According to the Alberta Information and Privacy Commissioner, as of April 30 of this year, 151 privacy breaches have been reported to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner. The majority of reported breaches involve human error, such as misdirected email, faxes, stolen or lost unencrypted electronic devices and improper record and electronic media destruction. Many of these breaches are preventable with proper security systems and encryption.

Since May of 2010, Alberta’s Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA) requires private sector organizations to report privacy breaches that present a real risk of significant harm to the Information and Privacy Commissioner. . . . [more]

The United Food and Commerical Workers Union (UFCW) is moving from chasing discount retailers like Walmart into the more rarefied world of high end retailers. The Globe and Mail reported today that the UFCW is driving a campaign at the Holt Renfrew in Yorkdale Shopping Center in Ontario. The Globe explains:

The company is facing a union drive at one of it best-performing stores – an effort that could set a precedent at other locations and add further pressure to the company as it braces for the onslaught of new competition.

Interestingly, the Holt’s employees aren’t paid the same near-minimum . . . [more]

Today is my last day, for a while, in Yellowknife NWT. My firm has moved our northern location and I have been part of the coordinating team. It is a new experience for me, coordinating with movers, space planners, furniture vendors, landlords and contractors. Usually my contractor negotiations start with, “Hey honey, why don’t we…” With this project, everything was a phone call or email until Friday, when our Edmonton contingent arrived on site.

This project has provided some valuable lessons. First, it is much easier to buy all new furniture and just move people and paper (we didn’t do . . . [more]

Hell hath no fury like a scorned Internet, as Charles Carreon is finding out the hard way.

First, Carreon sued online comic the Oatmeal on behalf of his client FunnyJunk.com over a blog post published a year ago wherein the Oatmeal’s founder, Matt Inman, criticized FunnyJunk for hosting copies of his comic without proper attribution. Carreon and his client accused Inman of defamation and demanded $20,000 in damages.

Inman’s response was, predictably, to publicly mock Carreon and FunnyJunk in a blog post detailing the ludicrousness of Carreon’s accusations and. Furthermore, Inman responds to the demand of $20,000 in damages by . . . [more]

It’s with a heavy heart I report on the passing of Lonesome George. He was found dead by his keeper yesterday. George was the last known of the sub-species Pinta Island Tortoise from the Galápagos Islands, found on one of the Islands in 1971. He was estimated to have been over 100 years old. Attempts to mate him with similar sub-species had failed.

Lonesome George’s name and image were used to launch programs in the Galápagos Islands to protect its unique flora and fauna. The Galápagos are oceanic archipelagos, or groups of islands, with 13 large islands and more than . . . [more]

It’s barely conceivable, but some Slaw readers may not resort to Google today, what with the fact that it’s a Saturday, summer and all. That’d be a shame, because today the Google Doodle is honouring that tragic hero of the modern age, Alan Turing. And Google’s done it right: the doodle is an animated take on the Enigma Machine, challenging you to solve the puzzle and spell out in binary the Google name letter by letter. It ain’t easy: the ground keeps shifting underneath your trials.

In case you’re of a mind to cut to the chase, it being . . . [more]

Friday, aka: The day of Firge or Venus; while Fridays are nice and all, I often find it harder to get out of bed on Friday than I do on Monday. While that is a personal observation I’ve another observation about Friday that I’ve found is shared with others; that is, weird things happen on Friday. Working in a an academic law library that is open to the public I’ve found that it is often on Friday, and more specifically, Friday afternoon that the individual who wants to challenge the constitutional validity of income tax arrives at the library looking . . . [more]

Okay, so it’s way past the start of summer, at least where I am. And wherever you are, cold or hot, you’re thinking of going somewhere else, quite likely, because that’s what many of us do in summer. So I thought it might be a good idea to show you a few dozen photos of great destinations. If you can’t pack up and take off right now, you can at least plan, or, all else failing, dream of visiting one of these fascinating locations.

UNESCO World Heritage Site is an unofficial (!) tribute to that agency’s chosen protectorates, so to . . . [more]

This is a post in a series appearing each Friday, setting out some articles, videos, podcasts and the like that contributors at Slaw are enjoying and that you might find interesting. The articles tend to be longer than blog posts and shorter than books, just right for that stolen half hour on the weekend. It’s also likely that most of them won’t be about law — just right for etc.

Please let us have your recommendations for what we and our readers might like.

This is a post in a series appearing each Friday, setting out some articles, videos, podcasts and the like that contributors at Slaw are enjoying and that you might find interesting. The articles tend to be longer than blog posts and shorter than books, just right for that stolen half hour on the weekend. It’s also likely that most of them won’t be about law — just right for etc.

Please let us have your recommendations for what we and our readers might like.

No matter how many tens—nay, hundreds—of thousands of words we have in English, we still feel the need to take a thought from column A and apply it against something in Column B, or C, or D. At its purest, this is metaphor: x is y goes the assertion that no one believes but almost everyone understands. And appreciates. Much of the time, rather than a crisp and literary metaphor, it’s a whole expression that’s ported from one trade to another, or just into common parlance. Thus, something can be “all Greek to you” even if Η γλώσσα δεν είναι . . . [more]