Last week saw a rather striking decision issued by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice. 2102 saw the tort of “intrusion upon seclusion” recognized; in 2016, we now have the tort of “public disclosure of private facts”. Unlike the 2012 decision, this one came with a large damage award.
Manitoba’s Intimate Image Protection Act came into force on 15 January 2016. The statute does something that I think is especially noteworthy – it creates a new privacy tort concerning the “non-consensual distribution of intimate images”.In short, Manitoba becomes the first Canadian province to provide victims of revenge porn with a common law remedy and […]
Whenever a new technology arrives, society always plays “catch up” to determine what norms to apply to the use of that technology. It’s probably how we got traffic lights after the advent of automobiles. One “by-product” of smartphone cameras and the Internet is “revenge porn”. The Internet didn’t invent the problem but it sure magnifies it […]
There is a new and interesting decision out of Peterborough that raises but doesn’t answer a lot of questions. These questions revolve around the intersection of PHIPA, class action law and tort law. This is not something you see everyday although we may have to wait awhile before the dust (and the law) settles.
The privacy bar sat up and took notice last week of a decision out of Halifax that upped the ante when it comes to PIPEDA damage awards. The case is more about “reprehensible conduct” than “harm suffered” and one question that immediately comes to mind is whether it represents an evolution in judicial thinking about […]
I recently came across a calculator while reading a Financial Times article (registration required) on the surveillance of consumers. It shows just how much marketers value our personal data – apparently it’s just pennies and we don’t even have those in Canada anymore. This 2010 Forbes article talks about the monetization of personal data and […]
If you’re someone caught up in a data breach or a person who can point to an actual violation of privacy, an obvious question is whether you suffered harm and should you be compensated? Three PIPEDA-related decisions from Canadian courts in 2010 offer a glimpse of different approaches to the subject of privacy-related damages.
