I’m a law professor at the University of Ottawa where I hold the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law. I write a weekly technology column for the Toronto Star and Ottawa Citizen, blog actively at michaelgeist.ca, tweet @mgeist, and serve on boards including the CANARIE Board of Directors, the Canadian Legal Information Institute Board of Directors, and the Privacy Commissioner of Canada’s Expert Advisory Board.
I recently joined www.SurfEasy.com (a very cool privacy centric VPN provider) as an Advisor. If you have any questions about SurfEasy, the founder of the company Chris Houston is here as well. He’s also brought some discounts and free account codes to hand out.
6:04 pm: Thanks to everyone for the discussion. SurfEasy’s provided a 20% discount code for all redditors, good until July 15th. Just use promo code bacon20
Before I forget - as a thank you for joining the discussion we’re offering a 20% discount to Reddit for our Total VPN solution (good for 5 devices, unlimited bandwidth). Sign up for free at www.surfeasy.com and if you upgrade to pay just use
SurfEasy promotes itself as a no-log service, but it does retain the ability to enable logging and disclose it “to governmental authorities or agencies, including law enforcement agencies, at their request or pursuant to a court order, subpoena or other legal process, if there is a good faith belief that such collection or disclosure is required by law”. Given that SurfEasy is based in Canada and vulnerable to the on-going spying scandal, this seems like a false sense of security. How does it compare to the aforementioned list of providers?
Hello! What advice would you give someone looking to get into this area of law professionally. I came across some of your work when writing my dissertation last year which was on privacy with social networking.
I’m studying Computer Science in university this fall, but have always been interested in digital rights and the various legal aspects of the web. I’ve thought about going into law school in order to become a lawyer that specializes in digital rights, technology, privacy, etc. but since law isn’t really my passion (the technology is) I wonder if the effort of law school would be worth it for such a niche role. What can a CS major do to get involved with digital rights advocacy, and how important is it to study law when doing so?
Question for Chris:
Care to shed some light on the “bank-grade encryption” mentioned on the SurfEasy site? Knowing exactly what’s going on behind the scenes would make me a lot more comfortable signing up for the service. How is traffic encrypted through your servers? Do employees have access to traffic data?
A free account code would also be nice incentive for me to sign up
In 2001 you published “Is There a There There?” arguing for a targeted approach for courts finding personal jurisdiction in Internet-related cases back when the Internet and Internet-related litigation was still in its infancy. You followed it up in 2003 with Cyberlaw 2.0. 10 years later, has your opinion changed of jurisdiction and the Internet, given how the Internet has evolved in the last decade? How would you view the ability of a court to have jurisdiction over a party with a single transaction on eBay. Or, same question, for a transaction involving a dispute in a virtual world like Second Life?
Noticed nobody had asked a question about the Trans-Pacific Partnership yet. What are your main concerns about that, and specifically about Canada’s participation? What do you think is the most likely outcome of the negotiations?
Hello Michael! I’ve been a long time follower on both your blog and Twitter. I guess this question is pretty straight-forward.
Do you think that with the recent NSA revelations, and the public opinion being that it’s “not such a big deal”, that we’re reaching a turning point that anonimity and privacy will soon be a thing of the past?
For years you’ve worked hard to keep the public informed and knowledgable about what’s going on, their digital rights, and so on, but yet the vast majority don’t seem to care, or at least, don’t mind it, in the “interests of national/international security”.
The media has done an amazing job of towing the government line that this is all for a good reason, without much investigative journalism happening.
Michael, first I want to say thank you for being an articulate and vocal proponent of legal perspectives that benefit people, rather than corporations.
How can ordinary Canadians best exercise the rights we have in order to strengthen our freedom and privacy?
With the Voltage hearing out of the way, what changes do you expect to Canadian Privacy laws and disclosure moving forward? Do you feel it will set a precedent?
I love law shows and always wonder how close these are related to real law events.