Teresa Scassa - Blog

Class action law suits for breach of privacy are becoming increasingly common in Canada. For example, the B.C. Supreme Court, the Ontario Superior Court, and Newfoundland and Labrador Supreme Court have all recently certified class action law suits in relation to alleged privacy breaches.

The use of the class action law suit can be a useful solution to some of the problems that plague the victims of privacy breaches. These difficulties include:

1) The lack of any other meaningful and effective recourse for a large scale privacy breach. Complaints regarding a large-scale privacy breach by a private sector corporation can be made to the Privacy Commissioner of Canada under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) (or to his provincial counterparts in B.C., Quebec or Alberta, depending upon the nature of the corporation and its activities). However, the federal privacy commissioner can only investigate and issue a report with non-binding recommendations. He has no order-making powers. Further, there is no power to award damages. An individual who feels they have been harmed by a privacy breach must, after receiving the Commissioner’s report, make an application to Federal Court for compensation. Damage awards in Federal Court under PIPEDA have been very low, ranging from about $0 to $5000 (with a couple of outlier exceptions). This amount of damages will not likely compensate for the time and effort required to bring the legal action, let alone the harm from the privacy breach. Perhaps more importantly, a few thousand dollars may not be a significant deterrent for companies whose practices have led to the privacy breach. The Privacy Commissioner’s Office has called for reform of PIPEDA to include order making powers, and to give the Commissioner the authority to impose significant fines on companies whose conduct leads to significant privacy harms. Yet legislative reform in this area does not seem to be on the current government’s agenda.

2) The problem of establishing damages in privacy cases. It can be very difficult to establish damages in cases where privacy rights have been breached. For example, although a company’s data breach might affect tens or even hundreds of thousands of individuals, it may be very difficult for any of those individuals to show that the data breach has caused them any actual harm. Even if one or more of these individuals suffers identity theft, it may be impossible to link this back to that particular data breach. While all of the affected individuals may suffer some level of anxiety over the security of their personal information, it is hard to put a dollar value on this kind of anxiety – and courts have tended to take a rather conservative view in evaluating such harm. It simply might not be worth it for any individual to bring legal action in such circumstances – even if they were to succeed, their damages would likely not even come close to making the litigation worth their while.

3) The inaccessibility of justice on an individual scale. Frankly, the majority of Canadians are not in a financial position to take anyone to court for breach of privacy. (Those in province of Quebec might be slightly better off in this regard, as privacy rights are much clearer and better established in private law in that province than they are elsewhere in Canada). It should be noted that those few individuals who have sought damages in Federal Court for PIPEDA breaches have been self-represented – legal representation would simply be too costly given the stakes. A suit for the tort of invasion of privacy or for breach of a statutory privacy tort would be considerably more complex than an application for damages under PIPEDA. Damage awards in privacy cases are so low that litigation is not a realistic solution for most.

In this context it is not surprising that the class action law suit for breach of privacy is catching on in Canada. Such law suits allow large numbers of affected individuals to seek collective recourse. As mentioned earlier, the British Columbia Supreme Court recently certified a class action law suit against Facebook for breach of privacy rights protected under British Columbia’s Privacy Act. The claim in Douez v. Facebook, Inc. related to Facebook’s Sponsored Stories “product”. Advertisers who paid to make use of this product could use the names and likenesses of Facebook users in “sponsored stories” about their products or services. These “sponsored stories” would then be sent to the contacts of the person featured in the story. The court found that between September 9, 2012 and March 10, 2013, 1.8 million B.C. residents were featured in Sponsored Stories. The plaintiffs argued that this practice violated their privacy. Although the issues have not yet been litigated on their merits, the certification of the class action law suit allows the privacy claims to proceed on behalf of the significant number of affected individuals.

In Evans v. Bank of Nova Scotia, Justice Smith of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice certified a class action law suit against the Bank of Nova Scotia. In that case, an employee of the bank had, over almost a five year period, accessed highly confidential personal banking information of 643 customers. In June of 2012, the Bank notified these customers that there may have been unauthorized access to their banking information; 138 of these individuals later informed the bank that they were victims of identity theft or fraud. The bank employee subsequently admitted that he had channelled the banking information through his girlfriend to individuals who sought to use the information for illegal purposes. The lawsuit claims damages for invasion of privacy and negligence, among other things, and argues that the bank should be held vicariously liable for the actions of its employee.

