Bio
Brenda McPhail is the director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association’s Privacy, Surveillance and Technology Project. Her recent work includes guiding the Canadian Civil Liberties Association’s interventions in key court cases that raise privacy issues, most recently at the Supreme Court of Canada in R v. Marakah and R v. Jones, which focused on privacy rights in sent text messages; research into surveillance of dissent, government information sharing, digital surveillance capabilities and privacy in relation to emergent technologies; and developing resources and presentations to drive public awareness about the importance of privacy as a social good.
She received her Ph.D. from the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information. In her peer-reviewed, published work and at international conferences, she has explored do-it-yourself approaches to privacy-protective identification, privacy risks of radio frequency identification-enhanced driver’s licences, identity performance in government service interactions, Canadian ePassport development, attitudes toward video surveillance, and privacy issues inherent in connected cars and usage-based insurance.