Canadian Privacy Law: The Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA)

Patrick Zeller, Vice President & Deputy General Counsel, Guidance Software, Inc., USA

This white paper provides a general overview of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (“PIPEDA”), and discusses both the privacy requirements imposed by that Act as well as the rules governing the use of electronic documents that it sets out.

Patrick E. Zeller (patrick.zeller@guidancesoftware.com) is Vice President and Deputy General Counsel for Guidance Software Inc. where he performs in-house legal functions, supervises the legal and regulatory team, and works with corporate law departments of other companies seeking to implement defensible in-house eDiscovery processes in the US, Canada, UK, and Europe. He writes and speaks regularly on topics related to eDiscovery and digital evidence and the intersection between law and technology. Prior to joining Guidance Software, Mr. Zeller practiced litigation at Seyfarth Shaw LLP where he co-chaired the firm's Electronic Discovery Practice Group. He practiced commercial litigation, with a strong emphasis on technology issues and electronic discovery. Mr. Zeller served as an Assistant Attorney General and Director of the Computer Crimes Institute for the State of Illinois where he prosecuted a wide variety of technology related crimes and supervised a multi-jurisdictional computer forensic laboratory. During this time, he was named a Computer Crimes Fellow by the United States Department of Justice and served as a trial attorney for the Department’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section, where he advised prosecutors and law enforcement agents on how to conduct Internet and high-tech criminal investigations. He has lectured extensively on Internet and high-tech crime at numerous law enforcement training venues nationwide, including the FBI Academy. He is widely regarded as one of the leading minds in technology and the law; his specialties include eDiscovery, internal investigations, computer intrusion, economic espionage, online fraud, intellectual property and trade secret issues. Mr. Zeller is an Adjunct Professor and Distinguished Lecturer at The John Marshall Law School’s Information Technology and Privacy Law LLM program, where he teaches the “eDiscovery, Computer Evidence and Computer Forensics” class. He also holds several certifications in computer forensics, is a member of the Sedona Conference and presided over the Midwest Chapter of HTCIA High Technology Crimes Investigators Association in 2008 and is a member of the national steering committee of ASDFED American Society of Digital Forensics and eDiscovery.

Guidance Software was founded with a clear purpose: to develop solutions that search, identify, recover and deliver digital information in a forensically sound and cost-effective manner. Since our founding in 1997, we have moved into network-enabled investigations, enterprise-wide integration with other security technologies, and now, have powerful search and collection capabilities for eDiscovery and other investigations. Yet we haven't strayed from our core competency and continue to be widely recognized for quality and value