Most recently, in Hynes v. Western Regional Integrated Health Authority, the Newfoundland and Labrador Supreme Court certified a class action law suit against the Health Authority after it was discovered that an employee had improperly accessed 1,043 medical records without authorization. The information accessed included name and address information, as well as information about diagnostic and medical procedures at the hospital. This case is an example of where it may be difficult to assess or quantify the harm suffered by the particular individuals as a result of the breach, as it is not known how the information may have been used. The plaintiffs argued that both the statutory privacy tort in Newfoundland and the common law tort of intrusion upon seclusion were applicable, and that the Health Authority should be held vicariously liable for the acts of its employee. The also argued that the Health Authority had been negligent in its care of their personal information. The court found that the arguments raised met the necessary threshold at the class action certification stage – the merits remain to be determined once the case ultimately proceeds to trial.

What these three cases demonstrate is that class action law suits may give individuals a useful recourse in cases where data breaches have exposed their personal information and perhaps left them vulnerable to identify theft or other privacy harms. Such law suits may also act as a real incentive for companies to take privacy protection seriously. The cost of defending a class action law suit, combined with the possibility of a very substantial damages award (or settlement), and the potential reputational harm from high profile litigation, all provide financial incentives to properly safeguard personal information.

This may be welcome news for those who are concerned about what seems to be a proliferation of data breaches. It should not, however, let the federal government off the hook in terms of strengthening Canada’s private sector data protection legislation and giving the Privacy Commissioner more effective tools to act in the public interest to protect privacy by ensuring compliance with the legislation.

Just over a year ago, in Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta v. United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 401 the Supreme Court of Canada struck down Alberta’s Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA) on the basis that it violated the freedom of expression guaranteed by s. 2(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom. The case arose after a union was found to have violated PIPA by collecting and using video and photo images of people crossing its picket lines in the course of a labour dispute without the consent of those individuals. The union was ultimately successful in its arguments that the limitations on the collection, use and disclosure of personal information without consent contained in PIPA violated their freedom of expression. (You can read more about this decision in my early blog post here).

As a remedy, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the entire statute, but put in place a suspension of invalidity for a period of year. This amount of time was considered reasonable for the Alberta legislature to amend the legislation to bring it into conformity with the Charter. The year passed without legislative action, and at the last minute the government scrambled to obtain an extension. The Court granted a six month extension on October 30, 2014.

The Alberta government has now introduced a bill to amend PIPA to bring it into conformity with the Charter. Bill 3 is framed in fairly narrow terms. In essence, it creates a new exception to the general rule that there can be no collection, use or disclosure of personal information without consent. This exception is specifically for trade unions. The collection, use or disclosure without consent is permissible if it is “for the purpose of informing or persuading the public about a matter of significant public interest or importance relating to a labour relations dispute involving the trade union” (proposed new sections 14.1, 17.1, and 20.1). The information collected, used or disclosed must be “reasonably necessary” for that purpose, and, in the circumstances, it must be reasonable to collect, use or disclose that information without consent.

The new provisions attempt to strike a balance between the right to privacy and the freedom of expression of trade unions. While it will now be permissible to collect, use or disclose personal information without consent in the context of a labour dispute, there is no blank cheque. Rather than exempt trade unions from the application of PIPA altogether, the new provisions set out the circumstances in which unions may act, and these actions will be under the supervision of the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC). A person whose information is collected, used or disclosed without their consent by a union may still complain to the OIPC; the OIPC will get to determine if the union’s purpose was to inform or persuade the public “about a matter of significant public interest or importance relating to a labour relations dispute involving the trade union” This wording is interesting – actions by a trade union taken in support of another trade union may not qualify, nor may actions carried out by a trade union to protest a government’s policies. Further, an adjudicator might decide that the information was collected, used or disclosed in relation to a matter that was not of significant public interest or importance. Whether this exception strikes the right balance is an open question which may arise in the course of some future dispute.

The issue of the balance between the freedom of expression and privacy is an extremely interesting one, and it arises in other contexts under private sector data protection legislation. These competing rights are purportedly balanced, for example, by provisions that exempt journalistic, artistic and literary endeavors from the application of the statute in certain circumstances. However, as the United Food case demonstrates, these exceptions do not necessarily capture all of the actors who may have information of public interest that they wish to communicate. A few years ago I wrote an article about the “journalistic purposes” exception that is found in Alberta’s PIPA, as well as in B.C.’s Personal Information Protection Act and the federal Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act. I argue that this exception may not strike the right balance between the right to journalistic freedom of expression and privacy. In the first place, it is not clear who is meant to be entitled to the exception (what are journalistic, artistic or literary purposes, and who gets to assert them?) Secondly, the exceptions are structured so that once it is decided that the acts in question fall within the exception, there can be no oversight to determine whether the manner in which the personal information was collected, used or disclosed went beyond what was reasonable for the legitimate information of the public.

