Privacy in the Age of the Internet

Abstract

This paper addresses the claim that there is “zero privacy” for Canadians on the internet. For the interpersonal computing era 1992 to 2007, the relationship between the three major agents (i.e., individual users, federal government, and business) operating on the internet was examined. Three questions guided the research: how has the popular press educated Canadians about internet privacy? what has been the response of the federal government? how have online companies protected the privacy of Canadians? Content analyses of (a) Maclean’s magazine, (b) the Privacy Commissioner's Annual Reports to Parliament, (c) and the privacy policies of the most visited websites were conducted. Complex Adaptive Systems theory indicated that privacy is an emergent property arising from the interaction of the agents and that the internet is an environment where the agents' interactions lead to limited privacy.