Evidence of meeting #32 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was subamendment.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Elizabeth Denham  Assistant Privacy Commissioner , Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Carman Baggaley  Senior Policy Advisor, Legal Services, Policy and Parliamentary Affairs Branch, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Daniel Caron  Legal Counsel, Legal Services, Policy and Parliamentary Affairs Branch, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada

9:30 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo

Thank you.

Mr. Siksay, please.

9:30 a.m.

NDP

Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Ms. Denham, for being here today with your colleagues. We hope the commissioner is better soon.

I wanted to come to your remarks about Google Street View and Canpages Street Scene. I know Google went live with their service recently. Canpages has been up and running for a while and are planning to expand. Have there been any specific complaints to your office about those services? Are you investigating any complaints right now?

9:30 a.m.

Assistant Privacy Commissioner , Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada

Elizabeth Denham

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. That's really up to Google. We haven't received a complaint since it went live.

Earlier this spring, we received a complaint from an individual who felt his image was captured when he was walking down the street in London, Ontario, I believe. That complaint was resolved during the investigation by Google agreeing to permanently delete his image from the database, so it never went to a public report.

9:30 a.m.

NDP

Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC

And you haven't had any feedback yet from members of the public who have tried to use the service whereby you can remove images?

9:30 a.m.

Assistant Privacy Commissioner , Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada

Elizabeth Denham

The take-down procedure.

9:30 a.m.

NDP

Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC

Yes. Have you had any complaints about that not being effective?

9:30 a.m.

Assistant Privacy Commissioner , Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada

Elizabeth Denham

No. Somebody in our office tested it. She didn't like the image of her house because the picture of her house showed a baby carriage outside and her garage door was open and she didn't think it was very clean in her garage. That image was taken down within 24 hours.

9:30 a.m.

NDP

Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC

So it appeared to be working from that test, at least.

I know that one of the issues was the security of the images—the unblurred images—and how long they were going to be held. I know you've negotiated with Google around that. I believe Canpages has also made accommodations around that. Google has agreed to store the unblurred images for only one year. Can you say a bit more about that negotiation and that agreement? I understand you want to review that after a period of a year as well.

9:30 a.m.

Assistant Privacy Commissioner , Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada

Elizabeth Denham

Thank you.

One of the most contentious issues that we had in our discussions with Google and Canpages is what happens to the raw imagery, the unblurred imagery that's stored in databases in the U.S. At first Google was very reluctant to set a retention period for how long they were going to keep that data. In August they agreed with us and they agreed with other data protection commissioners in Europe that indeed they needed to delete the unblurred imagery after one year. They gave us the business rationale as to why they needed to keep it for a year. We accepted that. We also have an undertaking from Google that we can visit their facilities and review how they are permanently deleting or permanently anonymizing the data after a year. That was one of our major concerns with the service.

9:30 a.m.

NDP

Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC

Is the commissioner satisfied that the storage of these unblurred images is secure, even though it is outside Canada?

9:30 a.m.

Assistant Privacy Commissioner , Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada

Elizabeth Denham

We've been told that it's secure, but we're not investigating, so we haven't visited their facilities yet. The undertaking will happen after a one-year period, and they've invited us in.

9:30 a.m.

NDP

Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC

In the statement this morning you noted that Google had consulted with umbrella community groups about concerns regarding the service. Do you believe that this consultation was extensive enough? I know it was only with umbrella groups, for instance. It didn't go down to local organizations that may have more connection with the concerns that people on the street might have.

9:35 a.m.

Assistant Privacy Commissioner , Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada

Elizabeth Denham

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.

Is it good enough? Is that an extensive enough consultation? It's a start. If we're investigating, we may want them to go further.

9:35 a.m.

NDP

Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC

Thank you.

From my conversations with Canpages and Google, it seems to me that this is a technology that's used by other companies, not only organizations that are trying to provide the sort of street-scene imagery, but that it's a basic mapping technology now that's used rather extensively. We had the publicity about Google and Canpages, but other organizations that do mapping use it and collect these kinds of images. Has the commission looked at those other applications of this kind of technology and what happens with the images they collect?

9:35 a.m.

Assistant Privacy Commissioner , Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada

Elizabeth Denham

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. We are aware that these other services are there, which is why we issued our fact sheet, “Captured on Camera”, because I think it communicates what the commissioner's expectations are for these commercial entities.

9:35 a.m.

NDP

Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC

Is there any ongoing work being done to understand the extent of the use of this technology and the implications of it for Canadians' privacy?

9:35 a.m.

Assistant Privacy Commissioner , Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada

Elizabeth Denham

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. We have had two in-services, where experts have come in to talk to us from industry, from academia, from advocacy groups, on this topic.

9:35 a.m.

NDP

Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC

Is geospatial technology the terminology for this mapping technology, or is it broader than that? Help me with understanding what geospatial technology really means.

9:35 a.m.

Assistant Privacy Commissioner , Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada

Elizabeth Denham

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.

9:35 a.m.

Carman Baggaley Senior Policy Advisor, Legal Services, Policy and Parliamentary Affairs Branch, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada

In addition to simply capturing the images, the other thing we're beginning to see is overlaying other information, whether it's demographic information about the average incomes of neighbourhoods, and images that are captured from space that are getting increasingly clear and have very high resolution. So it's not only images; it's combining different types of information so you can get pictures or a sense of a community that could be used for any number of purposes.

9:35 a.m.

NDP

Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC

Thank you.

9:35 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo

Thank you.

Mr. Rickford.

9:35 a.m.

Conservative

Greg Rickford Conservative Kenora, ON

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses today.

I'm going to perhaps build and broaden the discussion on video surveillance, and to a certain extent Google Street View and others that my colleague has introduced.

I just want to say that I'm relieved, in reading your report about the issues you're dealing with, that we're catching up with the law on this. Our starting point goes from Deuteronomy 24:10 to a 1604 case—something to do with every man's house being his castle—to a 1974 Supreme Court of Canada decision in Eccles, where we dealt with the right to privacy in a house, but that was with respect to police officers entering a home.

We come up to more recent cases that deal with this issue in a much better way, for example, Heckert v. 5470 Investments Ltd., which I'll refer to as Heckert, and Milner v. Manufacturer's Life Insurance Company. Are you familiar with those cases?

9:40 a.m.

Assistant Privacy Commissioner , Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada

Elizabeth Denham

I am not. I'll look to my legal counsel.

9:40 a.m.

Daniel Caron Legal Counsel, Legal Services, Policy and Parliamentary Affairs Branch, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada

I'm not familiar with those cases either.