Corporate Surveillance
The Issue
While discussion of surveillance traditionally focuses on governments, the most pervasive surveillance of individuals is by corporations, made possible by new technologies and corporate business practices. These are largely invisible to those whose data are collected. The purpose is to predict and modify human behaviour to produce revenue and market dominance. The data are often used for other purposes, including aiding state surveillance.
Why It Matters
Pervasive surveillance of every aspect of our lives challenges long-standing social norms of privacy and individual rights and gives enormous power to those organizations able to make everyday lives transparent to themselves while rendering their own practices increasingly invisible to those whose data they are appropriating. At the same time, individuals become increasingly reliant on the new information and communication tools for social participation, thereby increasing their transparency and dependency.
Our Work
The Centre for Free Expression facilitates public discussion and research on corporate surveillance, its impacts, the implications for democratic practice and individual rights, and the alternatives.
Resources
Facial Recognition: A pathway or threat to our future
Panelists: Brenda McPhail, Tamir Israel, Jacob Schroeder
Moderator: Bernie Lucht
You’re being watched: How we can expose the watchers and protect our rights
Speaker: Evan Light
Discussants: Andrew Clement and Brenda McPhail
Is This the End of the Web as We Know It? How Facebook and Other Large Companies are Closing the Open Web
Corporate control, and the "tyranny of the popular." Fake news, filter bubbles, and apps as "walled gardens." Have we lost a free and democratic internet?
Chilling Free Expression in Canada: Canadian Writers' and Journalists' Views on Mass Surveillance
Centre for Free Expression in collaboration with PEN Canada and the Canadian Association of Journalists.
November 2016
Surveillance Self-Defense
Electronic Frontier Foundation