Faced with a decades-old private-sector privacy law that is no longer fit for the purpose in the digital age, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) has embarked on a dramatic reinterpretation of the law premised on incorporating new consent requirements. My Globe and Mail op-ed notes the strained interpretation arose last Tuesday when the OPC released a consultation paper signalling a major shift in its position on cross-border data transfers.
Post Tagged with: "cross-border data transfers"
Canadian Privacy Commissioner Signals Major Shift in Approach on Cross-Border Data Transfers
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada has released a consultation paper that signals a major shift in its position on data transfers, indicating that it now believes that cross-border disclosures of personal information require prior consent. The approach is a significant reversal of longstanding policy that relied upon the accountability principle to ensure that organizations transferring personal information to third parties are ultimately responsible for safeguarding that information. In fact, OPC guidelines from January 2009 explicitly stated that “assuming the information is being used for the purpose it was originally collected, additional consent for the transfer is not required.”
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