Thus the practice of technology assessment is an essential and ongoing prerequisite to fashioning intelligent regulations to protect the privacy interests of all Canadians. The application of fair information practices can take care of most of the privacy problems posed by the Information Highway. The formulation and implementation of fair information practices in national and provincial data protection laws has a thirty-year history in advanced industrial societies. Fair information practices are at the heart of national and provincial data protection legislation. A table of twelve primary data protection principles and practices for the treatment of personal information is included in Appendix A, below.
Informed consent is the most specific concern in the application of fair information practices.
In every instance, opportunities for informed consent should be maximized. Thus, for example, a direct marketer should obtain individual consent for recontact with a customer or for the sale of a customer's name to a third party. Every agency and organization holding personal data in the private sector in North America should engage in as much voluntary self-regulation as possible. Fair information practices should be the basis of such voluntary privacy codes. Following Quebec's 1993 legislated model and the European Union's draft Directive on Data Protection, such private sector codes should ultimately have the force of law with an outside body responsible for monitoring compliance.