Source: http://teresascassa.ca/index.php?option=com_k2&view=itemlist&task=user&id=63%3Ateresascassa&Itemid=82&limitstart=40
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 13:10:27+00:00

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The long-term care context is one where privacy interests of employees can come into conflict with the interests of residents and their families. Recent reported cases of abuse in long-term care homes captured on video camera only serve to highlight the tensions regarding workplace surveillance. A June 2017 decision of the Quebec Court of Appeal, Vigi Santé ltée c. Syndicat québécois des employées et employés de service section locale 298 (FTQ), considers the workplace privacy issues in a context where cameras were installed by the family members of a resident and not by the care facility.
The facts of the case were fairly straightforward. The camera was installed by the family of a resident of a long term care facility, but not because of any concerns about potential abuse. Two of the resident’s children live abroad and the camera provided them with a means of maintaining contact with their mother. The camera could be used in conjunction with Skype, and one of the resident’s children present in Quebec regularly used Skype to receive updates about his mother from the private personal care person they also paid to be with their mother for part of the day, six days a week. The camera provided a live feed but did not record images. The operators of the long-term care facility did not have access to the feed. The employees of the facility were informed of the presence of the camera and none objected to it. The privately hired personal care worker was often present when staff provided care, and the court noted that there were no complaints about the presence of this companion. The family never complained about the services provided to the resident; in fact, they indicated that they were very satisfied. The resident had been in two other facilities prior to moving to this one; similar cameras had been used in those facilities.
The employees’ union challenged the installation of the video, and two questions were submitted to an arbitrator for determination. The first question was whether the employer could permit the family members of a resident to install a camera in the resident’s room for the sole purpose of allowing family members to see the resident. The second was whether the employer could permit family members to install a camera in the room of a resident with the goal of overseeing the activities of employee caregivers. The arbitrator had ruled that, as far as employees were concerned, in both cases the camera was a surveillance camera. He went on to find that the employer had no justification in the circumstances for carrying out surveillance on its employees. Judicial review of this decision was sought, and a judge of the Quebec Superior court confirmed the decision. It was appealed to the Court of Appeal.
Under the principles of judicial review, an arbitrator’s decision can only be overturned if it is unreasonable. The Court of Appeal split on this issue with the majority finding the decision to have been unreasonable. The majority emphasized that the arbitrator had found that the family’s motivation for installing the camera was not to carry out surveillance on the staff, and also highlighted the fact that none of the staff had complained about the presence of the camera.
Although the majority agreed that the privacy guarantees of the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms protected employees against unjustified workplace surveillance by their employer, they found that the camera installed by the family for the purpose of maintaining contact with a loved one did not constitute employee surveillance. Further, it was not carried out by the employer. They noted in particular the fact that the images were not recorded and the feed was not accessible to the employer. The majority criticized the arbitrator for characterizing the family’s decision to install the camera as being motivated by a disproportionate concern (“une inquietude démesurée”) over their mother’s well-being, because there was no evidence of any mistreatment.
The majoirty cited jurisprudence to support its view that a camera that captured activities of workers was not necessarily a surveillance camera. It noted several Quebec arbitration cases where arbitrators determined that cameras installed by employers to provide security or to protect against industrial espionage were permissible, notwithstanding the fact that they also captured the activities of employees. Any surveillance of employees was incidental to a different and legitimate objective of the employer.
The majority went further, noting that in this case, the issue was whether an individual (or their family) had a right to install a camera in their own living space. For the majority, it was significant that the care home was the resident’s permanent living space because she had lost her ability to live on her own. The camera allowed her to remain in greater contact with her loved ones, including two children who lived abroad. They considered that the family’s choice in this matter had to be given its due weight, and found that the arbitrator should have ruled, in answer to the first question, that the employer could permit the installation of a camera, by family members, for the goal of permitting the family members to maintain contact with a resident.
The second question related to the rights of family members to install cameras with the goal of carrying out surveillance on caregivers. The majority declined to answer this question on because the facts did not provide a sufficient context on which to base a decision. The Court noted that the answer would depend on circumstances which might include whether there had already been complaints or reported concerns, the nature and extent of notice provided to employees, and so on.
