By Jane Bailey
This installment of the eQ blog series relating to the 2023 UNCSW considers some of the amazing feminist work being done to address to tech-facilitated violence (TFV) through both technological and policy reform initiatives. It focuses in particular on initiatives showcased in a Canadian-hosted event entitled “The Signal for Help: Innovation to Shift from Stigma to Support” which took place on Friday March 10 at Canada’s Perman...
By Jane Bailey
This installment of the eQ blog series relating to the 2023 UNCSW focuses on Artificial Intelligence (AI)1, ethics and equality.
AI can reproduce and reinforce sexist, racist, and other oppressive stereotypes, and promote violence that disproportionately harms members of equality-seeking communities. Prominent documented examples have included:
Latanya Sweeney’s 2013 analysis of discrimination in online ad de...
By Jane Bailey and Sasha Langdon
eQ co-leader Jane Bailey, eQ researcher Suzie Dunn, Interim CEO of eQ partner YWCA Canada Raine Liliefeldt, and Rhiannon Wong of Women’s Shelters Canada and BC Society of Transition Houses were all members of the Canadian Delegation at the 67th UN Commission on the Status of Women (UNCSW) held in New York City from 6-17 March 2023. This year’s priority theme focused on “Innovation and technological change, and...
By Suzie Dunn, Moira Aikenhead & Jane Bailey
Young athletes should be safe from sexual exploitation and privacy invasions. In the digital era, this includes freedom from coaches secretly recording them in changerooms.
On March 10th, the Supreme Court of Canada endorsed these statements in R v Downes.
Canada’s top court found that the Criminal Code’s voyeurism provisions prohibit people from secretly recording others in “quintessentially ‘...
By Alexa Dodge
Dr. Alexa Dodge, a postdoctoral fellow at Dalhousie University, recently released her report Deleting Digital Harm: A Review of Nova Scotia’s CyberScan Unit. Dodge shows that, in Canada, much of the government response to cyberbullying and nonconsensual intimate image distribution has focused on legal responses as a core solution (e.g. the federal Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act (2014) and various civil ...
By Taylor Sullivan
On January 28, 2021, the Ontario Superior Court recognized a new tort to effectively address internet defamation and harassment. The creation of the tort of harassment in internet communications was motivated by Nadire Atas’ online behaviour, which the Court characterised as "campaigns of malicious harassment and defamation" with the intent to cause emotional and psychological harm to persons against whom she had grievances. In th...
By Robert Porter & Sarah Keeshan
A lone university professor walks across an emphatically deserted university campus: his casual shorts dissonant under a more formal button-down shirt and blazer. He walks into a darkened, empty lecture hall, arranges his teaching materials, and sits down facing an AI webcam to begin his class. He cues the countdown to the start of the live-streamed lecture and begins to talk directly into the camera – no powerp...
By Hannah Kurosu
When I was in 5th grade, my parents took me sailing around the Pacific. I did not have much say in the matter as my parents decided we’d go on this adventure before I was even born. So during my entire 6th-grade year, I was living on a catamaran and traveling the French Polynesian Islands. With no phone, no computer, and no Internet.
Eventually, my parents choose to return home, and I was re-enrolled to my original school in 7th grade....
By Vanessa Ford
No stranger to controversy, TikTok has made headlines for being banned in India and for hosting content published by underage users in the UK. This time, US senators have labelled the app, and its parent company, a national security concern and an investigation is underway. Oddly enough, TikTok follows the same business model as so many of its social media predecessors … so why all the hype?
What is TikTok?
While I consider myself plugg...
By Robert Porter
It may well be the most wonderful time of the year, but it’s also the time of year where you may be gifted – or planning to gift – an internet connected device that connects to the “Internet of Things.” The explosion of the IoT marketplace has led to the creation of the “smarthome,” which can contain everything from smart speakers, smart TVs, smart mattresses and smart kitchen appliances: all promising to turn everyday life into a tech...
