Skip to main content

Andrea Slane
PhD, JD

Professor

Graduate Program Director, Master of Arts in Social Practice and Innovation

Legal Studies

Faculty of Social Science and Humanities

LinkedIn

Contact information

Bordessa Hall - Room 507
Downtown Oshawa
55 Bond Street East
Oshawa, ON

905.721.8668 ext. 2844

andrea.slane@ontariotechu.ca

Background

Dr. Andrea Slane joined Ontario Tech's Faculty of Social Science and Humanities Legal Studies program in 2009. Her research focuses on privacy, data protection, and the variety of legal regimes that protect people from both individual and commercial wrongdoing online, over digital devices and smart technologies. She has a substantial body of work on the appropriate means to regulate the flow of personal information, whether between individuals; individuals and businesses; businesses and government; business to business; or to the public. She has also conducted socio-legal research on the views of professionals who work with victims of online child sexual exploitation, and has examined older people’s views toward new social support technologies such as digital assistants and social robots. She is currently engaged in a project that involves co-designing and testing public engagement strategies that aim to involve members of the public in policy development and oversight of police use of facial recognition technology.

Prior to joining Ontario Tech, she was Executive Director of the Centre for Innovation Law and Policy at the University of Toronto, Faculty of Law. She received her Juris Doctor degree, with honors, from the University of Toronto in 2003, and was called to the Ontario bar in 2004. Dr. Slane practiced trademark, copyright, privacy and technology law at a large downtown law firm in Toronto before returning to academia in 2006. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of California in San Diego, and worked as an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia from 1995 to 2000.

Curriculum vitae

Education

  • JD University of Toronto
  • PhD, Comparative Literature (Cultural Studies) University of California

Courses taught

  • Information and Privacy Law
  • Law and Technology
  • Communication Law and Policy

Research and expertise

  • information law
  • intellectual property
  • law and technology
  • privacy
  • cyberbullying and cybercrime
  • SSHRC Parntership Development Grant (2020-2023). Devising and Testing Public Engagement Models to Shape Guidelines for Potential Use of Facial Recognition Technologies by Police. Andrea Slane (Principal Investigator), Brenda McPhail (Co-investigator), Christopher O'Connor (Co-investigator), Lisa Austin (Co-investigator).
    Community partners: Canadian Civil Liberties Association (Toronto, ON), Cobourg Police Service (Cobourg, ON), Northumberland Business Development Assistance Corporation (Cobourg, ON)
    • $200,000
  • SSHRC Insight Development Grant (2019-2022). Gathering Input from Seniors on Legal and Ethical Issues Related to use of Social Robots for In-Home Support. Andrea Slane (Principal Investigator), Patrick Hung (Co-investigator), Barbara Marshall (Co-investigator), Isabel Pedersen (Co-investigator), Jane Bailey (Collaborator), Kirsten Ellison (Collaborator), Valerie Steeves (Colaborator).
    • $70,866

Involvement

  • Selected publications

    Andrea Slane and Isabel Pedersen, “Older People’s Ethical Framing of Autonomy in Relation to Current and Future Consumer Technologies: The Case of Socially Assistive Robots” International Journal of Social Robotics (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-024-01188-0

    Andrea Slane and Isabel Pedersen, “Bringing Older People’s Perspectives on Consumer Socially Assistive Robots into Debates about the Future of Privacy Protection and AI Governance” (2024) AI & Society: Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Communication, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-024-01894-3.  

    Lisa M. Austin and Andrea Slane, “Digitally Rethinking Hunter v Southam” (2023) 60.2 Osgoode Hall Law Journal 419-447.

    Jessica Ringrose, Betsy Milne, Faye Mishna, Kaitlyn Regehr, and Andrea Slane, “Young People’s Experiences of Image-Based Sexual Harassment and Abuse in England and Canada: Towards a feminist framing of digital sexual violence” (2022) 93 Women’s Studies International Forum 102615.

