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It's been a busy week news-wise in privacy land in different parts of the world, and the same is true for us in Canada. Here are just a few highlights.
Yesterday, it was revealed — not through an announcement from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner — that the OPC launched an investigation into whether the social platform X is violating Canadian federal privacy laws when it uses personal information to train its artificial intelligence software. Remember that the OPC, quite a while ago now, announced an investigation into OpenAI — the company behind ChatGPT. I am eagerly awaiting the findings report on that one, as I'm sure it will influence what happens in the investigation of X.
Sometimes missed in the news when they've made previous announcements — and the reason I'm calling it out here — is the launch of the OPC's annual grants and contributions program. This year's focus is on smart and connected devices, and I think the results could be quite interesting. I, for one, would like to use Siri for more than just a timer or the weather. All this to say, if you have a research project in mind, check out how the program works here.
In non-OPC news, there were developments out of Nova Scotia this week that surely did not thrill the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner in that province. A long overdue amendment was proposed to the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, but the draft bill doesn't really provide any meaningful oversight to the regulator. For example, it's up to the government to decide whether or not a request is "vexatious," and it seems the regulator cannot opine. If Nova Scotians don't like this approach, they might want to share their views with their provincial political representatives before the bill becomes law.
And, lastly, some good news this week: Chair of the Global Privacy Assembly Working Group on Data Protection and Other Rights and Freedoms and Privacy Commissioner of Canada Philippe Dufresne announced the 5Rights Foundation and the Internet Freedom Foundation as winners of the first Global Privacy and Human Rights Award. It sounds like there were many candidates and these co-winners really stood out — 5Rights for their efforts to promote laws that ensure digital privacy rights for children, and Internet Freedom Foundation for advocacy efforts to promote online freedom and privacy rights of workers and students.
Kris Klein, CIPP/C, CIPM, FIP, is the managing director for Canada for the IAPP.
This article originally appeared in the Canada Dashboard Digest, a free weekly IAPP newsletter. Subscriptions to this and other IAPP newsletters can be found here.