Although the United Food saga may be approaching its close, the issues around the balance between freedom of expression and privacy are far from being resolved. Expect to see these issues surfacing in cases arising under private sector data protection legislation (as was the case with United Food) as well as in other privacy contexts as well.

Note: I recently posted about a privacy law suit that raised freedom of expression issues. It can be found here.

In an interesting decision from the small claims court of Quebec, Google has been held liable for violating the plaintiff’s privacy rights after an image of her sitting on her front steps appeared on Google Streetview.

In Grillo v. Google Inc., the plaintiff, Ms Grillo, testified that she had decided to sit on her front steps briefly one day, while on vacation. She was checking her messages on her smart phone, when she noticed the Google Car driving by, with its mounted camera. It was not until five months later that she first went online to look for her house on Streetview. She was shocked to see herself sitting barefoot and wearing a loose, sleeveless top which revealed part of one of her breasts. Also visible in the image was her car, with the licence plate unblurred, and the civic number of her house.

The plaintiff testified that she was a very private person, and, in fact, had chosen to live where she did because it was a relatively private and untraveled area of the city. After she found the image on Streetview, she testified that she was the butt of a number of jokes at the bank where she worked; her partially exposed breast was particularly commented upon by her co-workers. She testified as to her sense of shame and embarrassment. She immediately complained to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, which suggested that she contact Google in order to have them remove the images. She claimed that she tried to do this, using the features available on the Streetview site, but without success. Shortly afterwards, she claimed to have sent two copies of a letter to Google – one to its offices in Washington D.C., and one to its corporate headquarters in California, setting out her concerns, and specifically requesting that her licence plate information be removed. Google claimed never to have received either copy of this letter. Approximately two years later, Ms Grillo sought the assistance of a lawyer, and sent a letter to Google demanding that “all photographs of our client, her breast, her car’s license plate and her civic address” be blurred or removed. The letter also claimed damages in the amount of $45,000. A short time after this letter was received, Google notified Ms Grillo’s lawyer that the images had been blurred.

Ms Grillo initiated a law suit against Google to recover damages related to the display of the images. However, perhaps because she was unrepresented at this point, she initiated her action in Quebec’s small claims court. Because this court has jurisdiction only over claims of $7000 or less, she limited her damage claim to this amount. In terms of the damages she claimed to have suffered, she noted that she had been mocked and humiliated at work, and had left her job at the bank as a result. She had also been on an extended period of sick leave prior to resigning her position – this was due to depression for which she was receiving care. She emphasized that she was a very private person who preferred her anonymity, and who had made choices about where to live and what kind of online activity to engage in (or not) with a view to this desire for privacy and anonymity.

The legal basis for the claim of violation of privacy rights in this case is found both in the Civil Code of Quebec and the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms. The Civil Code sets out a right to privacy and identifies a series of acts that are considered to violate that right. One of these is the use of a person’s name or image without their consent for any purpose other than the legitimate information of the public. The Quebec Charter also sets out a right to privacy and to human dignity.

The leading case in Quebec on the right to privacy as it relates to the use of a person’s image is Aubry v. ÉditionsVice-Versa. In this case, the Supreme Court of Canada awarded damages after a magazine published a photograph of a young woman sitting outside on her front steps. The photograph had been taken without her knowledge or consent. Drawing on this decision, Justice Breault explained that a photograph taken of a person in a public space in Quebec could not be circulated without that person’s consent unless the public’s legitimate right to information prevailed over the right to privacy. He noted that in Quebec, the freedom of expression did not trump privacy rights; the two considerations must necessarily be balanced.

In this case, Google argued that Ms Grillo had been sitting on her front steps in plain view of her neighbors or of any passersby. Since she was in public view, it argued, she had no right to privacy. Justice Breault disagreed. He rejected the idea that there was a strict dichotomy between public and private spaces. In this case, he noted that Ms Grillo lived on a quiet street, and that the relative level of privacy on that street was something that was of importance to her. Further, she was not engaged in any sort of public activity: she was on vacation, sitting outside her home. She was entitled to expect that her privacy and her right to control her image would not be infringed by the taking and distribution of a photo without her consent.

Google also argued that Ms Grillo was not identifiable from the photograph because her face had been blurred. However, the court found that the other details in the photograph made her identifiable, and that these other details were, as a result, also “personal information”. Justice Breault noted in particular that the photograph showed her car licence plate, and her house number – details Google admitted had been missed by its blurring algorithm.

