Tag: Canada

(May 29, 2020) I think if you have to scramble to change a law in the time of a pandemic, it might lead you to consider that perhaps that law wasn’t such a good one in the first place.  This is exactly what the government of British Columbia has had to do amid the COVID-19 lockdown to create additional exceptions to their outdated data localization law. The temporary exceptions to the law ostensibly allow for a greater number of instances in which personal information can flow outside of Canada if it is nece... Read More

(May 28, 2020) Countries around the world continue to grapple with COVID-19 contact tracing apps and their privacy applications. Here are the latest developments regarding the deployment of those apps: Reuters reports the French government approved the country's StopCovid tracing app, which will be deployed to the public starting May 30. Also from Reuters, the Belgian Data Protection Authority has taken issue with the government's plans for contact tracing data storage. The U.K. government is set to launc... Read More

(May 27, 2020) Countries around the world continue to grapple with COVID-19 contact tracing apps and their privacy applications. Here are the latest developments regarding the deployment of those apps: The French data protection authority, the CNIL, published its opinion on the implementation of the StopCovid tracing app. (Original post is in French.) Switzerland's Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner announced the SwissCovid tracing app has entered the test phase and explained its function... Read More

(May 26, 2020) In this week's Privacy Tracker global legislative roundup, the European Data Protection Board released its annual report detailing guidance and opinions issued over the last year. Facebook received a $9 million fine from the Canada Competition Bureau. Ireland's Data Protection Commission reached a preliminary decision on possible Twitter violations, and China is deliberating its first civil code that would grant privacy rights to citizens. In the U.S., the Federal Trade Commission settled two se... Read More

(May 21, 2020) I’ve often written in this space about how, in Canada, regulators other than the privacy commissioners could play an impactful role in helping to protect and promote the privacy rights of Canadians. After all, in the United States, they don’t have any privacy commissioners at all, and yet, through various enforcement mechanisms, organizations can be held accountable. Well, it seems someone at the Competition Bureau caught on to this idea. The big news is that the bureau has levied a $9 million ... Read More

(May 21, 2020) Competition Bureau Canada announced Facebook agreed to pay a $9 million penalty to settle the bureau's investigations into the company's privacy practices. In this piece for Privacy Perspectives, nNovation Counsel Constantine Karbaliotis, CIPP/C, CIPP/E, CIPP/US, CIPM, CIPT, FIP, looks at what the settlement may mean for Canadian regulatory actions going forward.Full Story Karbaliotis also examines how Facebook's settlement with Competition Bureau Canada may impact the recommendations set forth... Read More

(May 21, 2020) Now that Facebook’s settlement with the Competition Bureau Canada has been published, it is interesting to consider how this could impact other regulatory actions Facebook is dealing with in Canada with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. The settlement is quite short but has some interesting implications. First, it expressly states that Facebook’s agreement does not constitute an admission of guilt under the Competition Act or any other law, so this settlement doesn’t preclude F... Read More

(May 21, 2020) The Canadian Security Intelligence Service warned the government that proposed changes to the Privacy Act could “significantly impact the work of national security and investigative agencies,” Global News reports. CSIS expressed concern about the law’s broad definition of "personal information" and said privacy law should ensure it is not required to disclose the foreign agencies it shares data with, adding the service should be exempt from informing individuals that their data has been breached... Read More

(May 21, 2020) The inaugural Ian Kerr Memorial Lecture will be presented this Friday on LinkedIn Live at 12:00 p.m. ET. Originally intended to take place at this year's IAPP Canada Privacy Symposium, the first lecture will be broadcasted digitally on the IAPP LinkedIn page. The first lecture will be delivered by University of Ottawa Law Professor Michael Geist. Editor's note: IAPP Staff Writer Joe Duball covered the launch of the Ian Kerr Memorial Lecture series for The Privacy Advisor.Full Story... Read More

(May 20, 2020) Competition Bureau Canada announced Facebook agreed to pay a $9 million penalty to settle the bureau's investigations into the company's privacy practices. "While not at the scale of fines faced in the U.S. and elsewhere, the involvement of a nontraditional regulator for privacy sends several signals to Canadian and multinational organizations," writes nNovation Counsel Constantine Karbaliotis, CIPP/C, CIPP/E, CIPP/US, CIPM, CIPT, FIP. In this piece for Privacy Perspectives, Karbaliotis looks at... Read More