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August 12 2013

PIPEDA Needs Reform to Bring Enforcement Powers

"In Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart's recommendations for reforming PIPEDA, she says amendments should include stronger enforcement powers, mandatory data breach reporting, teeth behind accountability and increased transparency measures. ""The root of many of the privacy challenges we face is that technology is growing so quickly that some companies are failing to address privacy issues in the competitive rush (and they are) creating products that can be used in highly privacy-intrusive ways, ways that consumers don't anticipate, much less knowingly consent to,"" Stoddart said. As many as one in four websites the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (OPC) has tested recently were either unaware they were disclosing information to third parties or were not clearly disclosing that they were providing information to third-party service providers. Stoddart said these are major privacy concerns, but ""our law does not contain the right incentives to make sure privacy is a consideration when companies produce risk assessments. It's clear that without amendments, PIPEDA will be even less up to the task in the future. The balance that PIPEDA is supposed to bring is increasingly not there."" "