Disclosing
personal
across the
border B.C. government wants to permit ransborder flow of personal data
information
AHMAD HAMOUDAH / IS TOCKPHOTO. COM
CHRISTOPHER GULY
Six years ago, the B.C. government
tightened its privacy law to prevent
the public sector from disclosing personal information beyond Canada’s
borders. Now the provincial government wants to loosen that restriction
on the storage and access of information outside the country.
As part of a comprehensive review of
the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA) — which
must be undertaken at least every six
years—the B.C. government has proposed several amendments to reflect the
fact that the world is a very different
place than when the legislation first
came into force in October 1993. (B.C.
and Nova Scotia are the only Canadian
jurisdictions that have public-sector laws
restricting the transborder flow of personal information out of Canada.)
One of the changes would involve
amending provisions in the law that pro-
hibit, with a few exceptions, the storage
of information outside of Canada, to
reflect developments in information
technology (IT) and “advancements that
make jurisdictional boundaries artificial,
including social networking and other
Internet tools and mechanisms that can
promote stronger citizen engagement,
and to take advantage of commercial and
economic opportunities for storage and
management of information, including
‘cloud computing.’ ”
To achieve those objectives, B.C. law-
makers will have to open a legislative
door locked in 2004 when the Act was
amended to address what were billed at
the time as concerns regarding cross-
border access to public-sector sharing of
personal information about the prov-
ince’s residents. The “fear” that precipi-
tated the restriction was that American
law-enforcement officials would be able
to use the 2001 USA Patriot Act or some
other legal mechanism to approach a
U.S.-based entity, such as Google’s Gmail
service, to obtain information about for-
eigners in the post-9/11 war against ter-
rorism, according to Ottawa privacy law-
yer Kris Klein. He served as litigation
counsel in the Office of Canada’s Privacy
Commissioner from 2005 to 2007.
21st century. In a submission to the
special committee studying FIPPA, it
explained that B.C. Ministry of Chil-