Justice Giroux, in dissent, found that it was reasonable for the arbitrator to have characterized the camera as a surveillance camera. The arbitrator had noted that the camera was placed in such a way as to allow for a continuous view of all care provided by employees to the resident. The resolution was good enough to identify them, and in some cases to hear them. While there was no recording of the feed, it was possible to create still photographs through screen capture. The arbitrator had also turned his attention to the special nature of the care home, noting that it was a home to residents but at the same time was a workplace for the employees. The workplace was governed by a collective agreement, and disputes about working conditions were meant to be resolved by an arbitrator, meaning that courts should exercise deference in review. The arbitrator had found that by permitting the installation of the camera by the family of the resident, the employer had adopted as its own the family’s reasons for doing so, and was responsible for establishing that the level of surveillance was consistent with the Quebec Charter. The arbitrator had found that the family members had demonstrated a disproportionate level of concern, and that this could not be a basis for permitting workplace surveillance. He concluded that in his view the decision of the arbitrator should have been upheld.
In R. v. Orlandis-Habsburgo the Ontario Court of Appeal revisited the Supreme Court of Canada decisions in R. v. Spencer, R. v. Gomboc, and R. v. Plant. The case involved the routine sharing of energy consumption data between an electricity provider and the police. Horizon Utilities Corp. (Horizon) had a practice of regularly reviewing its customers’ energy consumption records, including monthly consumption figures as well as patterns of consumption throughout the day. When Horizon encountered data suggestive of marijuana grow operations, they would send it to the police. This is what occurred in Orlandis-Habsburgo. The police responded by requesting and obtaining additional information from Horizon. They then conducted observations of the accused’s premises. The police used a combination of data provided by Horizon and their own observation data to obtain a search warrant which ultimately led to charges against the accused, who were convicted at trial.
The defendants appealed their convictions, arguing that their rights under s. 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms had been infringed when the police obtained data from Horizon without a warrant. The trial judge had dismissed these arguments, finding that the data were not part of the “biographical core” of the defendants’ personal information, and that they therefore had no reasonable expectation of privacy in them. Further, he ruled that given the constellation of applicable laws and regulations, as well as Horizon’s terms of service, it was reasonable for Horizon to share the data with the police. The Court of Appeal disagreed, finding that the appellants’ Charter rights had been infringed. The decision is interesting because of its careful reading of the rather problematic decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in Gomboc. Nevertheless, although the decision creates important space for privacy rights in the face of ubiquitous data collection and close collaboration between utility companies and the police, the Court of Appeal’s approach is highly contextual and fact-dependent.
A crucial fact in this case is that the police and Horizon had an ongoing relationship when it came to the sharing of customer data. Horizon regularly provided data to the police, sometimes on its own initiative and sometimes at the request of the police. It provided data about suspect residences as well as data about other customers for comparison purposes. Writing for the unanimous court, Justice Doherty noted that until the proceedings in this case commenced, Horizon had never refused a request from the police for information. He found that this established that the police and Horizon were working in tandem; this was important, since it distinguished the situation from one where a company or whistleblower took specific data to the police with concerns that it revealed a crime had been committed.
The Court began its Charter analysis by considering whether the appellants had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the energy consumption data. The earlier Supreme Court of Canada decisions in Plant and Gomboc both dealt with data obtained by police from utility companies without a warrant. In Plant, the Court had found that the data revealed almost nothing about the lifestyle or activities of the accused, leading to the conclusion that there was no reasonable expectation of privacy. In Gomboc, the Court was divided and issued three separate opinions. This led to some dispute as to whether there was a reasonable expectation of privacy in the data. In Orlandis-Habsburgo, the Crown argued that seven out of nine judges in Gomboc had concluded that there was no reasonable expectation of privacy in electricity consumption data. By contrast, the appellants argued that five of the nine judges in Gomboc had found that there was a reasonable expectation of privacy in such data. The trial judge had sided with the Crown, but the Court of Appeal found otherwise. Justice Doherty noted that all of the judges in Gomboc considered the same factors in assessing the reasonable expectation of privacy: “the nature of the information obtained by the police, the place from which the information was obtained, and the relationship between the customer/accused and the service provider.” (at para 58) He found that seven of the judges in Gomboc had decided the reasonable expectation of privacy issue on the basis of the relationship between the accused and the utility company. At the same time, five of the justices had found that the data was of a kind that had the potential to reveal personal activities taking place in the home. He noted that: “In coming to that conclusion, the five judges looked beyond the data itself to the reasonable inferences available from the data and what those inferences could say about activities within the home.” (at para 66) He noted that this was the approach taken by the unanimous Supreme Court in R. v. Spencer, a decision handed down after the trial judge had reached his decision in Orlandis-Habsburgo. He also observed that the relationship between the customer and the service provider in Orlandis-Habsburgo was different in significant respects from that in Gomboc, allowing the two cases to be distinguished. In Gomboc, a provincial regulation provided that information from utility companies could be shared with the police unless customers explicitly requested to opt-out of such information sharing. No such regulation existed in this case.
