Trigger warning, another fairy tale coming up. I am not sure how those Grimm Brothers got away with all their gruesome (and our favourite) tales being uncensored. Hansel and Gretel are those famous child protagonists that, at the end of the tale, toss a witch into the heated oven (it was either them or her, self defence in legal terms).
I am not sure why so many of the bad dudes are females in many fairy tales, maybe there was a reason those Grimm Brothers had so much spare time to write fairy tales, perhaps bad luck landing a mate, a little resentment featured in their stories? Or, maybe the women were too busy to write, or, their works were not published (by the likely male publishers) about all the wicked warlocks.
The tale of Hansel and Gretel starts with children being abandoned in the forest by their parents who could no longer feed them (without self-sacrifice) due to a famine. The stepmother encouraged the father to abandon them. The children heard about the plan. Hansel thought to leave a trail of breadcrumbs (some versions refer to pebbles) to find their way back out in the end. The witch lived in a beautiful home deep in the forest constructed of candy and cookies, built to lure a child.
As we spend so much of our time in the digital world, we leave digital breadcrumbs that allow others, for instance marketers, to find their way back to us by tracing our activities, most often to target advertising. We agree to all kinds of “terms of use” that allow others, including the wicked witch types, to use “cookies” to track our activities across a website and while conducting various activities online so that they can lure us, or use our data, for their self interests.
Many users hope to stay anonymous to preserve their privacy including so they can “troll” others, the social platform X (formerly known as Twitter; this might be like Prince when he was a symbol and we will be saying “formerly known as” forever) including many prime examples of such activity.
We have our IP addresses in addition to our physical addresses. Recently, in the criminal fraud case of R. v. Bykovets, the Supreme Court of Canada (by way of appeal from the Alberta Court of Appeal) overturned (by majority decision) the lower courts’ decisions which had upheld police action in obtaining production orders compelling an Internet service provider to disclose the names and physical addresses for customers’ IP addresses. The police used this information to obtain search warrants. The SCC agreed with the appeal from conviction on the issue of whether there was a reasonable expectation of privacy with respect to one’s IP address. As there was no search warrant for the IP address, the conviction was overturned and a new trial ordered.
Life is always a balance of competing interests, in this case, the right to privacy as against the need for safety. The digital breadcrumbs individuals leave assist law enforcement in tracking offenders engaged in fraud, child luring, human trafficking, etc. The court held that the digital age also makes it easier for law enforcement to obtain search warrants so that the additional onus did not outweigh our reasonable expectations of privacy. Few of us realize how little privacy we have over our data on the internet, meanwhile others will continue to take advantage of how much they have, not always for the improvement of society.
Donna Purcell, K.C., (aka Lady Justice) is a Central Alberta lawyer and Chief Innovation Officer with Donna Purcell QC Law. If you have legal questions, contact dpurcell@dpqclaw.com.