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Limits to company's use of digital video surveillance cameras
Posted by Nimrod Kozlovski on Sunday, February 23 @ 21:56:27 EST Privacy
The Privacy Commissioner of Canada ordered the railway company to remove digital video surveillance cameras from the workplace. An employee of a railway complained that his employer was collecting the personal information of employees without consent. The complainant was concerned that the digital video recording cameras recently installed at a company yard could collect the personal information of employees, specifically, their conduct and work performance, and that such information could then be used for disciplinary purposes. The compalint was based on the Canadian Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (the Act) which applies to any federal work, undertaking, or business. Section 5(3) states that an organization may collect, use or disclose personal information only for purposes that a reasonable person would consider are appropriate in the circumstances.

The Commissioner acknowledged that the company’s stated purposes, namely, to reduce vandalism and theft, improve staff security, and limit the potential liability for damages, would seem to be appropriate. However, to ensure compliance with the intent of section 5(3), the Commissioner stressed that the circumstances must also be considered. In determining whether the company’s use of the digital video cameras was reasonable in this case, he found it useful to consider the following questions: (1) Is the measure demonstrably necessary to meet a specific need? (2) Is it likely to be effective in meeting that need? (3) Is the loss of privacy proportional to the benefit gained? (4) Is there a less privacy-invasive way of achieving the same end? Given that the incidents of vandalism were relatively minor, with the most significant damage occurring to the cameras themselves, the actual threat to security was in question, and the risk from liability claims was unclear, the Commissioner determined that the company had not demonstrated the existence of a real, specific problem, only the potential for one. Based on this analysis, the Commissioner did not believe that a reasonable person would consider these circumstances to warrant taking such an intrusive measure as installing digital video cameras. Therefore, the company’s use of this type of video surveillance for the stated purposes is not appropriate and the company is in contravention of section 5(3).
 
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