The issue of privacy protection is ‘hot’ in the Canadian parliament

Canada’s Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien said bill C-11 is not enough to protect people from facial recognition technology and needs to include “significant amendments”.

Facial recognition technology. Photo: https://towardsdatascience.com/ According to the Vietnam News Agency correspondent in Ottawa, in a recent speech to the Canadian House of Representatives, Daniel Therrien, Canada’s Privacy Commissioner, said that bill C-11 is not enough to protect people from identity technology. face and need to include “significant modifications”. This measure proposes to amend private sector privacy laws. Regarding facial recognition technology, Mr. Therrien mentioned US technology company Clearview AI. In February 2021, Daniel Therrien’s office, along with three provincial privacy commissioners, concluded that Clearview AI violated Canadian privacy laws by providing facial recognition software. for the police. What’s interesting is that Clearview AI’s (New York-based) software works by comparing photos with a massive stockpile of billions of photos the company has amassed, collected from various sources. popular social media sites without the consent of individuals. “While we found that Clearview’s practices violated Canadian privacy laws, the company refused to follow our recommendations, such as removing photos of Canadians,” said Mr Therrien. Meanwhile, the new administrative penalty regime in C-11 is not applied to such violations of the law. Therrien noted that the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada is investigating whether online website Pornhub and its parent company MindGeek (based in Montreal) violated Canadians’ privacy rights. MindGeek is accused of regularly sharing videos of child pornography and sexual assault, as well as content that was filmed/or posted without the subject’s consent. Within the framework of the bill, for the most serious violations, fines could be up to 5% of revenue or CAD 25 million (whichever is greater). These measures have been assessed by Canada’s Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development as the strongest penalty framework among the world’s Group of Seven (G7) privacy laws. Therrien recommends that when there is a conflict between commercial goals and protecting privacy, the privacy of Canadians should take precedence.