Your Right To Privacy - Minimize Your Digital Footprint - Legal Series

Chapter 3
Employee Privacy Rights
An individual’s privacy in the workplace is a balance between the employer’s
need to collect, use, and — in rare circumstances — disclose personal
information and the employee’s right to ensure the information is accurate and
used correctly.
As is the case with access to information, spelled out in Your Right to
Know: How to Use the Law to Get Government Secrets (published by Self-
Counsel Press), Canadians have a quasi-constitutional guarantee of privacy.
Their rights are protected under sections seven and eight of the Canadian
Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The sections articulate the “right to life,
liberty, and security of the person,” and the right to be secure against
unreasonable search and seizure, respectively. [1]
No such guarantee exists in the United States where the US Constitution
excludes “privacy as a fundamental right or even an important concept.” That
being said, Americans do enjoy some protections, especially in areas that
lawmakers have decided are important to protect such as “financial-account
information, health-care-provider data, and any information intentionally
taken from children.” [2]
When it comes to personal information the US government collects,
citizens have rights in broad categories under the Privacy Act. Enacted in
1974, the Act guarantees three primary rights: The right to see personal
records, subject to the law’s exemptions; the right to request that the records
be updated for accuracy; and the right against unwarranted invasion of privacy
resulting from the “collection, maintenance, use, and disclosure of personal