Rong Wu
LL.M. (Law and Technology) Candidate, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa

Rong Wu was born in Shanghai, China. In 2001, Rong graduated from Shanghai University with an Honours LL.B. She went on to study at law school, leaving the graduate studies program in mid-course to pursue LL.M. (concentrating on law & technology) in University of Ottawa in 2003.

Rong was called to Chinese Bar in 2002, and was awarded Jones Day International Legal Fellowship in 2003. Rong has published 3 articles focusing on intellectual property, high-tech in Chinese law journals. She is also an active volunteer in a lot of legal community activities.

Research

Surveillance and democracy in cyberspace: Canadian and Chinese perspective

I am doing my master summer project under the supervision of Professor Ian Kerr. The tentative title of my project is “surveillance and democracy in cyberspace: Canadian and Chinese perspective”.

Cyberspace should not only be as a place for electronic commerce, but also as a forum for deliberative democracy. However, the growing public sector surveillance constitutes a grave threat to the privacy of the individuals. This may erode constitutional values, particularly freedom of expression. Surveillance technologies exert a chilling effect on individuals who wish to dissent and exercise their democratic right to protest government policy.

The question raised in my project is who will watch the watchers? What’s the limit of reasonable surveillance? Democracy not only requires restriction on access to personal information, but also demands that access to these data be guaranteed in many circumstances. Due to different cultural and legal background, privacy is not a priority in China as it is in Canada. I will try to do some comparative study between these two different regimes and try to answer if an appropriate scheme exists in the global environment.