Justice Doherty adopted the four criteria set out in Spencer for assessing the reasonable expectation of privacy. There are: “(1) the subject matter of the alleged search; (2) the claimant's interest in the subject matter; (3) the claimant's subjective expectation of privacy in the subject matter; and (4) whether this subjective expectation of privacy was objectively reasonable, having regard to the totality of the circumstances.” (Spencer, at para 18) On the issue of the subject matter of the search, the Court found that the energy consumption data included “both the raw data and the inferences that can be drawn from that data about the activity in the residence.” (at para 75) Because the data and inferences were about a person’s home, the Court found that this factor favoured a finding of a reasonable expectation of privacy. With respect to the interest of the appellants in the data, the Court found that they had no exclusive rights to these data – the energy company had a right to use the data for a variety of internal purposes. The Court described these data as being “subject to a complicated and interlocking myriad of contractual, legislative and regulatory provisions” (at para 80), which had the effect of significantly qualifying (but not negating) any expectation of privacy. Justice Doherty found that the appellants had a subjective expectation of privacy with respect to any activities carried out in their home, and he also found that this expectation of privacy was objectively reasonable. In this respect, he noted that although there were different documents in place that related to the extent to which Horizon could share data with the police, “one must bear in mind that none are the product of a negotiated bargain between Horizon and its customers.” (at para 84) The field of energy provision is highly regulated, and the court noted that “[t]he provisions in the documents to which the customers are a party, permitting Horizon to disclose data to the police, cannot be viewed as a ‘consent’ by the customer, amounting to a waiver of any s. 8 claim the customer might have in the information.” (at para 84) That being said, the Court also cautioned against taking any of the terms of the documents to mean that there was a reasonable expectation of privacy. Justice Doherty noted that “The ultimate question is not the scope of disclosure of personal information contemplated by the terms of the documents, but rather what the community should legitimately expect in terms of personal privacy in the circumstances.” (at para 85) He therefore described the terms of these documents as relevant, but not determinative.
The documents at issue included terms imposed on the utility by the Ontario Energy Board. Under these terms, Horizon is barred from using customer information for purposes other than those for which it was obtained without the customer’s consent. While there is an exception to the consent requirement where the information is “required to be disclosed. . . for law enforcement purposes”, Justice Doherty noted that in this case the police had, at most, requested disclosure – at no point was the information required to be disclosed. He found that the terms of the licence distinguished this case from Gomboc and supported a finding of a reasonable expectation of privacy in the data.
The respondents argued that s. 32(g) of MFIPPA provided a basis for disclosure. This provision permits disclosures to law enforcement agencies without referencing any need for “lawful authority”. However, Justice Doherty noted that, like PIPEDA, MFIPPA has as its primary goal the protection of personal information. He stated: “That purpose cannot be entirely negated by an overly broad and literal reading of the provisions that create exceptions to the confidentiality requirement.” (at para 106) He noted that while s. 32(g) provides an entity with discretion to release information in appropriate circumstances, the exercise of this discretion requires “an independent and informed judgment” (at para 107) in relation to a specific request for information. The provision could not support the kind of informal, ongoing data-sharing relationship that existed between Horizon and the police. Similarly, the court found that the disclosure could not be justified under the exception in s. 7(3)(d)(i) of PIPEDA that allowed a company to disclose information where it had “reasonable grounds to believe that the information relates to . . . a contravention of the laws of Canada”. While Justice Doherty conceded that such disclosures might be possible, in the circumstances, Horizon “did not make any independent decision to disclose information based on its conclusion that reasonable grounds existed to believe that the appellants were engaged in criminal activity.” (at para 110) It simply passed along data that it thought might be of interest to the police.
Although the Court of Appeal concluded that there was a reasonable expectation of privacy in the energy consumption data, and that the search was unreasonable, it ultimately found that the admission of the evidence would not bring the administration of justice into disrepute. As a result, the convictions were upheld. The court cited, in support of its conclusion that the trial judge had reached his decision prior to the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Spencer, and that the error in the judge’s approach was only evident after reading Spencer.
