Legal information related to the Privacy Act

Leading Privacy Act Cases

Since the Privacy Act was first enacted in 1983, courts have been called upon to interpret its meaning. The resulting case law has helped clarify key concepts in the legislation, and added to our understanding of its purpose, scope and application.

The purpose of this section of our website is to highlight what we see as some of the leading cases decided under the Privacy Act and under the closely related Access to Information Act (ATIA). The latter shares some key terms and wording with the Privacy Act and so some of the cases interpreting the ATIA have a direct bearing on the Privacy Act.

The case summaries below are not meant to be exhaustive. Rather they are meant to provide an accessible overview of the leading cases and the key principles which can be drawn from those cases. The principles listed at the end of the summaries are meant to provide practical tips and should not be relied upon as legal advice.

Our focus in preparing the summaries was to draw out those aspects of the decisions which we felt were most relevant tothe Privacy Act. Our hope is that they will be a useful resource for federal government employees, lawyers, the public and anyone generally interested in the protection of personal information by government institutions.

You can view the leading Privacy Act cases:

• In alphabetical order
• By subject matter
• By section number

For anyone interested in accessing other case summaries, the annual Info Source bulletins contains summaries of Federal Court decisions related to the Privacy Act and the ATIA, which are accessible online going back to 1998.