Transfers Of Personal Information To U.S. ‘Linked’ Service Providers

Much attention has been focussed recently in Canada on the privacy issues arising out of the use of service providers for data processing services where the data is either stored in the U.S. by a U.S. organization or is stored in Canada by a Canadian organization where such organization has a U.S. affiliate (in each case, a U.S. linked service provider). This issue was highlighted with the release, on October 29, 2004, of the report of the Information & Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia entitled "Privacy and the USA Patriot Act" (the B.C. Report), which draws attention to the potential risks of using U.S. linked service providers to provide data processing or storage services. Furthermore, recent amendments to the British Columbia Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FOIPPA) (which amendments came into force on