Skirmishes over right to freely access and use “publicly available” data hosted by internet platform companies have led to an interesting decision from the U.S. District Court from the Northern District of California. The decision is on a motion for an interlocutory injunction, so it does not decide the merits of the competing claims. Nevertheless, it provides insight into a set of issues that are likely only to increase in importance as these rich troves of data are mined by competitors, opportunistic businesses, big data giants, researchers and civil society actors.
The parties in hiQ Labs Inc. v LinkedIn Corp. are companies whose business models are based upon career-related personal information provided by professionals. LinkedIn offers a professional networking platform to over 500 million users, and it is easily the leading company in its space. hiQ, for its part, is a data analytics company with two main products aimed at enterprises. The first is “Keeper”, a product which informs corporations about which of their employees are at greatest risk of being poached by other companies. The second is “Skill Mapper” which provides businesses with summaries of the skills of their employees. For both of its products hiQ relies on data that it scrapes from LinkedIn’s publicly accessible web pages.
Data featured on LinkedIn’s site are provided by users who create accounts and populate their profiles with a broad range of information about their background and skills. LinkedIn members have some control over the extent to which their information will be shared by others. They can choose to limit access to their profile information to only their close contacts or to an expanded list of contacts. Alternatively, they can provide access to all other members of LinkedIn. They also have the option to make their profiles entirely public. These public profiles are searchable by search engines such as Google. It is the data in the fully public profiles that is scraped and used by hiQ.
hiQ is not the only company that scrapes data from LinkedIn as part of an independent business model. In fact, LinkedIn has only recently attempted to take legal action against a large number of users of its data. hiQ was just one of many companies that received a cease and desist letter from LinkedIn. Because being cut off from the LinkedIn data would effectively decimate its business, hiQ responded by seeking a declaration from the California court that its activities were legal. The recent decision from the court is in relation to hiQ’s request for an interlocutory injunction that will allow it to continue to access the LinkedIn data pending resolution of the substantive legal issues raised by both sides.
hiQ argued that in moving against its data scraping activities, LinkedIn engaged in unfair business practices, and violated its free speech rights under the California constitution. LinkedIn, for its part, argued that hiQ’s data scraping activities violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), as well as the digital locks provisions Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) (although these latter claims do not feature in the decision on the interlocutory injunction).
Like other platform companies, access to and use of LinkedIn’s site is governed by website Terms of Service (TOS). These TOS prohibit data scraping. When LinkedIn demanded that hiQ cease scraping data from its site, it also implemented technological protection measures to prevent access by hiQ to its data. LinkedIn’s claims under the CFAA and the DMCA are based largely on the circumvention of these technological barriers by hiQ.
The court ultimately granted the injunction barring LinkedIn from limiting hiQ’s access to its publicly available data pending the resolution of the issues in the case. In doing so, it expressed its doubts that the CFAA applied to hiQ’s activity, noting that if it did, it would “profoundly impact open access to the Internet.” It also found that attempts by LinkedIn to block hiQ’s access might be in breach of state law as anti-competitive behavior. In reaching its decision, the court had some interesting things to say about the importance of access to publicly accessible data, and the privacy rights of those who provided the data. These issues are highlighted in the discussion below.
In assessing whether the parties raised serious questions going to the merits of the case, the court considered LinkedIn’s arguments about the CFAA. The CFAA essentially criminalizes intentional access to a computer without authorization, or in a way that exceeds the authorization provided, with the result that information is obtained. The question, therefore, was whether hiQ’s continued access to the LinkedIn site after LinkedIn expressly revoked any permission and tried to bar its access, was a violation of the CFAA. The court dismissed the cases cited by LinkedIn in support of its position, noting that these cases involved unauthorized access to password protected sites as opposed to accessing publicly available information.
The court observed that the CFAA was enacted largely to deal with the problem of computer hacking. It noted that if the application of the law was extended to publicly accessible websites it would greatly expand the scope of the legislation with serious consequences. The court noted that this would mean that “merely viewing a website in contravention of a unilateral directive from a private company would be a crime.” [Emphasis in original] It went on to note that “The potential for such exercise of power over access to publicly viewable information by a private entity weaponized by the potential of criminal sanctions is deeply concerning.” The court placed great emphasis on the importance of an open internet. It noted that “LinkedIn, here, essentially seeks to prohibit hiQ from viewing a sign publicly visible to all”. It clearly preferred an interpretation of the CFAA that would be limited to unauthorized access to a computer system through some form of “authentication gateway”.
