The Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) has obtained a major grant from The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) as part of their 2015-2016 Contributions Program for a research project entitled “Open Data, Open Citizens? The Private Sector Beneficiaries of Government Open Data Policies and the Consequences for Privacy”.
CIPPIC will survey government open data portals and their exploitation by commercial private sector data analytic firms, and assess potential implications for Canadians’ privacy. Specifically, the project will: (a) survey data made available through open data portals of different levels of government in Canada with a view to identifying open data that relates to individuals and therefore has potential privacy consequences, and; (b) assess the collection, use and disclosure of open data by private sector “big data” analytics enterprises. For this project, CIPPIC is particularly interested in discovering the extent to which private sector actors are combining open datasets with other datasets with consequent risk of “re-identifying” individuals.
Considered to be one of the foremost privacy research funding programs in the world, the Contributions Program explores a wide range of emerging privacy issues. The OPC received 39 proposals for the 2015-16 funding cycle of the Contributions Program. Those proposals were evaluated by the Privacy Commissioner's Office, as well as an external peer review panel of privacy experts.
For more information about the Contributions Program, click here.
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