Finally, Google argued that the dissemination of the photograph without Ms Grillo’s consent could be justified as it was for the “legitimate information of the public”. In this respect, it argued that its Streetview service was of broad use and interest to the public. Justice Breault rejected “social utility” as a basis for justifying a breach of privacy. It was not enough to argue that Streetview in general served a useful public purpose; it was necessary to show that there was a dominant public interest in the circulation of the plaintiff’s image – an interest that would outweigh the plaintiff’s privacy interest. The court found that no such public interest existed in this case. Thus, Justice Breault concluded that the plaintiff’s right to privacy had been violated.

In considering the amount of damages to award, Justice Breault found that Ms Grillo had not adequately established the extent to which her image had actually been viewed by members of the public. He assumed that the number of viewers would be relatively low, and limited mainly to friends and co-workers. He also found that she had not established a causal relationship between the dissemination of her image on Streetview and the depression that she had suffered. He noted that she had produced no witnesses as to the state of her health. Justice Breault also found it significant that she had waited two years between the time she had discovered the image and the time that she had sent the lawyer’s letter to Google. He noted that the images had been blurred immediately after Google’s receipt of the letter, suggesting that she could have mitigated any harm she suffered by acting much sooner. Nevertheless, Justice Breault accepted that she had been deeply shocked by the publication of the image and that she had been hurt as well by the comments of her co-workers. He awarded her $2250 in damages, along with costs of $159.

Do you have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the data recorded by your car’s airbag sensing diagnostic module (SDM)? Did you even know your car has an SDM? Two recent court cases highlight important privacy issues related to this technology – and by extension to technology embedded into other consumer products that is capable of recording user information.

Both R. v. Hamilton from the Ontario Supreme Court and R. v. Fedan from the BC Supreme Court are cases involving automobile accidents where police extracted, without a warrant, data recorded on the “black box” associated with vehicle airbag systems. These little ‘black boxes’ are referred to alternatively as sensing diagnostic modules (SDMs) or airbag control modules (ACMs). The devices are installed in cars along with the airbag system. Their recording function is triggered by the sudden deceleration that precedes the deployment of the airbags, and they typically record only a few seconds of data leading up to impact.

It is a violation of s. 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms for police to conduct a search without a warrant in circumstances where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy. Thus, a key issue in these airbag cases was whether there was a reasonable expectation of privacy in the SDM data, and, in consequence, whether the police should have obtained warrants prior to seizing the devices and extracting the data.

The two courts reached opposite conclusions on this issue. Justice MacDougall of the Ontario Supreme Court found that the accused had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the data, and that his Charter rights were violated when the data was extracted without a warrant. This court found that the SDM was similar to a computer that recorded information about its user. By contrast, Justice Kloegman of the British Columbia Supreme Court found that there was no reasonable expectation of privacy in the SDM data.

The BC Court found that the driver had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the recorded data largely because he did not know that his car was equipped to record such data. As Justice Kloegman explained: “SDMs are a relatively new feature of motor vehicles and it is unlikely that the majority of drivers even know their vehicle is equipped with one or what it does.” (at para 22). In fact, the judge was prepared to distinguish Hamilton on this point – in Hamilton, the accused was an off-duty police officer who knew about such devices, and therefore could be found to have a reasonable expectation of privacy. However, for the court to base a reasonable expectation of privacy on whether or not a consumer realizes that the product they have purchased is recording data about their use of it is hugely problematic, particularly as we move into an era where more and more of our consumer items are “smart”. A reasonable expectation of privacy in recorded data should not depend upon whether the individual knew that their car, fridge, phone, thermostat, or any other consumer item was programmed to record data about their use of the device. One might even argue that the lack of awareness that one’s use of consumer devices leaves a data trail should result in an enhanced expectation of privacy.

The court in Fedan also criticized the finding of the court in Hamilton that the SDM was a kind of onboard computer, thus aligning it with other computing devices in which a reasonable expectation of privacy has been found by the courts. In rejecting the analogy to a computer, Justice Kloegman observed that when there was a triggering event, the SDM would “capture five seconds of data regarding speed, brakes, and seatbelts.” (para 23) She then stated that this was “information generated by the vehicle, not the driver.”(para 23) This too is reasoning about which ordinary individuals should be concerned. This is not data about the vehicle in the abstract (grey, Volvo, 2010); rather, it is data that reveals how the driver was interacting with the vehicle at the time of the accident. The information is clearly information about the driver – as the court in Hamilton found.

