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LSAT Fingerprinting Raises Privacy Concerns in Canada
The Law School Admissions Test (LSAT), a required standardized test for those applying to North American law schools, is suddenly raising some legal questions of its own. The problem is that individuals must provide a thumbprint in order to write the LSAT. Since the test is administered by the Law School Admission Council, a non-profit American entity, the thumbprints of Canadian LSAT writers are sent to and stored in the United States, and are therefore subject to far-reaching American laws such as the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act (the USA PATRIOT Act).
Privacy concerns have gained greater prominence in Canada in recent years. This is due in part to the enactment of private-sector privacy laws such as the federal Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act and British Columbia’s Personal Information Protection Act. There is also increased sensitivity to the disclosure of Canadians’ personal information to U.S. entities, as demonstrated by a recent court action by the B.C Government and Services Employees' Union over the government’s decision to outsource certain medical accounts processing activities to U.S. companies or their Canadian subsidiaries.
In this context, and with the realization that if Canadians’ thumbprints are sent to the United States they can be collected and stored by U.S. security officials without anyone knowing, a privacy complaint over the LSAT practice has been filed with the Information and Privacy Commissioner of British Columbia. The Commissioner has agreed to investigate the complaint, and his findings could change the way that the LSAT is administered in Canada.
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