Canada

The federal privacy commissioner has little faith current laws are strong enough to protect the rights of Canadians if governments approve a COVID-19 contact tracing app. Asked Friday by a parliamentary committee if he is confident current privacy laws would protect Canadians if there was a privacy breach in a…

Appearance before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology (INDU) on contact tracing applications May 29, 2020 Ottawa, Ontario Opening statement by Daniel Therrien Privacy Commissioner of Canada (Check against delivery) Thank you chair and committee members for your invitation to discuss tracing applications, which is…

With governments around the world making billions of dollars available for COVID-19 financial relief, criminals are making every effort to take advantage. That includes building phony official coronavirus relief templates for websites to trick victims into giving up sensitive personal information. Among the sites discovered by security vendor Proofpoint are…

Facebook has been ordered to pay a $9-million penalty after making “false or misleading claims about the privacy of Canadians’ personal information,” according to a news release from the Competition Bureau. The decision follows an investigation into the social media company’s privacy practices between 2012 and 2018. The Competition Bureau…

Cookie banners are increasingly prevalent on internet sites. A section about cookies may appear in privacy policies and, sometimes, even an entire policy is devoted exclusively to them. But what is a “cookie”? Also known as “HTTP cookies”, “browser cookies” or “web cookies”, a cookie is a small piece of…

Enforcement Highlights CRTC issues $115,000 in penalties to stop the spread of malicious software Recently, CRTC staff took enforcement action against Orcus Technologies and its partners John Paul Revezs and Vincent Leo Griebel, who developed, marketed and sold the Orcus RAT. Following this investigation, the Chief Compliance & Enforcement Officer…

The CIO Strategy Council published a new National Standard of Canada for third-party access to data last week, news that quickly got buried after Sidewalk Labs announced it was pulling the plug on its smart city project in Toronto. And while the rest of the country argues over whether or…

An Ontario emergency order — which compels public health authorities to give requested COVID-19 data to first responders— lacks built-in transparency or accountability measures, said Teresa Scassa, professor at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law. The order allows police, firefighters and paramedics to obtain information about individuals with whom…

On May 7, 2020, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) and the provincial and territorial Information and Privacy Commissioners issued a joint statement on privacy principles for contact tracing and similar apps. (Aside: yes, not to be left out of the hero category, they really did refer…

Last week Toronto’s York University fell victim to what appears to be a ransomware attack, according to cybersecurity expert David Masson, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise. Masson, director of enterprise security at cybersecurity firm Darktrace, says there have been multiple advisories recently warning healthcare providers, municipalities and academic…