In Lawyers Weekly, Mark Hayes says several recent court cases indicate that “courts are now willing to take a more balanced view of the meaning of privacy laws.” Though in the past, federal courts considered the privacy commissioner’s interpretations of laws such as the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) in making their decisions, the landscape is changing, Hayes writes. The Federal Court rejected the privacy commissioner’s position in a 2010 case, determining PIPEDA does not apply to insurance companies’ data collection when defending individuals, “significantly limiting the application of privacy laws to information-gathering by or on behalf of individuals.” And in April, a court of appeal ruled the commissioner’s decision was unreasonable.
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