Two months ago, I wrote about gunfire that hit the doors of several Toronto-area synagogues, including the Shaarei Shomayim, the synagogue where I was married. That round of violence led many to affirm yet again that supportive words alone could no longer meet the moment. My Hub Canada op-ed notes that last week, a Senate committee delivered its answer: a 73-page report with 22 recommendations, including a Digital Safety Commission, expanded hate-crime units, and the reinstatement of the Special Envoy on Combatting Antisemitism. These are serious proposals. But a report documenting antisemitism in Canada that cannot name the full problem cannot solve it.
Columns
Is Data De-Identification Dead?: Why the AI Privacy Risk Isn’t What It Learns, But What It Figures Out
In 1997, an MIT graduate student named Latanya Sweeney stunned the privacy world by matching publicly available voter rolls with hospital records stripped of names and addresses to identify the supposedly anonymous medical history of the then-governor of Massachusetts. Three years later, she expanded on that finding by demonstrating that 87 per cent of the U.S. population could be uniquely identified using just three data points: ZIP code, date of birth and gender.
My Globe and Mail op-ed notes that Ms. Sweeney’s work shaped privacy frameworks worldwide, which responded with de-identification standards designed to manage the risk by removing obvious identifiers, applying statistical tests and treating the resulting data as safe to use. Indeed, a core tenet of modern privacy regulation rests on the premise that de-identified data can be used, disclosed and commercialized without compromising individual privacy.
Heads They Win, Tails We Lose: What Lies Behind the U.S. Trade Battle For Control over Data
My Globe and Mail op-ed begins by noting that the Trump administration’s emphasis on tariffs continues to garner headlines, but a more consequential trade battle over data control is playing out with far less public attention. Last week, the U.S. released its annual report on trade barriers and for the first time, Canada was listed alongside dozens of other countries for seeking greater control over its own data. The message is clear: When countries enact laws that restrict where data is stored and who can access that information, the U.S. treats them as a trade threat.
Why the Verdict on Social Media Defective Design Harming Children Gets the Instinct Right But the Law Wrong
A California jury’s decision last week to hold Meta and YouTube liable for harms to a young woman’s mental health has been greeted as a watershed moment. Child safety advocates have called it Big Tech’s “Big Tobacco moment.” Parents who lost children to what they attribute to social media addiction embraced outside the courthouse. Commentators who have long argued that social media companies bear responsibility for the damage their services inflict on young users see the verdict as vindication.
My Globe and Mail op-ed notes that the instinct behind the decision is understandable. The evidence at trial was damning, as internal Meta documents showed the company knew Instagram was harming adolescents but continued targeting them anyway. But the legal theory the jury endorsed – that social media platforms are defectively designed products – is the wrong tool for a real problem, and building on it risks undermining the very accountability the strategy seeks to deliver.
Words Are Not Enough: Countering Relentless Antisemitic Violence in Canada With Action
On a hot August day nearly 32 years ago, I was married at the Shaarei Shomayim synagogue in Toronto. My Globe and Mail op-ed notes that I leafed through my wedding album this weekend as I grappled with the news that gunfire targeted the synagogue on Friday night, the third such attack on a synagogue in Toronto in a matter of days. The photos of my grandparents – Holocaust survivors who rebuilt their lives in Canada – looked back at me as if to warn that the risks are real.
The gun violence sparked the usual political tweets denouncing the shooting, pledging support, and unconvincingly stating that antisemitism has no place in Canada. Yet the predominant emotion that would have once greeted this news – shock – is no more. Over the past two-and-a-half years, Canadian Jewish communities from coast to coast have faced relentless antisemitic incidents: schools hit with gunfire, synagogues firebombed, community centres and old-age homes vandalized, hospitals protested, summer camps threatened, Jewish students and campus groups vilified, and Jewish-owned businesses boycotted.
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