In spite of the conclusion by the BC court that the information at issue was not about the driver, the judge did admit that the “driver’s actions in operating the vehicle will cause the SDM to engage.” (at para 23) Nevertheless, she found that this did not engage a privacy interest since “those same actions would likely be visible to the public eye.” (at para 23) This conclusion is based on older case law that finds that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in events that take place in public view. However, in technology context, there is a much more nuanced understanding of what is publicly perceptible and what is not. Accidents can occur anywhere and in any conditions. In many circumstances, there will be no witnesses. Even where there are witnesses, eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable – and it is considerably less precise than technological records. Eyewitnesses, for example, will not be able to provide the very precise details recorded by an SDM regarding the speed of the vehicle, the extent of braking. It is worth noting that the court in Hamilton, found, by contrast that the data in an SDM “is of a qualitatively different type than what an observing member of the public could reasonably observe.” (at para 58)

The starkly different decisions in Hamilton and Fedan illustrate that there are privacy issues here that have yet to been conclusively resolved. The issue of the reasonable expectation of privacy in SDM data is one that is worth following as cases from other provinces in Canada start to emerge. The implications of judicial approaches go well beyond on-board vehicle data recorders and may extend to a wide range of consumer devices equipped with devices that can record even small snippets of data.

The Quebec Court of Appeal has released its decision in Trudeau c. AD4 Distribution Canada inc., a case that balances the freedom of expression with the protection of privacy and dignity. This is an increasingly important theme in privacy case law in Canada; it was at the heart of a recent Supreme Court of Canada decision, albeit in a different context.

In Trudeau, the appellant, Stéfanie Trudeau had launched a law suit against the defendant film company after they released a pornographic film that featured a caricature of her in her professional capacity as a Montreal police officer. She had sought an injunction to prevent the distribution of the film, as well as damages in the amount of $100,000. The film produced by the respondents was titled “728 Agente XXX”. It was described as a parody inspired by the conduct of police at the time of the 2012 Quebec student protests. Although the filmmakers did not use her name in the film, and did not hire an actress who resembled her, the character in the film wore her police badge number 728. The number was not chosen at random; the appellant had become notorious following the student protests. The Quebec Superior Court noted, in its decision, that Agent 728 had become famous almost overnight when a video of her pepper-spraying demonstrators circulated widely in both mainstream and social media. Her badge number was also featured a later point in time in a video shown on mainstream and social media that depicted her forcible arrest of a man caught drinking in public in the Plateau area of Montreal. She was at one point suspended from the police force and an internal inquiry was held.

Ms Trudeau claimed that the film violated her right to privacy and her dignity (protected under sections 4 and 5 of Quebec’s Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms), and that they had usurped her name and image in the making of the film. The trial judge had rejected these arguments. On September 12, 2014, the Quebec Court of Appeal upheld this decision. The Court of Appeal agreed with the trial judge that there had been no usurpation of the appellant’s name or image – her name was not used in the film, and the actress who portrayed agent 728 did not resemble her. Although her badge number was used, and although her badge number could be linked to her through the extensive media coverage of the events leading to her notoriety, the Quebec Court of Appeal agreed with the trial judge that this was not enough to give rise to liability. It had to be shown not just that there was a link, but that any link between the appellant and the film violated her right to privacy or her dignity. The trial judge had found that her badge number was not part of her private identity, but rather was part of her public persona as a law enforcement agent. As a result, the caricature or parody in the film was not about her personally, but about her public persona – one that had engaged in highly publicized and controversial acts. The Court of Appeal agreed that her actions as a police officer could legitimately be the object of caricature and critical comment. According to the Court, the right to make a parody such as the film in question falls within the respondents’ freedom of expression. The Court accepted that there are limits on the extent to which a public figure can be subject to parody, but that these limits were not exceeded in this case. Here, according to the Court, the ordinary citizen would not believe that it is the appellant herself that is depicted, in any personal way, but only an effigy. The court found the parody to be so unrealistic that it could not diminish the appellant, in her personal capacity, in the mind of the public.

The appellant also argued that the fact that the film was pornographic was itself a violation of her dignity. The Court of Appeal disagreed, noting that the case did not involve the use of an actual photograph of the appellant in a pornographic context without her consent. The Court confirmed that the pornographic nature of the film did not remove it from the category of parody or caricature – a form of commentary that is protected by the freedom of expression.

A year ago in November, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down Alberta’s Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA) on the basis that it violated freedom of expression guaranteed by s. 2(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom. It did so by not appropriately striking the balance between the rights of striking works to express themselves in the context of a labour dispute and the privacy rights of others. In Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta v. United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 401, an adjudicator under PIPA had ruled that the Union’s practice of taking photographs and videotapes of people crossing its picket line during a labour dispute – and of using some of the footage on its website – contravened the data protection legislation. (The case is discussed in more detail in an earlier blog post here). The Union countered (ultimately, successfully) that to require it to seek consent to the collection and use of this personal information would infringe its rights to freedom of expression.

