I opened an email from Staples offering me a great deal on copier paper and a few coupons for office supplies.

But there was an error in the phone number listed in the email. Instead of reaching the order department, I found myself being called a hot, sexy guy. I have been called a lot of things, but hot and sexy aren’t usually the adjectives. It was a different kind of order desk from what I expected.

This incident serves as a good reminder to all of us. When you send a message to a million of your closest friends, make sure you proofread it carefully.

I wonder if they will issue a correction. Or if the other people will accept Staples’ coupons?

During my travels this past summer, I visited a Druze village outside of Haifa that has dismantled its cell phone towers. The village is located at the top of a mountain and it had been a popular place to host towers from all of the national mobile services providers.

The ban was an extreme response to a rash of health problems in the community and it is unclear whether the community is any healthier now without mobile antennae or indeed, are there increased health risks associated with losing access to the usually outstanding mobile signal strength in the rest of the country. That kind of epidemiological study is beyond the scope of this posting.

Instead, I’ll focus on the balance for consumers’ rights. Do citizens have a right to access information about the towers in their neighbourhoods?

Recently, the UK telecom regulator, Ofcom, did battle with the country’s information commissioner over full public access to a national database of mobile base station locations. Ofcom first refused the request, claiming that the information was already publicly available. After an internal review, it found that not all of the requested data was available, and so it then refused based on an exemption for National Security and Public Safety and an exemption for Intellectual Property Rights.

Ofcom lost its appeal. As a result, the telecom regulator has been ordered to disclose the location, ownership and technical attributes of mobile phone cellular base stations.

Would Industry Canada lead an initiative to provide equivalent access to tower location information in Canada? Do our collective rights to access antenna location information outweigh any perceived confidentiality due to competitive concerns or issues of national security?

In Canada, who would or who should lead the discussion of public access to such information?

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Ofcom, mobile antenna

Last week’s international privacy conference in Montreal provided a gastronomic backdrop for me to reconnect with a good friend, Stewart Dresner who was visiting from the UK.

Stewart’s firm, Privacy Laws and Business, is celebrating 20 years of advising companies and governments on issues dealing with data protection and privacy.

Recently, there have been a number of articles in PL&B; publications examining the privacy issues associated with social networking sites – from the perspective of companies hosting such services and organizations that have blocked access to such sites from the workplace.

In its September 2007 UK report, PL&B; noted

the interactive nature of these networks allows management effectively to listen in on staff “discussions” of grievances and how they might be addressed, which are much more honest and open than the company’s internal complaints procedure.

However,

the public nature of the networks mean that the media can bring this to the attention of management, often sooner than they would otherwise have heard of it.

How does your firm deal with Facebook? Do you embrace the power and channel it? Do you monitor the chatter about your firm?

Michael Geist delivered the closing remarks at the Montreal conference. He writes more about some of the issues discussed at the conference on his blog and in his Law Bytes column this week. Alec Saunders also writes today on a similar topic with The Social Networking “Bill of Rights”.

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privacy, Facebook, Stewart Dresner, Privacy Laws and Business, privacy policy, social networking

Once again, the CRTC has said no to Bell Aliant’s request for forbearance.

Actually, the language that the CRTC uses is more like Barbara Colorosa‘s parenting books – the answer is yes, dear, of course you can have forbearance. Just as soon as you meet the required competitor quality of service (Q of S) criteria.

In other words, you can have the cookie when you can show that you aren’t beating up the other kids in the playground.

In this particular instance, Bell Aliant was found to have been playing nicely most of the time, but it seems to have trouble meeting the guidelines for AT&T; Global Services.

You know how there was always that one trouble maker at school who seemed to set you off? Not speaking from experience, of course. Aliant’s response was that the problem is compounded by the small number of orders placed by AT&T; miss one and the numbers are blown.

It looks like Bell Aliant is just going to have to make sure it doesn’t miss any.

Technorati Tags:
Bell Aliant, MTS Allstream, AT&T; Global Services, forbearance, QoS