Immovable object, meet irresistible force. For over 30 years, every Canadian law student has read these words: Mr. Pettkus and Miss Becker came to Canada from central Europe, separately, as immigrants, in 1954. He had $17 upon arrival. They met in Montreal in 1955. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Elections Ontario Privacy Breach. Elections Ontario has just disclosed that they lost USB drives containing personal information on as many as 2.4 million voters. The USB drives were supposed to be password-protected, encoded and kept in a locked area accessible only to specific staffers – but were not. The Ontario Privacy Commissioner, Ann Cavoukian, is investigating. Her initial comment:
Regulations. Judge on privacy: Computer code trumps the law. Australian High Court Judge Justice Kirby says computer code is more potent than the law--and that legislators are powerless to do anything about it.
Technology has outpaced the legal system's ability to regulate its use in matters of privacy and fair use rights, said Kirby, speaking Thursday night at an Internet Industry Association (IIA) event. Kirby said the judicial system has faced difficulties in coping with changes the Internet and computing have brought. While the soon-to-be-reviewed Privacy Act has incorporated key privacy principles such as "usage limitation"--which states that data collected about an individual cannot be used for other purposes, except by the approval of the law or the person's consent--Google and Yahoo have rendered that principle defunct, Kirby said.