Just how far is business supposed to go in protecting privacy? In the United States, one can starkly see an example with Apple and the retrieval of encrypted iPhone data. But a recent Canadian case also shines a spotlight on the role of the private sector in proactively protecting privacy interests.
As we move more into 2015, I thought I’d put together my own list of the more interesting Canadian privacy cases of 2014. These are judicial decisions so there’s no Commissioner findings or orders here. Some of these I’ve blogged about; others I’ve simply noted for future reference. I’ve not seen a similar list so feel […]
Today, the Supreme Court of Canada (“SCC”) issued a significant decision with respect to another piece of technology that we commonly carry on our person – mobile phones. The court in R. v. Fearon addressed whether the police can search such phones under the common law power to “search incident to a lawful arrest”. In doing so, the […]
Who knew six months could pass so quickly? The last blog post seemed like yesterday. After getting the shoulder better and renewing an intent to blog on a more regular basis, here is part 2 of the R v. Spencer blog post. In the last post, my focus was on the meaning of “lawful authority”. […]
A busy practice combined with a very bad shoulder injury will, regretfully, move blogging down the priority list. As we reach mid-2014 there have been a few interesting privacy law developments this year but, in my view, no real “blockbusters”. That all changed today. Today, the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) came out with R […]
The federal government has now solved a major problem for Canada’s banks by entering into an intergovernmental agreement concerning FATCA with the United States. The details about the privacy implications of FATCA can be found in previous posts here, here and here. With this agreement, the “end game” of FATCA compliance for Canada appears close at hand and there’s an important […]
Alberta’s PIPA was recently declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada (“SCC”) in Alberta (Information and Privacy Commissioner) v. United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 401. In reading the decision, the issue appears to be the broad, circular definition of “personal information” in that statute. Since a similar definition of personal information is found in the federal, BC […]
The Supreme Court of Canada issued another privacy-related decision last week. Not only is it a significant refinement of search and seizure law it is also, with apologies to Pink Floyd, another “brick in the wall” with respect to building privacy rights in the context of computing devices.
Readers may recall my post on the subject of R. v. Cole here, a Supreme Court of Canada decision about expectations of privacy in workplace laptops. That decision has been now followed in a recent BC decision and while the facts are not terribly different, it is interesting to see the further application of privacy […]
I’ve written about FATCA before, here and here, with respect to the privacy law implications of this American tax compliance initiative. However, I was recently presented with a letter on the subject that made me pause. A noted Canadian constitutional law expert has raised a rather interesting aspect and it seems what may get Canadian […]
