Citizen Lab Director Ron Deibert will join an esteemed group of guests in an event on International Privacy Day.

Ann Cavoukian, Ph.D., Ontario Information & Privacy Commissioner, is hosting a symposium to engage Canadians in this important debate. The symposium will explore new ways forward, encouraging a more open dialogue with all Canadian security and intelligence organizations, and most important, with the public.

Big Surveillance Demands Big Privacy – Enter Privacy-Protective Surveillance
January 28, 2014 from 9:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. at the MaRS Discovery District in Toronto, Canada.

Surveillance by the state is a global issue, with personal information being shared across jurisdictions, at times in a manner that contravenes the most basic principles of privacy and freedom. Canadians can no longer be complacent and merely criticize the United States for allowing the NSA so much unsupervised power. We know startlingly little about what our own government is doing – and, potentially, what foreign intelligence agencies are doing – with our personal information. It is disturbing that there has been so little debate on this important issue, even in Parliament. It is time for citizens to speak out so that we can protect our freedom and take back our privacy. In a free and open society, we deserve no less. Transparency, oversight, accountability – we deserve no less.

Ron Deibert will be joined by Andrew Clement, Professor, Faculty of Information, University of Toronto, Nathalie Des Rosiers, Dean, Faculty of Law, Common Law, University of Ottawa, Khaled El Emam, Associate Professor, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa and David TS Fraser, Partner, McInnes Cooper. The event also features special video presentations from: William Binney, Mathematician/Analyst, Former Intelligence Official with the NSA and Dr. Alexander Dix, Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, Berlin, Germany.

For more information, see here.