Protecting Privacy: The Canadian Experience

Abstract

In a lead editorial, “The End of Privacy,” The Economist (May 1, 1999) served up a list of the extreme measures necessary to protect privacy in the face of advancing technology, including measures relating to the Internet. “If you must use the Internet,” it warned, “encrypt your e-mail, reject all ‘cookies’ and never give your real name when registering at Web sites. Better still, use someone else’s computer. At work, assume that calls, voice mail, e-mail, and computer use are all monitored.” The editorial argued that these precautions would merely provide you with the level of privacy available twenty years ago, and went on to conclude that such an effort would be futile. Privacy is doomed and we should “get used to it.”