Information & Ethics committee  Thank you, Commissioner Denham. Like you, we have order-making power, and we can order the cessation or the destruction of collections of personal information that have been collected contrary to the act. I did that a few years ago with the Ottawa police, believe it or not. The

Information & Ethics committee  Under biometric encryption, the encryption key would in fact be the facial image or the finger. The unique features of your biometric would become, in effect, the equivalent to an encryption key that would then encrypt some other data.

Information & Ethics committee  The decryption key resides on your face or finger. The biometric would be the decryption key. That's why, if the police came knocking at the OLG, they could say, “You're welcome to the database.” They don't possess the decryption keys. The decryption keys reside on the facial i

Information & Ethics committee  Okay, I'd love to do that. It's really quite simple, though it sounds very complex. Imagine your pictures being taken or your fingerprints being taken. The normal process involved in facial recognition programs or biometric programs is, as I said, to capture what is called a bi

Information & Ethics committee  I agree with Commissioner Denham that sometimes you're producing work at the workplace that has your personal information on it. It has your name and position, as it should, but it is not personal information as it is defined under our statutes, because it doesn't relate to you p

Information & Ethics committee  There are several things we can do. Obviously, raising awareness and education is our job, and we're getting the word out there strongly. You should know that internationally, word about privacy by design is growing. As I mentioned, in 2010 it was made an international standard.

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you. I concur with my colleague, Commissioner Denham. We have order-making power in Ontario, and I'm telling you it would not be the same without it. But let me be clear—it is a last resort. The order-making power, which gives you the teeth, is the stick. We rely on it

Information & Ethics committee  I've met with people and spoken at both Facebook's headquarters and Google's, and there is considerable interest in privacy by design. With regard to Facebook, if I had to guess their position, I would say they view privacy by design as being incompatible with their business mode

Information & Ethics committee  For starters, users, consumers, and all of us have to be more vigilant, and we have to speak up with the companies that we do business with. You may say that's hard to do. Facebook is the way it is. How are you going to get changes? You would be surprised at the number of times t

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, that's a very good point.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes.

Information & Ethics committee  Mr. Angus, I love that you refer to “unintended consequences”. I didn't use the slide here, but I have a big slide when I talk to, especially, tech companies. My slide just reads: beware of unintended consequences. That is always the fear. I called last year the year of the engi

Information & Ethics committee  I'm going to ask you to consider privacy by design as a solution on a go-forward basis in terms of how we protect privacy. For example, if we ask Google, Facebook, and others to implement privacy by design solutions such as biometric encryption for their facial recognition progra

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you very much for that question. I think there's one way that we can do it. I'll refer you to a paper that we released this past summer—I'm trying to remember the name of it—“Privacy by Design in Law, Policy and Practice”. The idea for the paper came from Commissioner Pame

Information & Ethics committee  Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My thanks to the chair and members of the committee for inviting me to speak to you today. I'm not going to speak to you about privacy regulatory matters and existing statutes. The reason for that is you've heard from Commissioner Stoddart on