    Dallas Hill, Christopher O’Connor, and Andrea Slane, “Police Use of Facial Recognition Technology: The Potential for Engaging the Public through Co-Constructed Policy-Making” (2022) 24:3 International Journal of Police Science and Management, 325-335.

    Faye Mishna, Betsy Milne, Charlene Cook, Andrea Slane and Jessica Ringrose, “Unsolicited Sexts and Unwanted Requests for Sexts: Reflecting on the Online Sexual Harassment of Youth” (2021) 55:4 Youth & Society, 630-651.  

    Andrea Slane, “Privacy Protective Roadblocks and Speedbumps Restraining Law Enforcement Use of Facial Recognition Software in Canada” (2021) 69:2 Criminal Law Quarterly 216-236. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4275241  

    Andrea Slane, Jennifer Martin, and Jonah Rimer. “Views and Attitudes About Youth Self-Produced Sexual Images Among Professionals with Expertise in Child Sexual Abuse” (2021) 30:2 Journal of Child Sexual Abuse 207-229.

    Andrea Slane, “Reconciling Privacy and Expression Rights By Regulating Profile Compilation Services”, in Ignacio N. Cofone, ed., The Right to be Forgotten: A Canadian & Comparative Perspective (Routledge, 2020): 40-54.

    Andrea Slane, “There Is a There There: Forum Selection Clauses, Consumer Protection and the Quasi-Constitutional Right to Privacy in Douez v Facebook” (2019) 88 Supreme Court Law Review 87-104.

    Andrea Slane, Jennifer Martin, Jonah Rimer, Angela Eke, Roberta Sinclair, Grant Charles, and Ethel Quayle. “Professionals' Perspectives on Viewing Child Sexual Abuse Images to Improve Response to Victims” (2018) 55: 4 Canadian Review of Sociology 579-596.

    Andrea Slane, “Search Engines and the Right to Be Forgotten: Squaring the Remedy with Canadian Values on Personal Information Flow” (2018) 55:2 Osgoode Hall Law Journal 349-397.

    Andrea Slane, “Information Brokers, Fairness, and Privacy in Publicly Accessible Information”, (2018) 4:1 Canadian Journal of Contemporary and Comparative Law 249-292.

    Andrea Slane and Ganaele Langlois, “Debunking the Myth of “Not My Bad”: Sexual Images, Consent and Online Host Responsibilities in Canada” (2018) 30:1 Canadian Journal of Women and the Law 42-81.

    Ganaele Langlois and Andrea Slane, “Economies of Reputation: The Case of Revenge Porn” (2017) 14:2 Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 120-138.

    Andrea Slane, “Legal Conceptions of Harm Related to Sexual Images Online in the United States and Canada”, (2015) 36:4 Child and Youth Services.

    Andrea Slane, “Motion to Dismiss: Bias Crime, Online Communication, and the Sex Lives of Others", in NJ v. Ravi, Valerie Steeves and Jane Bailey, eds. eGirls, eCitizens: Putting Technology, Theory and Policy Into Dialogue with Girls’ and Young Women’s Voices. (University of Ottawa Press, 2015): 253-280.

    Andrea Slane, "The Story of My Life: Fiction, Ethics and the Self at Law", in B. Courtney Doagoo, Mistrale Goudreau, Teresa Scassa and Madeline Saginur eds., Intellectual Property for the 21st Century: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Intellectual Property Law (Toronto: Irwin Law, 2014) 387-404.

    Andrea Slane, “Sexting and the Law in Canada”, (2013) 22:3 The Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality 117-122.

    Andrea Slane, “Luring Lolita: The Age of Consent and the Burden of Responsibility for Online Luring”, (2011) 1:4 Global Studies in Childhood 354-364.

    Andrea Slane, “Guarding a Cultural Icon: Concurrent Intellectual Property Regimes and the Perpetual Protection of Anne of Green Gables in Canada”, (2011) 56:4 McGill Law Journal 1011-1055.

