Privacy & Surveillance

The interests at stake in a recent investigation[1] by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (the “OPC”) can be evoked in two imaginative exercises. First, how would you feel if you had been accused of a crime, the charge had been stayed many years ago, but news articles about the incident were still easily accessible to anyone who typed your name into a search engine?

CFE Intervener Factum in the Supreme Court of Canada – This appeal concerns the scope of the obligations of meaningful consent and safeguarding according to Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). CFE submits three points in this intervener factum: (1) evidence of subjective expectations of privacy, rather than those of a reasonable person, has no role to play in determining whether meaningful consent was provided under PIPEDA; (2) users’ reasonable expectations of privacy on digital platforms will generally be high; and (3) meaningful consent to the use or disclosure of personal information on digital platforms requires that the platform clearly inform the user of the specific purposes for which the information may be used or disclosed, prior to such use or disclosure.

A new book is in the market: Chasing Shadows: Cyber Espionage, Subversion, and the Global Fight for Democracy by Ronald J. Deibert.