The Privacy Advisor Podcast

For those following along with digital policy in Canada, the last few weeks have been chock full of developments. In early June, the Canadian government introduced its AI for All strategy, aimed at driving economic growth, bolstering digital sovereignty and increasing trust and safety. The government also released Bill C-34 - the Safe Social Media Act, which would ban children under age 16 from accessing certain social media platforms, and Bill C-36, which would reform the nation's privacy laws, including a significant restructure of its enforcement framework. Kris Klein is the IAPP Country Leader for Canada and partner at nNovation. I recently caught up with Kris to discuss these converging policy developments and what we can expect from the AI strategy and privacy reforms.

Ruby Zefo has long been a leader in the fields of privacy, data protection and cybersecurity. She was the first chief privacy officer at Uber, where she served from 2018, helping lead the company's efforts to protect and enable user data. She has done so while Uber continues to innovate its technology amid a dramatic increase in digital laws around the world. Earlier this year, Zefo announced her retirement from Uber and her next move as a fellow at Stanford University's Distinguished Careers Institute. IAPP Editorial Director Jedidiah Bracy caught up with Zefo to discuss her work building a privacy team at Uber and how she has navigated—and led—in an increasingly complex and challenging world.

As the privacy profession surpasses the quarter-century mark and enters into a brave new world of artificial intelligence and digital entropy, it's worth taking a look back to assess how far the profession has come. That's exactly what long-time privacy pro Stephen Bolinger embarked upon when he decided to film a documentary on the rise of the privacy profession. "Privacy People" explores the veritable plethora of interpretations of the privacy concept through the voices of some of the profession's most seasoned and respected privacy leaders. Bolinger said he felt there was a really compelling story to tell. By juxtaposing on-the-street interviews with individuals to sit down discussions with some of privacy's luminaries in government, industry, civil society and academia, "Privacy People" looks at how this dynamic profession has grown and changed over the years, as well as recognizing the prominent role women have played throughout its evolution. Earlier this year, IAPP Editorial Director Jedidiah Bracy sat down with Bolinger to discuss the impetus for his documentary and how he went about filming "Privacy People."

Autonomous robots with embedded artificial intelligence are growing more common across industry sectors. So-called "embodied AI," collects vast amounts of data through its sensors and changes how humans interact with technology. As embodied AI becomes more common and continues to drive innovation, it also creates new challenges for ethical uses of data and personal privacy. Erin Relford is a privacy engineer at Google and has worked in the embodied AI space. In a recent article for the IAPP, she wrote that "existing privacy mitigations may be insufficient for human-robot interactions." That's why she helped create a robotics privacy framework to "promote privacy-preserving design" in the "responsible deployment of robotics with embedded AI. IAPP Editorial Director Jedidiah Bracy caught up with Erin to discuss her work in this vanguard space.

Australia made waves in 2024 after it passed an amendment to the Online Safety Act of 2021, which introduces a legal minimum age of 16 to create and use an account for certain social media platforms in Australia. It also requires platforms within scope to implement age-gating practices. As Australia's first eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman-Grant, whose agency administers the Online Safety Act and the Social Media Minimum Age amendment, has been at the forefront of regulating online safety since her appointment in 2017. With a background in the private sector, including stints at Microsoft, Twitter and Adobe, Inman-Grant has a wide-ranging view of the online space and the harms within it. IAPP Editorial Director Jedidiah Bracy recently caught up with Commissioner Inman-Grant to discuss her work in online safety, what's currently underway regarding age-gating requirements for social media and the effects AI will have for online safety and harms.

It's hard to believe we've reached the final weeks of 2024, a year filled with policy and legal developments across the map. From the continued emergence of AI governance, to location privacy enforcement, children's online safety to novel forms of privacy litigation, no doubt this was a year that kept privacy and AI governance pros very busy. One such professional in the space is Goodwin Partner Omer Tene. He's been immersed in many of these thorny issues, and as always, has thoughts about what's transpired in 2024 and what that means for the year ahead. I caught up with Tene to discuss the year in digital policy. Here's what he had to say.

As the U.S. enters the final stretch of the 2024 election cycle, we face a tight race at the presidential and congressional levels. With a razor-thin margin separating Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump, we decided to take a look at the possible policy positions of each campaign with regard to privacy and artificial intelligence governance. Of course, reading tea leaves is no easy feat, but while attending IAPP Privacy. Security. Risk. 2024 in Los Angeles, California, IAPP Editorial Director Jedidiah Bracy sat down with Managing Director, D.C., Cobun Zweifel-Keegan, CIPP/US, CIPM, to gain his insight on each camp's policy positions, from the administrative state to international data transfers and beyond. Here's what he had to say.

In May 2024, the U.S. National Institute for Standards and Technology launched a new program called ARIA, which is short for Assessing Risks and Impacts of AI. The aim of the program is to advance sociotechnical testing and evaluation of artificial intelligence by developing methods to quantify how a given system works within real-world contexts. Potential outputs include scalable guidelines, tools, methodologies and metrics. Reva Schwartz is a research scientist and principal investigator for AI bias at NIST and the ARIA program lead. In recent years, she's also helped with NIST's AI Risk Management Framework. IAPP Editorial Director Jedidiah Bracy recently caught up with Reva to discuss the program, what it entails, how it will work and who will be involved.