Sharon Polsky

Sharon Polsky MAPP, president, Privacy and Access Council of Canada.

For more than 30 years Sharon Polsky has advised corporations, governments, Senate and legislative committees about implications and unintended consequences of emerging laws, technologies, and global trends in privacy, data governance, information security, cyberliability, and civil liberties.


Appears in these episodes:

On October 7, some 2,000 Hamas terrorists invaded Israel. Atrocities ensued against innocent civilian children, women, and men. Scores were abducted into Gaza.

Israel has promised to utterly destroy Hamas and its infrastructure with an “unprecedented response.”

Are residents of Gaza innocent civilians? Or are they complicit in Hamas’s acts of barbarity?

Foreign policy analyst Josh Block and international legal expert Avi Bell join Edwin; Rachel Ehrenfeld, Juda Engelmayer, Francisco Gil-White, Walid Phares, Sharon Polsky, and Zalmi Unsdorfer provide additional reports from around the world.

AI developers—who admit they don't understand how their creations work—have already disregarded most precautions that would make the process and products safer. Many legislators are ill-equipped to craft effective regulations—or even to understand the risks and requirements.

Privacy expert Sharon Polsky joins Edwin for an up-to-date, sobering look.

Tested road warriors Josh Block, Juda Engelmayer, and Sharon Polsky join Edwin to converse and commiserate about the best hotels, airlines, and restaurants around the world.

Hold those reservations.

New criminal codes and regulations are being drafted, here and abroad, some under UN mandate. Look for new restrictions, new penalties, greater government surveillance and control—and diminishing freedom. Privacy expert Sharon Polsky joins Edwin to take another look at the perilous current state and future of free speech.

AI—artificial intelligence—has arrived. Experts everywhere are warning that AI could wipe out 80% of all jobs—and perhaps even civilization. Privacy expert Sharon Polsky joins Edwin to confront the threats and sound the alarm.

Spying, lying, denying, and the dangers of passive consent with privacy experts Michael Geist and Sharon Polsky, who join Edwin at the Canadian Privacy and Data Governance Conference, March 22–23, 2023, Ottawa.

Spying, lying, denying, and the dangers of passive consent are fast eroding all semblance of privacy. Is privacy the key to central control? Privacy expert Sharon Polsky of the Privacy & Access Council of Canada joins Edwin.

Barnes & Noble hosts a special launch event for IBM and the Holocaust—the 2021 re-issue of the hardcover in a special 20th Anniversary Commemorative Edition, available exclusively at Barnes and Noble. Sharon Polsky, president of the Privacy and Access Council, and Chris Lovett, professor of history at Emporia State University plus other top experts confront the historical genocide and the looming future threat. Join the launch and ask questions.

In his New York Times bestselling investigative book, Edwin Black documented how IBM knowingly organized all six phases of Hitler’s Holocaust: identification, exclusion, confiscation, ghettoization, deportation—and even extermination. The book was exhaustively researched and its assertions are backed by a literal tower of documentation.

With more than 1.5 million copies in print, IBM and the Holocaust is in more than 20 languages in numerous editions in 190 countries. A copy sells every hour.

The book was published to global acclaim.
EXPLOSIVE AND STUNNING. An explosive book… Backed by exhaustive research, Black’s case is simple and stunning: that IBM facilitated the identification and roundup of millions of Jews during the 12 years of the Third Reich… Black’s evidence may be the most damning to appear yet against a purported corporate accomplice.
Michael Hirsh, Newsweek

BEYOND DISPUTE. Black clearly demonstrates that Nazi Germany employed IBM Hollerith punch-card machines to perform critical tasks in carrying out the Holocaust and the German war effort. He goes on to document that IBM managed to profit from Hitler’s state throughout its existence … Black establishes beyond dispute that IBM Hollerith machines significantly advanced Nazi efforts to exterminate Jewry … IBM and the Holocaust is a valuable contribution to our understanding of the Holocaust.
Christopher Simpson, Washington Post Book World

SHOCKING. Thomas Watson chose to tabulate the Nazi census, to accept Hitler’s medal, and to fight for control of Dehomag. And he made other equally indefensible choices in his years of doing a profitable business counting Jews for Hitler—choices that are described in IBM and the Holocaust by Edwin Black. This is a shocking book. With the help of more than a hundred researchers working in archives in the U.S., Britain, Germany, France, and Israel, Edwin Black has documented a sordid relationship between this great American company and the Third Reich, one that extended into the war years.
Jack Beatty, The Atlantic

EXHAUSTIVE RESEARCH. With exhaustive research, Black makes the case that IBM and Watson conspired with Nazi Germany to help automate the genocide of Europe’s Jews … Black’s book is so enlightening [because] it paints a richly textured picture of how a man [Watson], and an entire company, can ignore all sense of morality while not once transgressing the lines of business ethics. If nothing else, this book should be required reading for every first-year MBA student.
Sam Jaffe, Businessweek

UNDENIABLE. Black's meticulous documentation reveals an undeniable fact: after the outbreak of the World War II, the IBM corporation knew the whereabouts of each of its European-leased machines, and what revenues it could expect from them … Now, the burden of proof rests squarely with IBM. What will it do with this thoroughly documented accusation, this long-overdue indictment of corporate greed? Black's book has done what US and international organs of justice chose not to do five decades ago.”
Prof Robert Urekew, Harvard International Review

The book has been the recipient of numerous awards, including two from the American Society of Journalists and Authors for Best Nonfiction Investigative Book of the Year and Best Article of Investigative Journalism on IBM at Auschwitz for “Final Solutions,” published in the Village Voice, Best Humanities Book, 2018 for the Chinese edition of IBM and the Holocaust, awarded by a joint committee of booksellers and information technologists in China, the Moral Compass Award granted by the Naples Holocaust Museum, and the Integrity Award from The American Jewish Congress.

A resurgence in popularity of the book in 2021 led to the re-issue of the special hardcover edition with dust cover, available exclusively at Barnes & Noble.

Cancel culture, monopoly, censorship, thought control, privacy excesses, electoral interference … can they be stopped? Privacy watchdog Sharon Polsky, crisis manager Juda Engelmayer, and political strategist Josh Block join Edwin to examine the issues.

Personal liberties may be the greatest victim of COVID-19, as new individual tracking devices and protocols are rushed into place to enforce social distancing. Jules Polonetsky, CEO of the Future of Privacy Forum, and Sharon Polsky, president of the Privacy and Access Council of Canada, join Edwin to shine a light on this dark new threat.