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Dr. Ian Kerr holds the Canada Research Chair in Ethics, Law & Technology at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law. He also holds cross-appointments to the Faculty of Medicine and the Department of Philosophy.
Email: iankerr@uottawa.ca
Phone: 613-562-5800 ext. 3281
Fax: 613-562-5124
University of Ottawa
Faculty of Law
57 Louis Pasteur St.
Ottawa, ON K1N 6N5 -
On the Identity Trail: understanding the importance and impact of anonymity and authentication in a networked society.
Lessons from the Identity Trail: Anonymity, Privacy and Idenity in a
Networked Society.Click here to learn more about the book.
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Special thanks and much gratitude are owed to one of my favorite artists, Eric Joyner, for his permission to display a number of inspirational and thought–provoking works in the banner.
Things tagged with: privacy
“The Strange Return of Gyges’ Ring”
"The Strange Return of Gyges' Ring" in Lessons From The Identity Trail: Anonymity, Privacy and Identity in a Networked Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009)
Book II of Plato’s Republic tells the story of a Lydian shepherd who stumbles upon the ancient Ring of Gyges that has the power to make him invisible. In the story, the shepherd uses the ring to gain secret access to the castle where he kills the king and overthrows the kingdom. Plato uses this story to pose the classic philosophical question: why be moral if one can act with impunity?
Read more →My Appearance Before the ETHI
On June 12th, I was called to appear before the Standing Committee on Ethics, Accountability & Privacy in a hearing on privacy and social media. I told the Committee that ‘big data’ is the ‘new sugar’ and that we stand at the precipice of what one might call the ‘late onset diabetes’ of the information age. I made a number of recommendations and will submit a detailed brief to the Committee later this summer. Click (more…) to see the transcript of my 10-minute oral testimony.
Cross Country Checkup on Lawful Access
Surveillance is, and always has been, a topic that makes people uneasy. The explosion over the past decade of public and private activity online has meant that many people have had to re-think their attitude towards privacy, and define exactly what should be public and what should be private. What do you think? Is the internet a wide open place that should be free from authority and surveillance? Or must there be an update of police powers to keep up with the evolution of crime and criminals in an Internet age? What about the proposed law …do Canadians need to … Read more
Privacy, Identity and Anonymity
'Privacy, Identity and Anonymity' in International Handbook of Surveillance Studies, eds. Kristie Ball, Kevin Haggerty and David Lyon (London: Routledge) forthcoming 2011 [co-authored in equal proportion with Jennifer Barrigar].
'This chapter was written in collaboration with one of my favourite readers and writers, Jennifer Barrigar. Together, we consider the complex interrelationship between privacy, identity and anonymity in an increasingly networked society through an exploration of the evolution of network technologies and its consequent shifts in social and technological architectures. The rise of ubiquitous computing from CCTV cameras and handheld devices to digital rights management systems (DRM) and radio frequency identification (RFID) tags has precipitated a shift in the network architecture from one in which anonymity was the default to one in which nearly every online transaction is subject to monitoring and the possibility of identity authentication. We argue that this invariably affects the relationship between privacy, identity and anonymity.
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