Canadian Privacy Protection Law Comes Into Effect

Spud the Ninja writes: "The CBC is reporting that under the newly enacted Bill C-6: The Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, "companies have to ask permission before taking down personal data, they have to tell the client why they need it and who will see it." The Privacy Commissioner of Canada says that "A person is liable to a fine of [...] up to $100,000 for an indictable offence." As this Act is phased in over the next few years, it will bring the rest of Canada up to the level of privacy protection enjoyed only by the residents of Quebec. Spiffy!"

Comments

the international angle

[gunner800]

I'm waiting to see what happens when a Canadian person accesses an American site that violates these requirements.


My mom is not a Karma whore!

Re:the international angle

[__aaaaxm1522]

Speaking as a Canadian, with some understanding of my country's laws, I can say: "probably not much". The US company is not bound by the same laws as a Canadian company, so as long as the webserver that served the information was located in the US, I don't believe the Act would be enforceable.

A shame in some regards, but on the other hand, at least we aren't in the habit of forcing our country's laws on another (see any of the stories about France and the Yahoo Auction sites).

A couple things.

[okmar]

What about cookies, aka temp internet files? Most internet activity inevitably is going to capture browsing and habitual information that can be used.


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Usable against email address harvesters?

[Masem]

I'm sure that the intent of the bill was to apply to web sites that collect information, but as the quoted materials states "collection of personal information", would that also include email addresses, even if they are publically available on web pages?

As an interesting test, those that can should create a new email alias and use it as their email address here (easy enough to still read mail that goes through it, but allows detection of where that email came from). If you get any spam-like advertizing through that address, assuming you are canadian, you might have a case here...