Surprisingly, ask people what “privacy metrics” mean to them and you’ll often get very different answers.
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I was very pleasantly surprised to find Dot Indicia as a “Pick of the Week” of IPOsgoode – the Intellectual Property/Technology Program of Osgoode Hall Law School at York University. For a new blog, it’s nice to be noticed.
This post, written by myself and Michael Martineau, is also posted on eHealth Musings and ITWorld Canada.
North Americans appear ready to interact electronically with their healthcare providers and take a more active role in managing their own health care. A much-talked about tool in this regard is the Personal Health Record (“PHR”). While there is considerable debate about what constitutes a PHR and how best to capture public interest in using a PHR, there seems to be a growing consensus that the privacy of personal health information is a key concern that must be addressed if PHRs are to gain widespread adoption. Read more »
If a government builds an EHR, can it require your data be put into it?
Governments in many jurisdictions have embarked on a concerted effort to build and use electronic health records (EHRs) and to encourage health professionals to use electronic medical records (EMRs). Everyone seems to have assumed that creating an EHR would be so advantageous to patients that requiring placement of patient data in multi-million dollar EHR systems wouldn’t be an issue. But there are privacy and security concerns and the authority, at least in a number of Canadian jurisdictions, to require the placement of patient data in an EHR does not seem clear. Read more »
In Canada, if not already, breach notification should be a corporate topic of conversation.
A brief survey of the Canadian landscape would reveal that Ontario requires breach notification under the Personal Health Information and Protection Act for custodians of personal health information; upon full proclamation, Newfoundland will require breach notification under its Personal Health Information Act; Nova Scotia’s new legislation on personal health information (to be reintroduced) will as well; New Brunswick also deals with the subject in its new (2009) Personal Health Information Privacy and Access Act; Alberta has recently amended its Personal Information Protection Act to require breach notification, and the federal government’s response to the 2007 review of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act indicates that Act will be amended to require breach notification. There is no definitive date yet but rumour has it that this may occur in 2010. It is understood that the Uniform Law Conference of Canada will develop a uniform breach notification statute and the topic is slated for discussion later this year. Read more »
Well, it’s not actually a secret but it is something that not too many people have focused on. It’s the fact that the withdrawal of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (“PIPEDA”) from provincial jurisdictions with substantially similar legislation may legally complicate the ability of Canadian organizations in those jurisdictions to receive data from EU countries. Read more »
While the concept of territorial privacy (“the house of everyone is to him as his castle and fortress”) can be traced to back to Semayne’s Case in 1604, it has evolved and become more nuanced over time. Information emanating from the home has received less generous privacy treatment and that subject is to receive further consideration in the Supreme Court of Canada (“SCC”) in May 2010 when it hears an appeal in the case of R. v. Gomboc.
Gomboc is a 2009 decision out of the Alberta Court of Appeal, involving the collection of residential electrical use data, where the issue was whether the use of a digital recording ammeter (“DRA”), in the absence of a warrant, constituted a s. 8 Charter violation. Read more »
Research, in whatever field of endeavour, is considered to have a useful societal purpose. But, in the case of people using networks, at what point does it cross the line into violations of personal privacy?
According to this press report last week, Pete Warden has amassed details on 215 million profiles on Facebook and plans to make Friend, Fan page and name data (but not URLs) available to the academic research community. Read more »
“Dot”: Old English. A spot. A mark. A period used in applications as a name separator in files and web addresses. “Indicia”: Latin. Signs, indications, evidence. “Dot Indicia”: A personal blog examining marks and signs in our world about information, privacy and security.
