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Cake day: Jul 06, 2023

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In Canada employees may have a limited expectation of privacy on work computers.

Quoting from this article, which references the same supreme court case as the above article:

Mr. Justice Fish, writing for the majority of the Supreme Court, delineated the following instructive principles:

  • Whether at home or in the workplace, computers are reasonably used for personal purpose and contain information that is meaningful, intimate and touching on the user’s biographical core;
  • The user may reasonably expect privacy in the information contained on their computer particularly where personal use is permitted or reasonably expected;
  • While ownership of the computer and workplace policies are relevant considerations, neither is determinative of a person’s reasonable expectation of privacy;
  • The totality of all the circumstances will need to be considered to determine whether privacy is a reasonable expectation in any particular case;
  • Workplace policies and practices may diminish an individual’s expectation of privacy in a work computer; however they may not in themselves remove the expectation entirely;
  • A reasonable, though diminished expectation of privacy, is nonetheless a reasonable expectation of privacy, protected by s. 8 of the Charter and subject only to state intrusion under the authority of a reasonable law.