March 25, 2011



Jeffrey Kaufman explains the scope of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act.

Excerpt:

PIPEDA, however, does allow, under certain circumstances, the ability to collect and use personal information that appeared in a publication, including a magazine, book or newspaper in print or electronic form, that is available to the public where the individual has provided the information, pointed out Jeffrey Kaufman, the co-director of the national privacy group at Fasken Martineau Dumoulin LLP.

"So far, this is a regulation that has not been given much focus," said Kaufman. "It's generally thought that the regulation dealt with things like magazines and newspapers, but actually it's quite a broad section that also deals with electronic form. As a result, if organizations are using information that someone put on a publication, even their own publication, because they intended to publish that information, that could be accessible under the exceptions for collection and use in PIPEDA."