Faculty Lounge, Flavelle House.
This is an invitational event as seating is limited. Please contact Andrea Slane at
andrea.slane@utoronto.ca if you are interested in attending.
Agenda and Abstracts
9:00 – 9:05 Welcome and Intro – Abraham Drassinower (Law, U of T)
9:05 – 9:50 -- Paper and Discussion #1:
Simon Stern (Law, U of T)
Identity Fraud in 18th Century Literature: examination of impersonation and the manipulation of sentiments as means to inheritance in sentimental novels.
9:50 – 10:35 -- Paper and Discussion #2:
Andrew Clement (Information Studies, U of T)
I'd like to talk about the conceptual and practical development of identity rights, related to but distinct from privacy rights. In this treatment identity is more than just unique individuation but incorporates recognition of particular social standings and the enduring assignment to particular categories of person. I situate a right to identity integrity in a (lay) reading of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and will explore the implications of this for the articulation of Fair Identity Practice principles, modeled on but extending beyond the privacy-oriented Fair Information Practice principles found in PIPEDA and the CSA Model Code.
Coffee Break: 10:35 – 10:45
10:45 – 11:30 Paper and Discussion #3:
Lisa Austin (Law, U of T)
I will argue that privacy rights are best understood in terms of protecting an individual’s capacity for identity construction, or self-presentation. The conception of the value of privacy can help to show why two enduringly popular definitions of privacy—privacy as control over personal information and privacy as limited access to the self—are inadequate. I will then offer some comments regarding how this identity-based view of privacy fits within Canada’s dominant legal models for privacy protection including tort law, constitutional law and data protection statutes.
11:30 - 12:15 Paper and Discussion #4:
Pina D’Agostino (Law, Osgoode/York) (with Barry Wellman (Sociology, U of T)
Our paper looks at identity rights through social network theory. It investigates the application of a social network approach to human rights. It inquires whether social network analysis might help promote human rights analysis and action. Based on a strain of social network scholarship concerned with the paradigm shift from group-centred relations to networked individualism, we explore a third theory on "network rights" that reconfigures traditional "individual rights-based" and "community-rights based" approaches for human rights scholars and practitioners. This shift to deploying network rights could make a difference for human rights movements and help promote sustained action and results.
12:15 – 1:00 Paper and Discussion #5:
David J. Phillips (Information Studies, U of T)
Infrastructures of identity: I will discuss the mediation of identity – the necessary forms of negotiation, communication, and exchange that facilitate more or less stable, understandable, and useful identities and social positions. I will then discuss how new forms of telecommunications (especially ubiquitous, location-aware, or mobile computing) potentially structure these interactions. Finally, I review possible policy or regulatory tools that might address the shifts in social power that these new communicative infrastructures entail.
Lunch will be provided from 1:00 – 2:00.
Papers will be distributed to participants prior to the event. Please RSVP by October 23, 2008 to centre.ilp@utoronto.ca