. I just finished reading the IAAF report thwarting the olympic ambitions of oscar pistorius, the south african sprinter whose spirit has captured the imagination of the 24 students I am here to teach.
We started our three-week exchange seven days ago in Ottawa, where 12 of my University of Ottawa law students hosted 12 students from universidad de puerto rico. Together, these two dozen outstanding students are enrolled in a course that I call "building better humans?" (please note the question mark in the title.)
One of the goals of this interdisciplinary course is to illuminate the murky line between therapy and enhancement in a world that seems to be drifting from "natural selection" toward what bioethicist John Harris calls "deliberate selection."
What happens to people when science and technology are aggressively used to alter the human condition? What does the future hold for health and humanity as we move from Darwinian evolution to self-directed enhancement medicine?
Read moreAmid all the hype about south korea's proposed robot charter, let's not forget the more important question of whether robots should assume human roles in the first place
A few months ago, as part of its bid to put a robot in every household by 2020, the south korean ministry of commerce, industry and energy announced its intention "to draw up an ethical guideline for the producers and users of robots as well as the robots themselves ..." Responsible computer programming, corporate accountability and consumer protection in the electronics sector -- these are all good things.
Pause. Rewind. Replay. What? An ethical guideline for the robots themselves?
Read moreWay back, on April 9th 2005, I attended one of Peter Yu’s many excellent conferences: “W(h)ither the Middleman?”
It was a fun event, packed with many of cyberlaw’s rockstars.
I was on the last panel of day two, looking at ‘the future of intermediaries’ along with a great line-up that included Ann Bartow, Rob Heverly, Dan Hunter and David Post.
For me, the most inspiring of the talks during the two day event was the one given by Ann. She took the question posed in the conference title seriously, choosing to remove the bracketed-h and explaining why gender equality requires us to wither the ‘man’ in the middle. The publication deriving from this talk is available here, and I highly recommend it as an important diagnostic and prescription for the way we use (and don’t use) the web.
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