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Canadian Court Orders U.S. Website Probed for Privacy Violations
Canada’s privacy commissioner has been ordered to investigate whether a U.S. company improperly obtained details about Canadian financial transactions. Addressing objections by the privacy commissioner, who said her office lacked jurisdiction to investigate the U.S. website, Federal Court Justice Sean Harrington asserted that the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (“PIPEDA”) does grant the privacy commissioner the requisite jurisdiction to investigate a “transborder flow of personal information”. The case was initially brought by the executive director of the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, who was able to obtain a Canadian background check on herself, using a U.S. website. The website offered resumes, signatures and even tax records.
This case may have an impact in other areas as well. For approximately the past five years, in an effort to track terrorist financing, the U.S. government has obtained details on private international banking transactions. The U.S. was able to gather this information from an international co-operative called the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (“SWIFT”). SWIFT’s electronic messaging system is used by more than 7,800 financial institutions to communicate banking information. It has been discovered, that Canada is one of 30 countries investigating whether SWIFT was in violation of privacy rules by providing U.S. counterterrorism investigators with records. Thus, in the wake of an EU panel in November of 2006 finding that SWIFT had violated privacy rules, Canada’s privacy commissioner is “...very pleased that the court has decided we have the jurisdiction to investigate this matter”.
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