Le Centre de recherche en droit, technologie et société est heureux d’annoncer que le 6 juin 2022, Kristen Thomasen a soutenu avec succès sa thèse de doctorat en droit intitulée « Private Law & Public Space: The Canadian Privacy Torts in an Era of Personal Remote-Surveillance Technology », rédigée sous la supervision des professeures Jennifer Chandler et Teresa Scassachercheures régulières au CDTS.
Kristen Thomasen a obtenu son diplôme de JD à l'Université d'Ottawa et détient un baccalauréat spécialisé en anthropologie de McMaster University et une maîtrise en affaires internationales de Carleton University. Avant d'entreprendre ses études doctorales, elle a été auxiliaire juridique de l'honorable juge Rosalie Abella à la Cour suprême du Canada et auxiliaire juridique à la Cour du Banc de la Reine de l'Alberta, ainsi que stagiaire à Alberta Justice. Elle est actuellement professeure adjointe en droit à la Peter A. Allard School of Law de University of British Columbia et chercheure associée du Centre.
En plus de ses superviseures, le comité de soutenance de Kristen Thomasen était composé des professeures Jane Bailey et Amy Salyzyn (examinatrice interne), chercheures régulières du CDTS, et des professeurs Carlisle Adams, Thomas Burelli (président) et Woodrow Hartzog (Northeastern University School of Law, examinateur externe).
Résumé (en anglais seulement)
As increasingly sophisticated personal-use technologies like drones and home surveillance systems become more common, so too will interpersonal privacy conflicts. Given the nature of these new personal-use technologies, privacy conflicts will also continue to increasingly occur in public spaces. Tort law is one area of Canadian common law that can address interpersonal conflict and rights-infringements between people with no other legal relationship. However, building on a historical association between privacy and private property, the common and statutory law torts in Canada fail to respond to such conflicts, I argue inappropriately. Privacy is an important dimension to public space, and to supporting social interactions and relationships in public spaces. Failing to recognize public space privacy in tort law leads to an overly narrow understanding of privacy and can be considered contrary to binding precedent that says that the common law should evolve in line with (or at a minimum, not contrary to) Charter values. The Charter values of privacy, substantive equality, and expressive freedom support various reforms to the judicial understanding of the privacy torts in Canada.
Privacy, also understood as “private affairs” or “private facts”, should not be predicated on property, and in fact, can take on greater value in public spaces. Privacy interests should be assessed through a normative lens, with a view to the long-term implications of a precedent for both privacy and substantive equality. Courts should assess privacy through a subjective-objective lens that allows for consideration of the lived experiences and expertise of the parties, their relative power and their relationships. Adopting these principles into the statutory and common law torts would permit tort law to serve as a legal mechanism for addressing interpersonal, technology-mediated privacy conflicts arising in public spaces. This will be a socially valuable development as such conflicts become increasingly common and potentially litigated.