Yukon Information and Privacy Commissioner Jason Pedlar was part of an Oct. 6 meeting in Quebec City where privacy authorities from across the country passed joint resolutions to protect the privacy rights of young people and employees.
The resolution on the rights of young people focuses on the responsibility of organizations across all sectors to actively safeguard young people’s data through responsible measures, including minimized tracking, regulated data sharing and stringent control over commercial advertising.
Meanwhile, the resolution for employees addresses the proliferation of employee monitoring software, noting laws protecting workplace privacy are either out-of-date or absent altogether. It called for a strong privacy protection framework to protect workers from overly intrusive monitoring by employers.
“It’s important young people understand the personal information they are sharing with online or software companies, especially when they download an app on their mobile devices,” he said. “They should know the privacy statements they agree to because that information will likely be shared with others.”
He told the News young people lose a lot of control on how the information they share online is being used or who it may be disclosed to.
“Information shared on the internet is very difficult to remove,” he said. “We hear in the media about various harms of social media like bullying and phishing attempts that exacerbates the problem.”
Pedlar said the two resolutions are important but noted his office has limited jurisdiction in its application in the territory. He pointed out the workplace resolution falls under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and said he has only an overlapping jurisdiction on the resolution regarding young people through the department of Education and how the department interacts with youth and their personal information.
“We have done some work focusing on young people like guidance materials and collaborated with the federal privacy office on resource materials and distributed them to schools in the territory this past fall,” he said. “We have done some compliance audits and investigation on video surveillance in schools and social media use by schools. Privacy of young people is definitely on top of our minds and we will continue to look for opportunities to inform the youth in the Yukon about their privacy rights.”
Pedlar said the prevalence of remote work as a result of COVID-19, combined with high-speed internet, has given companies and employers the ability to monitor employees who work from home or in satellite locations.
He said although it’s been recognized that supervisors should be able to monitor the performance of their employees, it’s important they don’t collect excessive information that may infringe on the privacy rights of employees.
“It’s advisable to provide notice to employees before collecting the information and what it will be used for or how they are being tracked or surveyed. These are important privacy principles that need to be considered in the private sector as well,” he said. “It’s important that legislation speaks to the trend of monitoring and surveilling employees and limiting the amount that organizations can track their employees.”
Contact Patrick Egwu at patrick.egwu@yukon-news.com