Information & Ethics committee  The reasonable person, that's a legal concept. Reasonable safeguards.... The law is full of the word “reasonable”. There has to be a reasonable balancing, and that's really what we were striving for in our negotiations on street-level imaging. Is it a perfect resolution? No. Is it a reasonable balancing between an innovative technology that is very popular and individual privacy rights?

Information & Ethics committee  We've talked about having a youth counsel. The youth don't want to hear from someone like me. They want to hear from young people who know how to communicate with them. We have talked about that. It's going to be our priority in the next few years. We think it is youth who are most vulnerable to the new technologies, and we know that their view of privacy is different from our generation's.

Information & Ethics committee  We have a tool under development. The audience for the tool is small businesses. It's an information security check list, but it is not geared to real estate agents or brokers. Still, we have a tool in development that will be ready by the end of the year. There are also other guidance documents on our website that deal with ways of protecting personal information.

Information & Ethics committee  There isn't a time lag as such. They take the photos and they blur the images of individuals before the images are posted on the Internet. So before it goes live, faces are blurred. Licence plates are blurred. Actually, I'm not sure what you mean by a time lag. Google has not blurred schools.

Information & Ethics committee  Just as a last comment, I agree that the jurisprudence is far from clear and is developing on these issues, so we'll be watching that. But the other issue goes to your point about the nexus, because the capture of individuals is incidental to what the street-level imaging is after.

Information & Ethics committee  Youth privacy was one of our objectives. It was a priority in 2008. As to how much we have spent on building the youth blog and the video contest and our outreach, I can certainly provide you with that information. But it really was limited, so it was well under $100,000 for that campaign.

Information & Ethics committee  I am not. I'll look to my legal counsel.

Information & Ethics committee  Under PIPEDA we have had complaints in the insurance realm about covert video surveillance, surveillance without the knowledge or consent of the individual. The purpose of the surveillance is to really look at potentially bogus insurance claims. One of the issues there was the capture of third parties in that covert video surveillance.

Information & Ethics committee  I wonder about that term, if I'm really saying spatial-spatial when I say geospatial technology? I'm not an expert, but it's my understanding that the terminology “geospatial” captures this kind of mapping technology. It's simply incredible, especially the resolution. I invite my colleagues to perhaps add to that.

Information & Ethics committee  We asked Google to consult with community agencies. We weren't prescriptive, because again we weren't investigating. We said it's a good idea if you talk to these groups to see if there's sensitivity around photographing clinics, schools, shelters, and other types of agencies. Google then gave us a list, about a week ago, of the umbrella organizations they spoke to, and they told us they didn't get any concerns or any requests from the umbrella organizations.

Information & Ethics committee  We have not. We are aware that there are many other services. There are many other smaller companies, and they might actually be driving and capturing images on behalf of government agencies as well. We didn't look at that. We looked at Google Street View because I guess it was the biggest, and was the most public; Canpages because it was, again, a very similar service operating in Canada.

Information & Ethics committee  There is, and in my opening remarks I referred to the round tables and the research that we'll be doing in 2010. The idea of doing this research is a lead-up to the next round of PIPEDA review, and one of those topics is on geospatial technology and our understanding of how widely the technology is used and how it's used.

Information & Ethics committee  That's exactly right. Our new process is a robust refer-back. If somebody comes to our office, we ask them to go to the business or the department first so they have the first chance to resolve the issue before we initiate a full-on investigation.

Information & Ethics committee  Since Google Street View went live on October 7, we've had a handful of calls from Canadians expressing their concerns. We have received no official complaints, but again, our first response is to send the individual to Google. A lot of people want images of their houses or themselves or their pets or their yards removed from the Internet.

Information & Ethics committee  The take-down procedure.