Practice Area: Information, Data Security & Privacy

Default Judgment Giving Rise to New Tort of “Public Disclosure of Embarrassing Private Facts” Set Aside

· 3 min read

Early in 2016, we reported on a case in which the Ontario Superior Court articulated a new private tort: “public disclosure of embarrassing private facts.” The plaintiff in that case had been coaxed by a former boyfriend (the defendant) to send him a sexually explicit video of herself. Despite promising the plaintiff confidentiality, the defendant…

Procedural Power of Courts Not Constrained by PIPEDA

· 3 min read

In Royal Bank of Canada v. Trang, the Supreme Court of Canada held that the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) does not interfere with the procedural powers of a court. The decision arose out of a situation in which past judicial interpretation and application of PIPEDA had impeded the ability of the…

Ten Incident Response Tips – Part 2

· 3 min read

In Part 1 of this two-part series on data security incident response, we identified five “norms” to guide your incident response process…

Ten Incident Response Tips – Part 1

· 3 min read

Responding to a data security incident is as much art as science. Whatever size your organization and whatever risks you face, you should have a detailed incident response plan to guide the efforts of a defined incident response team…

Supreme Court Affirms Supremacy of Solicitor-Client Privilege

· 3 min read

In Alberta (Information and Privacy Commissioner) v. University of Calgary, a majority of the Supreme Court of Canada (with two justices partially concurring) affirmed that the University of Calgary was justified in its refusal to produce certain documents over which it had claimed solicitor-client privilege to the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta (Commissioner). The…

First CASL Decision Invites Long-Desired Feeling of Normality

· 3 min read

Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation is relatively new, onerous and far from elegant. Organizations have been weighing the risks the best they can – and in doing so have puzzled over how to account for CASL’s provision for penalties of up to $10 million. On October 26th, the CRTC issued a decision in which it held that a company…

Federal Privacy Commissioner Uses Ashley Madison Incident to Promote Good Information Governance

· 2 min read

Organizations subject to Canadian privacy law should be aware that the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (together with the Australian Information Commissioner) recently issued a report on the 2015 breach of the Ashley Madison website – a breach that affected nearly 35 million individuals who had used the online dating site for adults…