At the Communications Governance Observatory (“CGO”), we’re committed to respecting your privacy. The purpose of this privacy policy (“Policy”) is to inform you about how CGO collects, uses, and discloses personal information on theTechLobby.ca (“the Website”) project.
The TechLobby project (“TechLobby”) is a research project led by Sara Bannerman under McMaster University’s (“McMaster”) Communications Governance Observatory hosted on Thetechlobby.ca (“the Website”).
The collection, use, or disclosure of personal information by the TechLobby project will comply with relevant privacy legislation and McMaster’s policies on privacy, namely its Notice of Collection, Use, and Disclosure Statement. McMaster’s policies take precedence over this Policy.
We may change this Policy at any time by updating it on the Website. By using our website, you agree to any and all changes to the Policy.
General
We generally collect, use and disclose personal information, business identity information, and publicly available informationfor research and scholarly purposes.
Definitions
Personal information means any recorded information about an identifiable individual as defined by Ontario’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA) (2(1)). It “does not include information about an individual who has been dead for more than thirty years” (FIPPA, 2(2)).
Business identify information is “the name, title, contact information or designation of an individual that identifies the individual in a business, professional or official capacity” (FIPPA, 2(3)). Such information is not considered to be personal information (FIPPA, 2(3)).
Publicly available information refers to information that is legally accessible to the public, or information that is publicly accessible in which there is no reasonable expectation of privacy . For example, personal information made available through a public registry such as Canada’s Registry of Lobbyist is publicly available information.
Information We Collect
By continuing on this Website, you are agreeing to our collection, use and disclosure of your personal information. The content on the Website may contain links to third party sites that are owned or operated separately by other organizations. This Policy does not cover the privacy practices of other organizations, nor any sites hyperlinked on the Website.
Newsletter
We collect personal and business identity information (e.g. name, title, and email address) directly from you when you subscribe to its mailing lists (“Listservs”) or when you contact us.
Website
By visiting the Website, we may collect personal information (e.g. IP addresses, browser type, pages visited) indirectly from you. This website uses various third-party tools (e.g. WordPress, Tableau, and PowerBI) to display content and implement other technical functionalities on the Website, such as its Listserv.
Research
We collect personal information, publicly available information and business identify information made available to us through personal and research communications, access-to-information requests, government data registries, or other data sources, for research purposes.
From time to time, we may use personal information or business identity information collected from other sources, such as news articles and organization websites, for research and scholarship purposes.
How We Use Your Information
We use personal information collected directly from you to provide services on this Website and to improve those services. We use personal information, business identity information and publicly available information for research and scholarship purposes. For example, we post content that may include or analyze information collected from open government registries.
We do not use personal information that we collect through the Website (e.g. cookies) for academic research.
How We Share Your Information
We share personal information, business identity information, and publicly available information with service providers to perform technical functionalities and as required by law.
We share personal information, business identity information, and publicly available information on the Website and in an online library used by our research team. The online library contains access to information requests relating to lobbying communications. Journalists, researchers, academics, students, or other authorized individuals may request access to this information for journalistic, research or academic purposes.
We display the personal and business identity information from the Government of Canada lobbying registry and other publicly available open data available publicly on our web site. We also make the information from the lobbying registry available in a downloaded public dataset.
We use third party service providers to operate the Website and display content. Any content published on our website is available to the public and third parties.
We use third party technology to store, manage, process, and share information collected for research or scholarship purposes stated above which may include personal information.
We do not sell any personal information to third parties.
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At any time, you may contact Sara Bannerman if any personal information or data that you provided to us needs to be corrected, updated or deleted in order to fulfil a service or partnership with the TechLobby.
Any questions about this Policy, and any specific questions about the Communications Governance Observatory can be directed to:
Dr. Sara Bannerman
McMaster University, 1280 Main Street, Hamilton ON
Togo Salmon Hall (TSH), Room 302
banners@mcmaster.ca
905-525-9140, ext. 23722
Inquiries about privacy can be directed to McMaster University’s Privacy Office at privacy@mcmaster.ca.