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ARTICLE · 21 FEBRUARY 2024

De-Identification! Anonymization! Aggregation! Big Words, Little Clarity.

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Anonymization has long been a popular topic in the privacy world. But it is getting even more attention in Canada these days as federal Bill C-27...

CanadaPrivacy
Nadia Jandali Chao
Nadia Jandali Chao
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Anonymization has long been a popular topic in the privacy world. But it is getting even more attention in Canada these days as federal Bill C-27 gets analyzed at the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology (INDU) of the House of Commons, and in response to the proposed Regulation respecting the anonymization of personal information in connection with Law 25 in Quebec.

Privacy laws are designed to protect "personal" information – meaning, information that can be connected to a specific person. Therefore, a threshold issue for the application of privacy laws is identifiability. If information can identify a person, privacy laws will apply; if a person cannot be identified from the information, it is generally considered outside the scope of such laws. This is why terminology like "de-identified" or "anonymized" or "aggregate" is so important. It is often assumed that once information has been transformed into these types of states, it is no longer identifiable

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