Transparent Lives: Surveillance in Canada

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The work of a multidisciplinary research team, Transparent Lives explains how surveillance is expanding—mostly unchecked—into every facet of our lives. Although many Canadians are aware that government agencies are able to conduct mass surveillance using phone and online data, relatively few of us recognize the extent to which our privacy has been invaded by routine forms of monitoring. We cannot walk down a city street, attend a class, pay with a credit card, hop on an airplane, or make a phone call without data being captured and processed. Where does such information go, and who makes use of it? Who gains, and who loses? The New Transparency Project set out to investigate the myriad of ways in which both government and private sector organizations gather, monitor, analyze, and share information about ordinary citizens.

This research, which extended over several years, culminated in the identification of nine key trends in the contemporary practice of surveillance—trends that, together, raise urgent questions of both privacy and social justice. Perhaps the loss of control over our personal information is merely the price we pay for using social media and other forms of electronic communication. Or should we instead be wary of systems that make us visible, and thus vulnerable, to others as never before? Transparent Lives is intended to inform policymakers, journalists, civil liberties groups, and educators about the current state of surveillance in Canada. Above all, though, it aims to alert unsuspecting citizens to the ubiquitous and largely invisible practices of monitoring that surround them.