This chapter was written in collaboration with my longtime colleague and co-author Daphne Gilbert. Together, we describe the changing role of telecommunications service providers (TSPs) from trusted stewards of clients’ personal information to “agents of the state”, from gatekeepers of privacy to active partners in the fight against cybercrime. We argue that the legislative approach that has been or will soon be adopted in various jurisdictions around the world, including Canada, will lower the threshold of privacy protection and significantly alter the relationship between TSPs and the individuals who have come to depend on them to manage their personal information and private communications.

The Chapter begins with an investigation of the role of TSPs as information intermediaries, and then moves to examine a Canadian online search and seizure case, where a TSP acted as an “agent of the state” by sending to the police copies of a client’s personal emails without his knowledge or consent. The Council of Europe’s Convention on Cybercrime is considered next, focusing on the privacy implications of its potential implementation in Canada and the possibility of a challenge to the constitutionality of new cybercrime laws based on the Canadian Charter.

The article was written for the first “We, Robot” conference held in Miami in 2012 in collaboration with my favorite philosopher-engineer-guitarist and all around renaissance dude, Jason Millar.

Together, we question what role humans will occupy once robot experts are capable of performing a multitude of tasks traditionally delegated to human experts. We begin by describing IBM’s Jeopardy! winning robot Watson and Isaac Asimov’s ‘The Evitable Conflict,’ and argue that we are on the precipice of having to decide whether to relinquish some control to expert robots. In Part II of this paper we describe Watson’s development into a go-to-medical expert to demonstrate that there are already many instances where knowledge and control are being relinquished to machines.  In Part III, we specify the kinds of robotic systems that we are concerned with, mainly those in which unpredictability in operations is a feature and not a bug. In Part IV we question when a robot might be considered an expert and in part V we examine the effect of expert robots on the question of relinquishing control of expert decision-making to machine systems. In Part VI we set out two situations in which humans will be working alongside robots and consider what might happen when disagreements between the two might arise. Finally we question how we might assign liability when an expert robot malfunctions.

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? 

In a network society—where social structures and activities are organized around electronically processed information networks this classic philosophical question ceases to be the luxury of an ancient philosopher’s thought experiments.

This article, written as an introduction to the anthology Lessons from the Identity Trail, begins by discussing “the network society” and re-articulates the lesson from the tale of the Ring of Gyges in the context of anonymous online activity. The article goes on to describe the three themes discussed in the anthology: privacy, identity, and anonymity. 

Zac has been a proud Kerrian since his first year in law school. Like many Kerrians, Zac has loved robots since he had the chance to work with them at Lakehead University’s then-new robotics laboratory in the summer of 2004. And no one would gainsay his love for philosophy. These two common interests, along with Ian’s Kerrisma, drew him to seek an RA position with the esteemed professor. It was one of Zac’s best decisions and Ian’s tutelage has played a formative and foundational role in Zac’s legal Kerreer.

How do you stop a robot from destroying you and the rest of civilization? You don’t.

In 2004, twenty-five global law students and I listened to the proprietor of the Baja Beach Club in Barcelona pitch the idea of getting implanted with an RFID tag to allow easy access to the VIP lounge of the club and to act as an easy payment system for booze at the bar. Would my students seriously consider getting chipped?

The technological possibility of an RFID-enabled internet of things looms on the horizon. Companies like Applied Digital Solutions Inc., makers of the VeriChip, have been working hard to ensure this. In this chapter I argue that our privacy laws are not equipped to protect us in this fast-approaching new infrastructure.

Part I offers a brief account of RFID technologies. I define and explain the purpose and use of RFID tags. After describing various RFID applications, I suggest that if RFID becomes a mainstream technology, it could be truly transformative, enabling “the internet of things.” I then offer a brief overview of RFIDs in the realm of health care. This overview provides an example of the issues that can arise regarding the regulation of the many functions of human-implantable RFIDs.

In Part II I provide a brief explication of existing regulatory environment for RFID.  I review existing laws applicable to RFID such as regulations regarding such things as (a) communications, (b) electronic waste, (c) healthy and safety, and (d) privacy. The purpose of this section is to set the stage for Part III, where I set out my belief that current approaches are too narrow and will fall short in protecting our privacy and autonomy interests if implantable RFID becomes part of the infrastructure of the so-called Internet of things.

In order to grasp the potential shortcomings of our current regulatory environment, in Part IV I aim to show that human-implantable RFIDs are just one of the many implantable devices being developed as part of a growing trend to merge human bodies with machine parts.  In Part V, I conclude the chapter by suggesting that, rather than giving up core principles and values just because they are in tension with RFID and other emerging technologies, we must (i) rethink the appropriate application of these principles, and (ii) determine whether there is sufficient justification for moving forward with human-implantable RFID, ubiquitous computing, and the internet of things.

While pursuing all different kinds of dance styles, she decided she better use the analytical part of her brain as well, and nothing says a balanced lifestyle like business school :p
After four years of exploring the business world at the Schulich School of Business at York University, Beatrice knew that there was something missing in her studies. Partly on the advice of her mother, who never tires of pointing out that Beatrice enjoys arguing, and because she had thoroughly enjoyed her experiences in mock trial competitions throughout her studies, she found herself at the University of Ottawa to pursue her J.D.

Beatrice then had the good fortune of finding herself in Ian Kerr’s first year contracts class where she heard about his fascinating research interests. Soon after she got the opportunity to work on a business law textbook with Ian, enabling her to explore her interest in corporate law. She has even had the chance to learn about privacy law by assisting on Ian’s submission to the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics

In the midst of all these activities, Beatrice can be found doing yoga, eating sushi, and, lets be honest, enjoying all kinds of dessert!