Issues

For COVID-19 issues, please see this separate page.

• Open access, open data, open government
• Access to the Internet as a human right; the digital divide; net neutrality
• Information, media, & digital literacies
• Data protection
• Whose big data?
• Surveillance
• Technology abuses
• Identity & privacy rights
• Cybersecurity
• Cyberbullying
• Intellectual property, copyright, fair dealing/fair use
• Social media
• Data activism
• Telecommunications regulation
• Ethics & values related to information
• Future of the book

  

Current controversies & CIPS in the news

Here is a sample of selected critical information policy issues in the news.

Online freedom of speech

• Social media's decision to dump Trump too little, too late: U of T's Megan Boler (U of T News, January 2021)
• Twitter ban on Trump signals escalating debate on online speech that will be one for the ages (CBC, January 2021)

• Users, not tech executives, should decide what constitutes free speech online (MIT Tech Review, January 2021)

Identity & privacy rights

• Dressing for the surveillance age (New Yorker)
• New infrastructure will enhance privacy in today's internet of things (Cylab @ Carnegie Mellon)

Digital futures

• Contract for the web (Tim Berners Lee & the World Wide Web Foundation)
• Shareable quotes from experts about the next 50 years of digital life (Pew Research Center)
• This is the future of the internet (World Economic Forum)
• What will the internet look like in 2040? (BBC)

Digital labour

• Working conditions on digital labour platforms: Opportunities, challenges, and the quest for decent work (Centre for Economic Policy Research) 
• The digital labor of digital learning (Digital Education Research @ Monash)
• As more work moves online, the threat of 'digital sweatshops' loom (Motherboard)

Social media & social justice activism

• Activism in the social media age (Pew Research Center)
• Arab Spring (Wired)
• Small change (Malcolm Gladwell's New Yorker article)
• Crowdsourcing (HuffPost)

Online misogyny

• Donna Zuckerberg: 'Social media has elevated misogyny to new levels of violence' (The Guardian)
• Research reveals huge scale of social media misogyny (The Guardian)
• Reporting, reviewing, and responding to harassment on Twitter (Women, Action, & the Media report)
• GamerGate: 'Press must tackle misogyny,' says developer (BBC News)

Technology abuses

• Huawei funds $56 million in academic research: That has some experts concerned (CBC)
• 'The goal is to automate us': Welcome to the age of surveillance capitalism (Guardian)
• How smart technology gets you to continue paying long after point of sale (CBC)
• Should we be worried about computerized facial recognition? (New Yorker)
• 'Stalked within your own home': Woman says abusive ex uses smart home technology against her (CBC)
• We can't stop hate spreading until we get tough with technology giants (The Guardian)
• A majority of teens have experienced cyberbullying (Pew Research Center)

Digital divide / Digital inclusion

• Smartphone ownership is growing rapidly around the world, but not always equally  (PEW Research Center)
• Telecom costs in Canada forcing low income households to spend 'absurd' amounts (Huffington Post Canada)
• Toronto Public Library expanding program that lends out wireless internet (CBC)
• Is high-speed Internet a basic right? CRTC to weigh in (Globe & Mail)
• Unemployed Detroit residents are trapped by a digital divide (New York Times)
• School board bans snow days, will make kids work online instead (Motherboard)
• Amazon teams up with government to deploy dangerous new facial recognition technology (ACLU)
• How to fight Amazon (before you turn 29) (Atlantic)
• E-book price war (NPR)
• Cheap words (New Yorker)

Facebook 

• How to turn off Facebook's face recognition features (Wired)
• The Cambridge Analytica Files (The Guardian)
• Can Mark Zuckerberg fix Facebook before it breaks democracy? (New Yorker)

Google

• Privacy advocates sound alarm on Google's acquisition of FitBit (Common Dreams)
• Google and the misinformed public (Safiya Noble)
• How Google took over the classroom (New York Times)
• Inheritance and loss: A brief survey of Google Books (First Monday)
• Google's Book Search: A disaster for scholars (Chronicle of Higher Education)

Right to be forgotten

• Everything you need to know about the 'right to be forgotten' (General Data Protection Regulation)
• Articles from The Guardian
• European Commission factsheet
• Article 19

CRTC

• 2020 news releases
• Canada's wireless operators hit back at CRTC access mandate (Globe & Mail)
• CRTC looks to the future with ruling on high-speed Internet access (Toronto Star)

Trans-Pacific-Partnership

• Canada and the TPP: My talk on a digital policy failure (Michael Geist)
• TPP signed: The 'biggest global threat to the Internet'... (The Independent)

Wikileaks

• Articles from The Guardian
• No secrets (New Yorker article)

Edward Snowden & the NSA

• Snowden Digital Surveillance Archive  (see iSchool article about the archive)
• NSA files decoded (The Guardian)
• Snowden interview with John Oliver
• Citizenfour (Snowden documentary film - U of T Media Commons has a copy)