The court also found that hiQ raised serious questions that LinkedIn’s behavior might fall afoul of competition laws in California. It noted that LinkedIn is in a dominant position in the field of professional networking, and that it might be leveraging its position to get a “competitively unjustified advantage in a different market.” It also accepted that it was possible that LinkedIn was denying its competitors access to an essential facility that it controls.
The court was not convinced by hiQ’s arguments that the technological barriers erected by LinkedIn violated the free speech guarantees in the California Constitution. Nevertheless, it found that on balance the public interest favoured the granting of the injunction to hiQ pending the outcome of litigation on the merits.
This dispute is extremely interesting and worth following. There are a growing number of platforms that host vast stores of publicly accessible data, and these data are often relied upon by upstart businesses (as well as established big data companies, researchers, and civil society) for a broad range of purposes. The extent to which a platform company can control its publicly accessible data is an important one, and one which, as the California court points out, will have important public policy ramifications. The related privacy issues – where the data is also personal information – are also important and interesting. These latter issues may be treated differently in different jurisdictions depending upon the applicable data protection laws.
The Supreme Court of Canada has just granted leave to appeal a decision of the British Columbia Court of Appeal in a case involving evidentiary issues in the province’s law suit to recover health care costs from the tobacco industry. The law suit was brought under the Tobacco Damages and Health Care Costs Recovery Act – a law passed specifically for the purpose of recovering health care costs from the industry. The case raises interesting issues regarding the balance between privacy rights and fairness in litigation; it also touches on issues or re-identification risk in aggregate health care data.
Under the B.C. statute, the province has two options for recovering health care costs. It can recover actual costs for particular identified individuals, or it can recover costs on an aggregate basis “for a population of insured persons as a result of exposure to a type of tobacco product.” (s. 2(1)) The province chose the second option. Under s. 2(5) of the Act, if this route is chosen, the province is not required to identify specific individuals or to establish tobacco-related illnesses with respect to those individuals. Further, the health records of specific individuals need not be provided as part of the litigation. However, if aggregate data is relied upon, the court retains the right to “order discovery of a statistically meaningful sample” of the records, and can issue “directions concerning the nature, level of detail and type of information to be disclosed.” The court must nevertheless ensure that the identities of the specific individuals to whom the data pertain are not disclosed.
The province generated aggregate statistical data regarding costs from its databases of health care services provided to insured persons, and indicated its intention to rely upon this data to prove its case. The defendant tobacco companies sought access to the data relied upon by the province. The province declined to provide the data directly. Instead it arranged for a limited form of access through third party intermediaries, which included Statistics Canada employees. Although some of the defendants accepted this approach, Philip Morris International (PMI) did not. It argued that it was entitled to access the data itself in order to assess the reliability and accuracy of the province’s analyses. Both the court at first instance and the B.C. Court of Appeal ultimately sided with PMI.
The Court ruled that the anonymized data on which the province would base its analyses would pose “no realistic threat to personal privacy.” (at para 36) Further, the defendants would be bound not to disclose the information provided to them as part of the litigation-related implied undertaking. The Court also observed that the identity of the specific individuals would be of no interest to the defendants, making it highly unlikely any attempts at re-identification would be made.
The Court of Appeal was particularly concerned about the unfairness that might result if “The only data available to the defendants would be the data the Province offers up on restrictive terms, or the data the Province’s testifying experts eventually choose to rely on in their reports.” (at para 37) It found that fairness required that the databases be produced.
It should be noted that in reaching its decision, the B.C. Court of Appeal declined to follow a judgment from the New Brunswick Supreme Court in a very similar case under nearly identical legislation. In Her Majesty the Queen in Right of the Province of New Brunswick v. Rothmans Inc., the judge had dismissed an application by the defendant tobacco companies for the production of anonymized health care data in the same circumstances. The judge in that case had access to the decision of the B.C. Supreme Court which had ordered production of the databases, but had declined to follow that decision on the basis that the anonymization of the data would not be sufficient to protect privacy, and that the database was “a document containing information that relates to the provision of health care benefits for “particular individuals””. (BCCA decision at para 20) In declining to follow the New Brunswick decision, the B.C. Court of Appeal observed that the New Brunswick judge had relied entirely on the privacy provisions and “did not attempt to read the provisions in the New Brunswick Act as a harmonious whole.” (at para 39) The New Brunswick Court of Appeal declined leave to appeal. With two conflicting decisions from two different provinces, the matter is now heading to the Supreme Court of Canada.

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