By Vinay Desai LawyerBorden Ladner Gervais S.E.N.C.R.L., S.R.L. In its most recent report of findings entitled“Company’s re-use of millions of Canadian Facebook user profiles violatedprivacy law”, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (the “OPC”) dealt with the often murky issue of personal information thatis publicly available and confirmed its view that Facebook profiles that areset to public are not considered “publicly available” information under the Personal Information Protection and ElectronicDocuments Act (“PIPEDA”). Assuch, this finding reinforces the notion that the colloquial meaning of “publicinformation” does not correspond to the legal definition of “publiclyavailable” under Canadian privacy law and confirms the OPC’s jurisdictionagainst foreign entities collecting personal information from Canadians. Investigation The OPC investigated the practices of a NewZealand company – Profile Technology –which operated a website called The Profile Engine, which collectedprofile information originally set to “public” on Facebook while providingsearch function services for users. The operator of the website argued… Lire la suite
