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 gu

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 bl

Information & Ethics committee  Most of the time the commissioner is a reasonable person.

Information & Ethics committee  I think the fact that it's a technology-neutral law is very positive. I think the fact that it's principle-based and not prescriptive works, as well. If you can imagine changing a law or creating a law every time a new technology is developed, we'd never keep up with it. I think

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 i

Information & Ethics committee  That's correct. There are substantially similar private sector laws in British Columbia, Alberta, and Quebec. Intraprovincially, our law, PIPEDA, doesn't apply. It applies in the rest of Canada, and it applies to data flows across provincial borders.

Information & Ethics committee  Our refer-back process is discretionary. Obviously if we felt that somebody were going to have a difficult time going back on their own, we would definitely help them. If it were an employee who has had a difficult relationship with their manager and wanted to file a complaint, w

Information & Ethics committee  I want to add one more thing to your question about the application of the laws. PIPEDA applies in the other seven provinces, but it all applies to federally regulated industries, such as banks and telecommunications and railways, no matter where they operate. I just want to clar

Information & Ethics committee  I absolutely agree with you. If the capture of the image is for a journalistic or artistic purpose, and no other purpose, then consent is not needed and the publishing of that photo can go ahead. We haven't had that argument put before us by a company to look at whether or not

Information & Ethics committee  I would like it to be put to me directly, and we would consider it, but the act says it's for journalistic and artistic purposes and no other purpose.

Information & Ethics committee  I suppose it's because they could be using the data for other purposes.

Information & Ethics committee  They could build, from this application, other applications. They could retain the data and use it for other purposes.

Information & Ethics committee  I enjoy telling the Facebook story. In 2008 we received a complaint from CIPPIC, which is a legal clinic based at the University of Ottawa. It was a comprehensive complaint. I think there were 24 allegations about all aspects of the Facebook experience and it landed, thump, on ou

Information & Ethics committee  I think there were 71 recommendations; I'm trying to remember. I think there were 24 allegations, but yes, we had numerous recommendations. At the end of the day, we resolved everything. We didn't have to go to court. Facebook has agreed to again let us back in at the end of the

Information & Ethics committee  That's right. We've heard from data protection commissioners in Europe that they're using our report as a road map to help them in their dialogue with other social networking sites. There's never been a case in which we heard from so many ordinary Canadians who picked up the phon