Canada issues guidelines against insurance company surveillance tactics

[Guest guest]

Insurance companies spend millions of dollars every year on covert surveillance

activities. I am happy to see Canada taking a stand against this nasty

practice. And, of course, State Farm is challenging those guidelines in court.

A good way to fix this----put the State Farm executives and attorneys and their

families under surveillance for the next 5 years.

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Insurance+firms+tell+privacy+commissioner+butt/\

2207864/story.html

November 10, 2009

OTTAWA — Canada's privacy czar is facing demands from key players in

the insurance industry to butt out of claim investigations and stop

complaining about the use of covert video surveillance to catch

suspected insurance cheats.

After fielding a growing

number of complaints against insurance companies, the Office of the

Privacy Commissioner issued guidelines to the private sector in May to

protect people against covert video surveillance, characterizing it as

an " extremely privacy-invasive form of technology " to be considered

" only in the most limited cases. "

" Covert surveillance is

an intrusive act and if there are other means to resolve a dispute, we

believe they should be explored first, " such as independent medical

exams, assistant commissioner Denham said in an interview.

Private investigators are now firing back, calling on the insurance industry to

disregard the directives.

" Our

advice to the industry is if you need to investigate, do not be

deterred by the privacy commissioner's guidelines, " said Norman Groot,

counsel to the Canadian Association of Private Investigators.

" We

challenge the privacy commissioner on the existence and scope of a

right to privacy in public places, and we say that where there are

flags of fraud, the right to defend and the right to investigate

supersedes another's right to privacy of their image in a public place. "

The

country's privacy watchdog is also fending off a legal challenge from

State Farm Insurance questioning her jurisdiction over investigations

in the first place.

The largest property and casualty

insurer in North America is asking the federal court to rule that

personal information collected during these investigations, including

copies of covert video surveillance reports and tapes, falls outside

the scope of Canada's private sector privacy law.

State

Farm turned to the court in response to an investigation of a complaint

against the insurance company; a man under covert video surveillance

complained to the privacy commissioner after the insurance company

refused to provide him with the information compiled about him.

State

Farm is seeking an order that the Personal Information Protection and

Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) does not apply to the privacy

interests of the man under surveillance.

This is the second challenge to the privacy czar's authority this year from an

insurance company.

Following

an investigation into the covert surveillance practices of a private

investigation firm working on behalf of an insurance company, the

privacy commissioner determined the complaint was well-founded and

recommended the firm depersonalize or remove third parties caught on

video without their consent.

In this case, a mother and

daughter were videotaped during covert surveillance of the mother's

sister, who had begun legal proceedings against her insurer over her

benefits following a car accident.

The privacy

commissioner also found that the collection, use or disclosure of

personal information about third parties without their consent is only

acceptable in certain, specific situations — for example, when the

information is relevant to the purpose of the collection of information

about the subject of the surveillance.

The privacy

commissioner declined to bring an application to Federal Court to

enforce the recommendations even though the firm refused to implement

the recommendations.

Groot says the insurance industry should take note of this development.

" We

have openly challenged the Office of the Privacy Commission to bring an

application to Federal Court to have a judicial review of their

recommendations and guidelines heard, and they have not had the

wherewithal to accept our challenge, " said Groot, a litigator with

Investigation Counsel Professional Corporation, a law firm specializing

in fraud litigation and investigation legal matters.

Lingard, assistant general counsel for the Insurance Bureau of Canada,

said the organization doesn't have a position on State Farm's legal

challenge to the privacy commissioner's authority. He said the bureau

is taking a wait-and-see approach to the guidelines on covert video

surveillance.

" The guidelines are just that, they're

guidelines. We're really going to have to see how the Office of the

Privacy Commissioner interprets the guidelines, " said Lingard.

In

a statement, a spokeswoman for the Canadian Life and Health Insurance

Association said member companies take the guidelines " seriously in

their ongoing compliance with the applicable provisions of PIPEDA. "