Where legislation violates a Charter right, a court has various options. Here, both the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta and the Attorney General of that province had asked the Court to strike down the legislation if it were found unconstitutional, rather than to perform judicial surgery on it. The Court agreed this was the better option, writing: “Given the comprehensive and integrated structure of the statute, we do not think it is appropriate to pick and choose among the various amendments that would make PIPA constitutionally compliant.” (at para 40). The Court added a one year period in which the declaration of the legislation’s invalidity was suspended. This would allow the law to remain operative in the province, giving the legislature what was clearly thought to be ample time to introduce the amendment or amendments necessary to bring the statute into compliance with the Charter.

A one-year suspension of invalidity might suffice where a government is functioning as its citizens have a right to expect. However in an age of increasingly dysfunctional governments the Charter remedy of striking down entire statutes with a one-year suspension of invalidity may be a riskier gambit. It has certainly proved to be so in this case. Recognizing that it cannot get amendment’s through by the November 15 deadline set by the Supreme Court of Canada, the Alberta Government as now asked the Court for an extension. The Court is likely to grant the extension – to do otherwise would result in a state of chaos in Alberta as far as private sector data protection is concerned.

Update Note:  On October 30, 2014 the Supreme Court of Canada agreed to a six month extension to the suspension of invalidity.

The public-oriented goals of the open government movement promise increased transparency and accountability of governments, enhanced citizen engagement and participation, improved service delivery, economic development and the stimulation of innovation. In part, these goals are to be achieved by making more and more government information public in reusable formats and under open licences. The Canadian federal government has committed to open government, and is currently seeking input on its implementation plan. The Ontario government is also in the process of developing an open government plan, and other provinces are at different stages of development of open government. Progress is also occurring at the municipal level across Canada, with notable open data and/or open government initiatives in Vancouver, Toronto, and Ottawa (to give a few examples).

Yet open government brings with it some privacy challenges that are not explicitly dealt with in existing laws for the protection of privacy. While there is some experience with these challenges in the access to information context (where privacy interests are routinely balanced against the goals of transparency and accountability (and see my posting on a recent Supreme Court of Canada decision on this issue), this experience may not be well adapted to developments such as open data and proactive disclosure, nor may it be entirely suited to the dramatic technological changes that have affected our information environment. In a recent open-access article, I identify three broad privacy challenges raised by open government. The first is how to balance privacy with transparency and accountability in the context of “public” personal information (for example, registry information that may now be put online and broadly shared). The second challenge flows from the disruption of traditional approaches to privacy based on a collapse of the distinctions between public and private sector actors. The third challenge is that of the potential for open government data—even if anonymized—to contribute to the big data environment in which citizens and their activities are increasingly monitored and profiled.

I invite you to have a look at this article, which is published in (2014) 6 Future Internet 397-413.

On June 13, the Supreme Court of Canada released its much awaited decision in Spencer v. The Queen. The core issue in this crucially important privacy case was whether there was a reasonable expectation of privacy in Internet Service Provider (ISP) subscriber information linked to a particular Internet Protocol (IP) address. Although privacy experts have for some time considered this question to be a no-brainer, the federal government had stubbornly held to the position that customer name and address information, viewed in isolation, was the kind of data in which none of us has a reasonable expectation of privacy.

Concurrent with the deliberations of the Supreme Court of Canada in Spencer were debates in the House of Commons and in Committee over the Conservative government’s controversial Bill C-13. This Bill will further pave the way for government authorities to gain easy and warrantless access to subscriber information. Among other things, the Bill gives ISPs immunity from any liability for handing subscriber information over to police without notice to or consent from their customers, and upon a simple request for this information to be shared.

Even prior to Bill C-13, provisions in both the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and the Criminal Code had been argued to grant permission to private sector companies to share personal information with authorities, at the request of those authorities, without a warrant and without notice or consent to the affected customers. The application of these provisions had led to numerous Charter challenges in the lower courts, and these courts were divided as to the interpretation these clauses should be given. Essentially, although the anonymous IP address could reveal a trail of internet-based activities, Crown lawyers argued (and some courts accepted) that the police were ultimately only seeking a simple name and address – information in which there could be little expectation of privacy – and no warrant was required.

