Adding to David Canton’s post this week, updating us on privacy and data protection developments, here is a release from our friend, Ontario’s Information and Privacy Commissioner, Dr. Ann Cavoukian. And an interview with Steve Paikin at TVO.

It’s NOT “just a number!” Commissioner Cavoukian warns of the ease of data linkages in an increasingly online world

TORONTO, Jan. 25, 2012 /CNW/ – Ontario’s Information and Privacy Commissioner, Dr. Ann Cavoukian, says that people’s perceptions of their privacy and anonymity online fall far short of reality. In fact, technology has evolved to the point that the seemingly unrelated . . . [more]

Getting the privacy balance right is not easy, from both theoretical and practical perspectives. As examples, here are some recent developments that go both ways.

Pro Privacy

• Proposed Bill C-12 amendments to PIPEDA that would mandate privacy breach notification in certain circumstances.
• The Ontario Court of Appeal decision in Jones v Tsige that created a tort of breach of privacy, or “intrusion upon seclusion” for intentional, offensive privacy invasions.
• The US Supreme court decision in US v Jones that decided police need to get a warrant before attaching a GPS tracking device to a vehicle.

Anti Privacy

• Proposed Bill C-12

. . . [more]

English news sources reported yesterday that a three-judge panel of the High Court found Theodora Dallas, until recently a university lecturer in psychology, guilty of contempt of court and sentenced her to six months imprisonment. She will serve the first three in jail and “be on license” for the second three.

Dallas was on a jury trying a case of grievous bodily harm. The trial judge had given jurors clear instructions not to look up matters connected to the trial. At home, she searched the term “grievous bodily harm” and then put it in conjunction with “Luton,” producing a result . . . [more]

The Library of Parliament’s Information and Research Service has released a background paper, “Legal Status at the Federal Level of Assisted Human Reproduction in Canada” [PDF] by Sonya Noris and Marlisa Tiedemann. The paper takes the reader though the recent history (1990 – present) of federal attempts at the regulation of this set of developing medical practices, culminating in a brief analysis of the Quebec constitutional challenge to the Assisted Human Reproduction Act culminating in the ambiguous / ambivalent response of the Supreme Court (4-4-1, so to speak) in Reference re Assisted Human Reproduction Act 2010 SCC 61 . . . [more]

Here are just a few links to what seems the most thoughtful commentary on the aftermath of the Jan. 18 Blackout. Add more in the comments, if you got ’em.

• SOPA support in Congress
• PIPA vote postponed
• Why the strategy failed
• Whose daily life the blackout affected
• The significance of the effort
• The whole thing explained in 13 minutes

Also, using copyright laws to justify civil rights infringements is not over . . . [more]

On Thursday January 12, 2012, Justice Jon-Jo Douglas convicted Coldin on the three counts of being nude in a public place. Douglas upheld the constitutional validity of Canada’s public nudity laws stating,...

Summary

Historically actions around privacy stemmed from concepts of trespass in the common law, and were only recognized as cearly actionable where stipulated by statute. An Ontario Court of Appeal decision today, Jones v. Tsige, changed that by recognizing the tort of invasion of privacy.

The action arose between two employees in a bank who did not know or work with each other. The plaintiff had a common law relationship with the former husband of the defendant, and the defendant acknowledged looking at the plaintiff’s bank information without just cause or reason on multiple occasions.

The plaintiff claimed $70,000 . . . [more]

Given the recent news about the arrest of Sub-Lieutenant Jeffrey Paul Delisle, Slaw readers may want to visit the Security of Information Act (SOIA) under which he has been charged, according to reports. Government officials and the RCMP have refused to identify the section of the legislation involved, however.

I say “visit” the Act in part because it is a nearly indigestible tangle, a true failure, perhaps, of the draftsperson’s art. This lack of clarity, which could be seen as a sympathetic reflection of the espionage world I suppose, has been the subject of judicial criticism. Readers may recall . . . [more]

Here are some of the sites that are going dark today, or changing their home pages in protest over the proposed US legislation. For more information on why this legislation is so bad, check out these sites, or search for “SOPA” on Slaw or Techdirt.com, or just Google it.

Wikipedia:

Boing Boing

WordPress

EFF

This is Google’s US site. Google’s Canadian homepage does not seem to be affected.

Michael Geist

  . . . [more]

The traditional tests for the validity of a marriage in Canada (which adopted the rules established by the English courts in the nineteenth century) was that a marriage had to be valid (i) where it was performed, by the lex loci celebrationis, and (ii) by the law of the parties’ ante-nuptial domicile, usually referred to as the question of “essential validity”. Simon Fodden correctly stated the law in his earlier post.

With respect to the lex loci celebrationis, the ceremony had to comply with the rules of the place where it occurred—the minister had to be licensed, a . . . [more]

I just returned from the 2012 Liberal Biennial conference in Ottawa, where a number of policy resolutions were passed. One which has received considerable attention is Priority Policy Resolution 117, which passed with 77% of the vote. The text of the resolution reads:

Justice
117. Legalize and Regulate Marijuana
WHEREAS, despite almost a century of prohibition, millions of Canadians today regularly consume marijuana and other cannabis products;
WHEREAS the failed prohibition of marijuana has exhausted countless billions of dollars spent on ineffective or incomplete enforcement and has resulted in unnecessarily dangerous and expensive congestion in our judicial system;
WHEREAS

. . . [more]

It’s been a great long time since I claimed any expertise in family law, but the fuss over today’s Globe and Mail front page headline (see the story here) concerning the availability of divorce to foreign same-sex couples married here in Canada has tempted me to put a toe in the waters again, just to check with Slaw readers that my understanding is correct or off base.

And that understanding is the following:

The law of marriage is governed by two sets of rules, one dealing with formal validity and the other with essential validity, or capacity to marry. Just . . . [more]