Canadian Lawyer

w w w . C A N A D I A N L a w y e r m a g . c o m A P R I L 2 0 1 6 43 n the face of it, the R o m a n i a n - o p e r a t e d Globe24h.com web site looks innocuous. But at a recent gathering of administrative law- yers at the Ontario Bar Association, the general counsel for Canada's priva- cy commissioner devoted time to talk about her office's concerns with the site. Globe24h positions itself as a law library, and contains in its database decisions from Canadian courts and tribunals as well as case law from other countries. It collects the cases from court and tribunal web sites or reposi- tories like the Canadian Legal Informa- tion Institute, but unlike web sites like CanLII, Globe24h allows these rulings to be indexed by search engines like Google, which means searches for name would turn up decisions in which that person is mentioned. Patricia Kosseim, senior gen- eral counsel at the Office of the Pri- vacy Commissioner of Canada, said her office found out individuals who wanted their information taken down from Globe24h had to pay a fee. One of the complainants to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner was a parent of a woman described as a sex worker in a case. The woman was a witness, not a party, said Kosseim, who spoke at an OBA Institute administrative law ses- sion in February. "While making court decisions wide- ly available online in the spirit of open courts is certainly a laudable objective, this investigation into Globe24h uncov- ered new privacy risks that were not even imaginable when the open courts principle [was] first formulated," said Kosseim. She urged courts and tribu- nals to adopt technological safeguards to protect online decisions from poten- tial abuse. It's common, of course, for admin- istrative tribunals to publish their rea- sons for decision on the Internet, and Kosseim said this practice is sometimes justified as "a logical extension" of their statutory powers to control their own procedures, hold public hearings, and share decisions with parties. While court documents could gener- ally contain information about people's private lives, Kosseim said "the reality is that decisions of administrative and quasi-judicial bodies often contain many sensitive details that are not as prevalent in high appellate court levels." Tribu- nal rulings contain details of socio-eco- nomic difficulties, disputes with bosses, home addresses, salaries, and physical and mental-health status, she said. But is transparency in administrative L E G A L R E P O RT \ A D M I N I S T R AT I V E L AW MARCO CIBOLA The limits of open justice Adminstrative law decisions can contain deeply personal information, so does total transparency at this level balance with privacy rights in the digital age? By Yamri Taddese O

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