    Andrea Slane, “From Scanning to Sexting: The Scope of Protection of Dignity-based Privacy in Canadian Child Pornography Law”, (2010) 48 Osgoode Hall Law Journal: 543-593.

    Book chapters

    Andrea Slane, “Mixed Means for Mixed Motives: The Role of Unfair Profit in Cases involving Privacy Invasion and Identity Misuse”, in Mistrale Goudreau and Margaret Ann Wilkinson, eds., Actes de la conférence académique pancanadienne de propriété intellectuelle de 2017 (Éditions Yvon Blais, forthcoming 2019).

    Andrea Slane, “Motion to Dismiss: Bias Crime, Online Communication, and the Sex Lives of Others in NJ v. Ravi”, Valerie Steeves and Jane Bailey, eds. eGirls, eCitizens: Putting Technology, Theory and Policy Into Dialogue with Girls’ and Young Women’s Voices. (University of Ottawa Press, 2015): 253-280.

    Andrea Slane, ”The Story of My Life: Fiction, Ethics and the Self at Law”, in B. Courtney Doagoo, Mistrale Goudreau, Teresa Scassa and Madelaine Saginur eds., Intellectual Property for the 21st Century: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Intellectual Property Law (Toronto: Irwin Law, 2014): 387-404.

    Andrea Slane, “The Crafting of a Political Icon: Lola Lola on Paper”, in Jon Lewis and Eric Smoodin, eds., Looking Past the Screen: Case Studies in American Film History and Method, Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 2007: 151-166.

    Andrea Slane, “The Interracial Treatment Relationship in the Cold War Period: Pressure Point in Analysis,” in Jerrold R. Brandell, ed., Celluloid Couches, Cinematic Clients: Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy in the Movies, SUNY Press, Albany, 2004: 47-66.

    Andrea Slane, “Romancing the System: Women, Narrative Film, and the Sexuality of Computers,” in Melodie Calvert and Jennifer Terry, eds., Processed Lives: Gender and Technology in Everyday Life, Routledge, 1997: 71-80.

    Andrea Slane, “Sexy Nazis and Daddy's Girls: Fascism and Sexuality in Film and Video since the 1970s” in Bernd Hüppauf, ed. War, Violence and the Modern Condition, Walter de Gruyter, 1997: 148-174.

  • Policy reports

    Privacy and Civic Duty: The Legitimate Scope of Voluntary Information Sharing by Private Enterprises in Law Enforcement Investigations into Cybercrime (2013).

    Research report for Public Safety Canada: Child Sexual Exploitation, Technology and Crime Prevention Education: Keeping Pace with the Risks? (2009).

    Personal Information Protection in the Face of Crime and Terror: Information Sharing by the Private Enterprises for National Security and Law Enforcement Purposes (2008).

    Combatting Hate On the Internet: Current Canadian Efforts and the Recommendations of Non-Governmental Organizations to Improve upon Them (2007).

    Through the Centre for Innovation Law and Policy, University of Toronto: Safely Connected (2005) and Staying Safely Connected (2007, with Vicky Kuek).

  • Media appearances

    IPC Ruling a First Step

    Oshawa Express | March 9, 2016

    As technology becomes ever more intertwined in our daily lives, decisions like those made to release Councillor Nancy Diamond’s private emails by the Information and Privacy Commissioner (IPC) will continue as issues arise, says one local professor.

    View more - IPC Ruling a First Step

    How C-51 undermines privacy

    National Post | March 31, 2015

    It is not a mystery why the federal government would not want to hear from the Privacy Commissioner of Canada during its hearings on Bill C-51. Part 1 of C-51 enacts the Security of Canada Information Sharing Act (SCISA). The government does not want Commissioner Daniel Therrien to draw attention to what these information-sharing provisions are all about: Big Data.

    View more - How C-51 undermines privacy

    Sexting and the Law in Canada

    Kids Help Phone | February 25, 2015

    When someone's actions have gone too far, understanding your rights can be a powerful way to make the behavior stop.

    View more - Sexting and the Law in Canada