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Zajko, Michael

This article examines the role of internet service providers (ISPs) as guardians of personal information and protectors of privacy, with a particular focus on how telecom companies in Canada have historically negotiated these responsibilities. Communications intermediaries have long been expected to act as privacy custodians by their users, while simultaneously being subject to pressures to collect, utilize, and disclose personal information. As service providers gain custody over increasing volumes of highly-sensitive information, their importance as privacy custodians has been brought into starker relief and explicitly recognized as a core responsibility. Some ISPs have adopted a more positive orientation to this responsibility, actively taking steps to advance it, rather that treating privacy protection as a set of limitations on conduct. However, commitments to privacy stewardship are often neutralized through contradictory legal obligations (such as mandated surveillance access) and are recurrently threatened by commercial pressures to monetize personal information.

Text

2019-01-24

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/68283

Zajko, M. (2018). Internet Service Providers as Privacy Custodians. Canadian Journal of Law and Society / Revue Canadienne Droit Et Société, 33(3), 401-423.

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http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/