Teresa Scassa - Blog

“Location-Based Services and Privacy”, (T. Scassa & Anca Sattler) (2011) 9:2 Canadian Journal of Law and Technology 99-134

The last decade has seen a rapid growth in the number and variety of location-based services that are available to consumers. While some of the older location-based services are tools such as GPS and other navigation systems, more recent innovations include applications that permit users to call up a variety of different information about their current locations, such as the nearest Italian restaurant, or the best deals at a favourite store. Location-based services (LBS) also allow individuals to share their location with friends in a wide range of social networking contexts. Location-based services are already shifting from pull to push applications. Information can now be pushed automatically to users based on their location. The options for such services are virtually limitless, and include mobile-marketing, public transportation applications, information about local points of interest, health care applications connected to remote treatment systems, or tools to find the closest election-day polling booth.

There is no doubt that many location-based services offer real benefits to users. Yet location-based services raise inevitable user privacy concerns. These concerns operate on multiple levels and involve many players. In some applications, privacy issues will arise between individual users, where, for example, applications permit the tracking of movements of family members, co-workers or “friends”. Location-based services may also result in the collection of a new layer of personal information about consumers by private sector companies. Information about individuals and their movements has meaningful commercial value, and the potential for the collection, use and disclosure of this information is significant. Location-based services also raise the spectre of state surveillance of individual activity – either concurrent with an individual’s movements (tracking), or retrospectively, through searching records of individual patterns of movement. These are just some of the contexts in which privacy issues are raised.

In this paper we describe location-based services, their evolution and their future directions. We then outline privacy issues raised by such services. We consider how current Canadian data protection laws apply to location-based services, and indicate where such laws fall short of addressing the full range of issues raised by location-based services. We also explore some technological methods to address the privacy challenges raised by location-based services. The paper concludes with a series of recommendations.

“New First Principles? Assessing the Internet’s Challenges to Jurisdiction”, (T. Scassa & R. Currie) (2011) 42:4 Georgetown Journal of International Law 1017-1082

The globalized and decentralized Internet has become the new locus for a wide range of human activity, including commerce, crime, communications and cultural production. Activities which were once at the core of domestic jurisdiction have moved onto the Internet, and in doing so, have presented numerous challenges to the ability of states to exercise jurisdiction. In writing about these challenges, some scholars have characterized the Internet as a separate “space” and many refer to state jurisdiction over Internet activities as “extraterritorial.” This article examines these challenges in the context of the overall international law of jurisdiction, rather than focusing on any one substantive area. This article argues that while the Internet may push at the boundaries of traditional principles of jurisdiction in public international law, it has not supplanted them. The article explores the principles of jurisdiction, including the evolving concept of “qualified territoriality,” and demonstrates how these principles continue to apply in the Internet context. The article examines how states exercise their authority with respect to Internet activities by addressing governance issues, by engaging in normative ordering for the Internet, and by extending the reach of their domestic laws to capture Internet-based activities. Lastly, the article concludes by offering a set of “first principles,” in the form of policy precepts, to guide the evolution of public international law norms and to address problems particular to the context of the global Internet.

Teresa Scassa and Anca Sattler, “Location-Based Services and Privacy”, forthcoming in (2011) Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

The last decade has seen a rapid growth in the number and variety of location-based services that are available to consumers. These include applications that permit users to call up a variety of different information about their current locations. Location-based services (LBS) also allow individuals to share their location with friends in a wide range of social networking contexts. Location-based services also permit information to be pushed automatically to users based on their location.

Many location-based services offer real benefits to users. Yet LBS raises inevitable user privacy concerns. In some applications, privacy issues will arise between individual users, where, for example, applications permit the tracking of movements of family members, co-workers or “friends”. Location-based services may also result in the collection of a new layer of personal information about consumers by private sector companies. Information about individuals and their movements has meaningful commercial value, and the potential for the collection, use and disclosure of this information is significant. Location-based services also raise the spectre of state surveillance of individual activity – either concurrent with an individual’s movements (tracking), or retrospectively, through searching records of individual patterns of movement.

In this paper we begin by describing location-based services, their evolution and their future directions. We then outline privacy issues raised by such services. We consider how current Canadian data protection laws apply to location-based services, and indicate where such laws fall short of addressing the full range of issues such services raise. We also explore some technological methods to address the privacy challenges raised by location-based services. The paper concludes with a series of recommendations.

"Violence Against Women in Law Schools", (1992), 30 Alberta L.R. 809

"Sentencing Intimate Femicide:  A Comment on R. v. Doyle", (1993) 41 Dalhousie L.J. 270