The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) is more than just an updated version of the North American Free Trade Agreement. With the inclusion of a digital trade chapter, the deal sets a new standard for e-commerce that seems likely to proliferate in similar agreements around the world. My Washington Post op-ed notes that negotiators have touted the benefits of addressing modern forms of commerce, but the reality is that the USMCA digital trade chapter raises many concerns, locking in rules that will hamstring online policies for decades by restricting privacy safeguards and hampering efforts to establish new regulation in the digital environment.
Post Tagged with: "privacy"
Crunch Time in the NAFTA Negotiations: What’s at Play for Canada on Digital Policy
As the NAFTA negotiations hit a possible home stretch this week, the focal point has been primarily on issues such as dispute resolution, the dairy sector, and the auto industry. However, the digital policy issues will have huge implications for Canada and the outline of the agreement between the U.S. and Mexico suggests that Canada is facing considerable pressure to agree to changes to our copyright, patent, IP enforcement, and digital policy rules, contrary to our preferred negotiation approach.
The U.S. appears to be pushing for a TPP+ approach – the TPP provisions plus some additional changes it did not get as part of those negotiations. This is notable since Canadian authorities admitted that the TPP went far beyond any previous Canadian free trade agreement. The Canadian starting point is presumably the CPTPP, the revised TPP where Canada successfully argued for the suspension of some of the U.S.-backed provisions. This post outlines five of the biggest issues that are likely at play, though many others such as de minimis rules for shipments that affect online commerce will be closely watched and could ultimately require future reforms.
PIPEDA at 20: Time for PIPEDA 2.0
Earlier this year, I had the honour of delivering a keynote address at the IAPP’s 2018 Canadian Privacy Symposium in Toronto. My talk argued that as Canada’s private sector privacy law turns 20 (it was first introduced in the fall of 1998), an updated statute is long overdue, focusing on issues such as enforcement, consent, and big data. A video of the talk has now been posted online. The slides can be accessed here.
Facebook Canada’s Hard Questions Series Turns to Privacy
Earlier this week I had the opportunity to sit down with Rob Sherman, Facebook’s Deputy Chief Privacy Officer, for a discussion co-hosted by the Centre for Law, Technology and Society on the many privacy issues facing the company. The conversation, part of Facebook Canada’s hard questions series, touched on applying Canadian privacy law, Facebook’s terms of use, and the desire for greater control over the use of personal data. The full discussion is embedded below.
Be Careful What You Wish For: The Risk of Ceding Online Content Monitoring to Internet Giants
As elected officials place Internet giants such as Google and Facebook under an increasingly intense microscope, the pressure mounts on those companies to play more proactive roles in policing content on their networks. In recent weeks, the demands have come from seemingly every direction: privacy commissioners seeking rules on the removal of search results, politicians calling for increased efforts to address fake news on Internet platforms, and Internet users wondering why the companies are slow to takedown allegedly defamatory or harmful postings.
My Globe and Mail op-ed notes Internet companies can undoubtedly do more, but laying the responsibility primarily at their feet poses its own risks as governments and regulators effectively cede responsibility for content moderation and policing to private, for-profit companies. In doing so, there is a real chance that the Internet giants will become even more powerful, limiting future competition and entrenching an uncomfortable reliance on private organizations for activities that are traditionally conducted by courts and regulators.
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