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Information is the new currency of our economy. Since the dawn of the digital era, information has become increasingly available, and at a scale previously unimaginable. According to IBM, each day, 2.5 quintillion bytes of information are being created and, over 90 percent of the information currently in existence has been created in the past two years.

This paper introduces the concept of Privacy-Protective Surveillance (PPS) – a positive-sum, “win-win” alternative to current counter-terrorism surveillance systems – and proposes a methodology for its implementation within the framework of Privacy by Design.

Surveillance is growing, as are the technologies that extend its reach. But surveillance that facilitates the sustained monitoring of people engaged in everyday activities in public is, in Justice Gérard La Forest’s unforgettable words, “an unthinkable prospect in a free and open society such as ours.”

There is great interest in how the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, Canada (IPC) has approached privacy and public safety issues, by bringing them together in a positive-sum manner. In this paper, the IPC shares its approach to applying Privacy by Design (PbD) which is relevant in the context of public safety and law enforcement, including the application of PbD to surveillance programs and the use of associated technologies.