Video Surveillance And Individual Privacy Rights: BC Privacy Commissioner Issues First Ever Audit And Compliance Report

On December 8, 2016, the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia (the "OIPC") issued its first ever Audit and Compliance Report following an audit of a private sector business. In Audit and Compliance Report P16- 01‒ Over-collected and Overexposed: Surveillance and Privacy Compliance in a Medical Clinic (the "Report"), the Commissioner determined that a medical clinic's use of video and audio surveillance was unauthorized and excessive. Concurrent with its release of the Report, the OIPC issued guidelines for implementing overt video surveillance (the "Guidelines"). Taken together, the Report and the Guidelines indicate that the OIPC takes a restrictive approach to video surveillance.