Teresa Scassa - Blog

A news story from January 2015 puts squarely into focus some of the challenges of privacy and open government. The story centred on the Canadian legal information website CanLII, although the privacy issues it raises relate more directly to how government institutions protect personal information when seeking to comply with open courts and open government principles. CanLII, a non-profit corporation that is managed by the Federation of Law Societies of Canada, is a tremendously important…

Last week I wrote about a very early ‘finding’ under Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act which raises some issues about how the law might apply in the rapidly developing big data environment. This week I look at a more recent ‘finding’ – this time 5 years old – that should raise red flags regarding the extent to which Canada’s laws will protect individual privacy in the big data age. In 2009, the…