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CCCA_V7No1_Privacy-FIN_CCCA 2/12/13 5:03 PM Page 35 Feature Privacy, By Susan Goldberg please! As technology blurs the lines between work and home, employers face new challenges in balancing employee hen the Supreme Court of Canada handed down its much-anticipated rights with the W decision in R v. Cole late last year, it shone a spotlight on the delicate question of privacy in the modern workplace. business imperative. Teacher Richard Cole was arrested and charged with possession of child pornog- raphy after nude photos of a student were found on his work-issued laptop during a routine check by his employer.The employer handed the laptop over to the police, who searched it without obtaining either a warrant or Cole’s express consent. What’s of interest to employers is the Supreme Court’s finding that an employee’s information, even if stored on computers owned by an employer, may attract a rea- sonable expectation of privacy.That reasonable expectation, however, depends on the policies, practices and customs governing the use of workplace computers. In other words, employers can’t simply assume that any and all data on their own computers is fair game:They must craft sound privacy policies that spell out their expectations for how employees use social networking sites — and the work-issued devices used to access them. We live and work in a world where smart phones, tablets, and laptop computers offer round-the-clock access to more than 200 (and counting) social networking and file-sharing sites — among them Facebook,Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn.These have become repositories for our deepest — and most trivial — thoughts, beliefs, affiliations and images: digital snapshots of ourselves, spelled out in “likes,” status VENTURI+KARPA prospective employer? And how accurate are those digital snapshots? As the lines updates, tweets, check-ins, blog posts and comments, and pictures of our kids. But who, exactly, is allowed access, and for what purpose? What if it’s a current or PRINTEMPS 2013 CCCA Canadian Corporate Counsel Association 35