Online merchants can offer each website customer a different price given that it can recognise such customer through the use of a cookie and can therefore categorise the customer based on other information (previous purchases, etc.). Many regard price discrimination as unfair or manipulative and I have already blogged about this issue a while back: Dynamic pricing […] Read more
I came across an article today about the Apple Store now selling drones. These devices are more commonly used by individuals, as well as from private sector and public sector entities although under each scenario, the privacy issues are obviously quite different. Personal drone Recent stories about unfriendly neighbours and drones have been circulating. On […] Read more
Two great U.S. privacy academics, Ira Rubinstein and Woodrow Hartzog, have released last week their article on anonymization and risk. They articulate the view that perfect anonymization of data sets has failed and that although the process of protecting individuals in shared information remains integral to privacy practice and policy, there is no clear direction for policy. Data protection […] Read more
I recently published a blog post on the topic of Is taking someone’s picture in public breaching their privacy? I have since received many questions pertaining to whether using or publishing someone’s Facebook profile information could be considered as breaching their privacy. Facebook users post information and pictures about themselves and their loved ones as […] Read more
It was announced yesterday that the Federal Court of Canada has certified the privacy class-action lawsuit involving 40,000 people which pertains to the medical marijuana access program. The case was launched in 2013 after Health Canada sent letters to people with the program’s name on the envelope. The envelope containing the letter explicitly identified the “Marihuana Medical Access Program” in […] Read more
I came across an article yesterday in which the Ottawa police is saying that filming women in public is not necessarily illegal. While it may be true that nothing prohibits filming or taking someone’s picture in public, in some jurisdictions, it may be illegal to publish / post the picture or movie online without that person’s prior […] Read more
When managing access rights, organisations should take note that while the access right has to be provided for free, it is possible for an organisation to charge a reasonable amount for a copy (photocopy) of the documents requested. What is considered a “reasonable amount”? A local paper reported yesterday a recent case (June 2015) in which the […] Read more
I recently summarized the state of recent privacy class actions in Canada: the cases that are either pending or which were recently authorized. There has recently been an update in the Condon v. Canada case, which pertains to an action taken following the announcement in late 2012 that Human Resources and Skills Development Canada had lost an […] Read more
Many organizations remain very broad in their website privacy policies on the use made of the information collected. Recent bill S-4, the Digital Privacy Act, the federal government’s latest attempt to reform PIPEDA was proclaimed last month and proposes a revised “valid consent” provision (PIPEDA, s. 6.1), by shifting from a subjective standard to a more objective standard. To […] Read more
I posted a blog a few months ago about Health-tracking bracelets and privacy issues and raised the fact that health information collected by these self-tracking devices may be used as evidence in a litigation. Kashmir Hill published a piece today entitled “Fitbit data just undermined a woman’s rape claim“. Apparently, according to ABC 27, a woman handed the username and […] Read more