Legal Commentary

Bruyea – Privacy as an asymmetrical concept

By David Canton

The media has been reporting that “Hundreds of federal bureaucrats accessed the private records of a longtime veterans’ rights advocate and went as far as briefing the minister on his psychiatric records, the former soldier revealed this week.”

Assuming the allegations are true, this illustrates a phenomenon I’ve observed over the years. 

Many privacy breaches occur because of human actions where people look at and do things with personal information that they should not do.  Then when it comes to light, we wonder why they didn’t know better. 

People often have an asymmetrical concept of privacy.   A given individual who doesn’t understand (or understands but somehow rationalizes their actions) they are violating someone else’s privacy rights  – would be appalled if the roles were reversed and it was their personal information that was compromised.

We have to do better than that.

Full post as published by eLegal Canton on September 23, 2010 (boomark / email).