"No one wants to scour through a privacy policy, " says Canadian Privacy Commissioner Ann Cavoukian.
"This is no trivial issue: There are close to a million developers out there, scattered across some 180 countries, " said Elizabeth Denham, who was then Canada's assistant privacy commissioner.
In July 2009, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada investigated Facebook and discovered that it was sharing too much of users' personal data with app makers without informing users.
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada added that it would also continue to monitor the company, but said it did not have the power to issue sanctions despite its belief that the firm was breaking local laws.
But this northernmost German state came back into the news when Thilo Weichert, the state's privacy commissioner, raised an issue of such complexity that it will make the first Schleswig-Holstein question look like a dot-to-dot coloring book in comparison.
Following an investigation by the Canadian Privacy Commissioner, Facebook in June limited applications to accessing only the public parts of a user's profile, unless the user grants additional permission. (Canadian officials later expressed satisfaction with Facebook's steps.) Previously, applications could tap any data the user had access to, including detailed profiles and information about a user's friends.
WSJ: Facebook in Online Privacy Breach; Applications Transmitting Identifying Information
If the Home Office is serious about this issue then the surveillance camera commissioner needs proper powers to protect our privacy.
"Once a piece of information is out there, it's nearly impossible to obliterate, " says Christine Varney, a former commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission and a privacy crusader.
Canada already has something of a hybrid privacy regime, which may explain why its data-protection commissioner, Jennifer Stoddart, has been so influential on the international stage.
Legal opinion sought by the Information Commissioner said the data retention powers could contravene European laws on human rights and privacy.
Late last month, France's data protection authority, the Commission Nationale de l'Information et des Libertes (CNIL) wrote to Larry Page warning him that Google's new privacy policy might be unlawful in the EU. The CNIL letter was strongly supported by EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding, who also requested that Google delayed the implementation of the policy.
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