The Supreme Court of Canada itself had been a bit iffy when it came to informational privacy. A number of split decisions in the past years showed a lack of consensus on key privacy issues, and some recent decisions were not particularly privacy-friendly. In 2004, a narrow majority of the Supreme Court of Canada found that infra-red technology used by police in fly-overs to measure the heat signature of houses was not privacy invasive, because it did not lead to precise inferences about activities taking place in the house (notwithstanding the fact that the police used the technology to draw inferences regarding the presence of a grow-ops the accused’s home). There was genuine concern that this approach placed an artificial distance between the individual and the information that could be gleaned about their activities through technology. This concern was augmented by the Court’s 2010 decision in R. v. Gomboc, where 4 of the judges found that a very precise recording of daily patterns of electrical use in a home “reveals nothing about the intimate or core personal activities of the occupants. It reveals nothing but one particular piece of information: the consumption of electricity.” (at para 14). This approach, which distanced particular pieces of information from the inferences that could be drawn from them, and that minimized the importance of the decontextualized information, was a matter of great concern to privacy advocates.

This is why the Court’s unanimous decision in Spencer v. the Queen is so important, and why so many privacy advocates awaited it with both anticipation and dread. It is perhaps fortuitous that the backdrop to the Supreme Court of Canada’s deliberations in Spencer was one of ongoing disclosures by Edward Snowden of intrusive and warrantless government surveillance of the online activities of individuals in Canada and elsewhere, and the heated debates over the Conservative government’s latest attempt to facilitate police access to information about Canadians’ online and mobile activities.

The Court in Spencer dismissed the approach that separated the name and address information from the information gleaned from the IP address. Justice Cromwell wrote: “the subject matter of the search is the identity of a subscriber whose Internet connection is linked to particular, monitored Internet activity.” (at para 33). He found as well that anonymity is an important dimension of privacy – one that is “particularly important in the context of Internet usage.” (at para 45) Noting that there is an almost unavoidable tracking of individual activity on the Internet, Justice Cromwell wrote:

The user cannot fully control or even necessarily be aware of who may observe a pattern of online activity, but by remaining anonymous — by guarding the link between the information and the identity of the person to whom it relates — the user can in large measure be assured that the activity remains private. (at para 46)

According to the Court subscriber information links certain types of information to identifiable individuals, and is thus revelatory of a great deal more information than simply a name and address. This in turn triggers a strong privacy interest.

On the issue of the provisions of both PIPEDA and the Criminal Code that permit companies to voluntarily share personal information with law enforcement officials, the Court ruled that these provisions do not override a reasonable expectation of privacy. Since a request by police for subscriber identification engages this privacy interest, it amounts to a search for which a warrant is required. The permissive provision in PIPEDA depends upon police having a lawful authority to obtain the information sought – if a warrant is required, then a request absent a warrant is not made with lawful authority. The Court also ruled that s. 487.014 of the Criminal Code merely confirms existing police powers to make enquiries, but does not give them any authority to circumvent requirements to obtain a warrant.

This decision is extremely important, and should prompt a reconsideration of parts of Bill C-13. Some caution is nonetheless warranted. The Court noted that the reasonableness of a person’s expectation of privacy in their subscriber information in the hands of their ISP may depend upon the wording of their Terms of Service and their ISP’s privacy policy. Essentially, if these documents state that the ISP will hand over customer data to police upon their request; this will undermine the reasonableness of any expectation that this information will remain protected. In an age of consumer helplessness in the face of lengthy, impenetrable and take-it-or-leave it terms of service, it is important to press ISPs – and other service providers – to respect basic privacy values.

The British Columbia Supreme Court has certified a class action law suit against Facebook for breach of privacy rights protected under B.C.’s Privacy Act. In doing so, it dismissed Facebook’s application to have the court decline jurisdiction to hear the case.

The claim in Douez v. Facebook, Inc. relates to Facebook’s Sponsored Stories “product”. Sponsored Stories permits paid advertisers to use the names and likenesses of users of Facebook, alongside information about their product and service and their trademarks. The resulting “Sponsored Stories” are then sent to the contacts of the person featured in the ‘story’. The court found that between September 9, 2012 and March 10, 2013, 1.8 million B.C. residents were featured in Sponsored Stories. Individual Facebook users are given no notice of the fact that they are featured in a Sponsored Story. The class Plaintiff Douez argued that the use of the names and images of herself and other Facebook users from B.C. violated s. 3(2) of the Privacy Act, which provides:

3. (2) It is a tort, actionable without proof of damage, for a person to use the name or portrait of another for the purpose of advertising or promoting the sale of, or other trading in, property or services, unless that other, or a person entitled to consent on his or her behalf, consents to the use for that purpose.

