At the beginning of 2012, Google announced that it would be adopting one single privacy policy across all of its various services. Immediately, the EU data protection authorities launched an investigation to assess the compliance of Google’s privacy policy with the European Data Protection legislation. The Article 29 Working Party (WP29) (European data protection authorities), […] Read more
A Court decision was rendered in Quebec city earlier this week, granting damages to a woman wearing a niqab and her husband under the right to one’s image. The facts are as follows: the editor of a magazine about immigrants in Quebec city took a picture of a woman wearing a niqab in a flea market and used it to […] Read more
I was interviewed today by Global News regarding a well-known online U.S. retailer selling an adult movie starring accused murderer Luka Rocco Magnotta. Magnotta is currently facing charges of first-degree murder, committing an indignity to human remains, publishing obscene material, distributing indecent material through the mail and harassing Prime Minister Stephen Harper and other members […] Read more
The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) issued in May 2014 a groundbreaking decision for online privacy rights in Google Inc. v. Agencia Espanola de Proteccion de Datos under which European Union citizens have the right to require the erasure of inadequate, irrelevant or outdated information from search engines. This decision further concluded that […] Read more
Home Depot Inc. recently suffered a security breach under which 56 million credit cards may have been compromised in a five-month attack on its payment terminals. Yesterday, an article was discussing the fact that the risks of hacking were clear to computer experts inside Home Depot, that Home Depot relied on outdated software to protect its network […] Read more
In response to concerns about widespread Internet surveillance by police and law enforcement agencies, Telus Corp released yesterday its 2013 transparency report which reveals that it has received more than 100,000 requests for customer data from the government and law enforcement agencies in 2013. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada issued a Statement in April […] Read more
A Montreal female police officer Stefanie Trudeau also known as Matricule 728 (or Agent number 728), earned infamy during the Quebec 2012 student protests. She was also caught on video (which went viral), violently arresting a man drinking beer outside his apartment for which she is currently facing one count of assault. AD4 Distribution Canada, […] Read more
Solove published an interesting piece today entitled: “Why Do Lawsuits for Data Breaches Continue Even Though the Law Is Against Plaintiffs?” He explains that while the U.S. law has been far from kind to plaintiffs in data breaches (most courts dismiss claims for lack of harm), lawsuits keep coming. We have a similar situation in […] Read more
The WSP reports that most mobile apps don’t respect users’ privacy. The Global Privacy Enforcement Network (GPEN) undertook last May a second privacy sweep demonstrating the ongoing commitment of privacy enforcement authorities to work together to promote privacy protection around the world. It is reported that some 26 privacy enforcement authorities in 19 countries participated […] Read more
The Economist published a great piece on behavioral advertising : “Getting to know you: Everything people do online is avidly followed by advertisers and third-party trackers”. I blogged yesterday about the fact that the article raises an interesting point: industry players often take the position that since they do not know the users’ names, what they are collecting […] Read more