Facebook argued that all of its users must accept its terms of use and privacy policy in order to use the site. In this way, it obtains the express consent of users to have their names and images used in Sponsored Stories. It also put forward a secondary argument regarding implied consent.

The focus of Facebook’s application to have the Plaintiff’s certification application dismissed was an argument based upon the lack of jurisdiction of the B.C. Supreme Court over the matter. Facebook argued that its Terms of Use, to which all users must consent, contains a forum selection clause that provides that disputes will be heard by the courts of California. Justice Griffin of the B.C. Supreme Court noted that the choice of jurisdiction clause was found near the end of exceeding long terms of use, making it relatively obscure. She distinguished an earlier Ontario case, Rudder v. Microsoft Corp which upheld a choice of jurisdiction clause in an online consumer contract on the basis that the claim in that case was one of breach of contract. The plaintiffs in Rudder therefore relied on the terms of the contract on the one hand, and claimed not to be bound on the other. She also distinguished the more recent BC Supreme Court decision in Century 21 Canada Ltd. Partnership v. Rogers Communications Inc., which also held that the parties were bound by online terms of use, on the basis that both were “sophisticated commercial parties who employ similar terms of use themselves and who had conceded the reasonableness of the terms of use at issue.” (at para 45).

Justice Griffin found that the plaintiff had shown strong cause for the court not to enforce the forum selection clause. She noted that the B.C. Privacy Act gave exclusive jurisdiction over claims arising under that Act to the B.C. Supreme Court. As a result, a California court could not have jurisdiction over such a claim. She took note as well of the “cultural differences in the ways various jurisdictions think of a right to privacy”, suggesting that a court in California might not interpret the right of privacy in the Privacy Act in a manner consistent with Canadian approaches to privacy. She concluded that “the availability of a statute-based claim in the court’s own jurisdiction, which confers exclusive jurisdiction on that court, can on its own be a basis for overriding a forum selection clause, but also can support two other “strong causes” for not enforcing a forum selection clause, namely, juridical advantage and public policy.” (at para 93). According to Justice Griffin, a court in California would have no jurisdiction over a Privacy Act claim, such that enforcing the forum selection clause would rob the plaintiff of her recourse. Further, she found that the protection of privacy was a matter of important public policy. She also noted that “with the creation and growth of the internet the potential implications for a loss of privacy are greater than ever. The difficulty in proving quantifiable damage remains great for an individual whose privacy is lost, but the social harm can be monumental if the loss of privacy includes publicity over the internet with its almost infinite reach and timelessness.” (at para 104). In addition to these reasons for not enforcing the forum selection clause, Justice Griffin found that it would cause much less hardship overall for Facebook to defend itself in B.C. than for the plaintiff and her witnesses to travel to California to plead their case.

Justice Griffin also certified the class proceeding. The relevant class is:

All British Columbia Resident natural persons who are or have been Members of Facebook at any time in the period from January 1, 2011, to May 30, 2014 and:

(a) who at any time during this period registered with Facebook using either their real name or a portrait that contained an identifiable self-image or both;

(b) whose name, portrait, or both have been used by Facebook in a Sponsored Story; and,

(c) who do not seek to prove individual loss as a result.

It is clear that a central issue in the law suit will be whether users consented, via Facebook’s Terms of Use to their names or images in Sponsored Stories.

Note that a similar class action law suit in the United States related to Facebook’s Sponsored Stories resulted in a $20 million settlement agreement in 2013.

Canada’s federal Conservative government has nominated Daniel Therrien as the next Privacy Commissioner of Canada. If this appointment is approved by resolution of the Senate and House of Commons, he will take over the position that was held until recently by two-term Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart.

Mr Therrien is lawyer and a career civil servant who has held many different posts. He currently holds the position of assistant deputy attorney general for public safety, defence and immigration. Mr. Therrien is not widely known in the privacy law field. In its information provided at the time of his nomination, the government notes that he “co-led the negotiating team responsible for the adoption of privacy principles governing the sharing of information between Canada and the U.S. under the Beyond the Border Accord.”

The NDP has already indicated that it will not support the nomination. The CBC reports that the NDP has expressed concerns that Mr Therrien has worked to closely on developing policies or legislation which he would have to oversee as Privacy Commissioner.

Since Jennifer Stoddart’s departure in December 2013, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada has been led by Chantal Bernier, who had previously served as Assistant Privacy Commissioner.

Jennifer Stoddart, who was highly regarded both nationally and internationally, was a strong leader, an innovative thinker and a strong voice for privacy. She leaves very big shoes to fill.