1. On the broad subject of the threats of computerization to fundamental rights and liberties, including privacy, see: Vitalis, André, Informatique, pouvoir et libertés (Paris: Economica, 1981)Google Scholar; Cordell, Arthur J., The Uneasy Eighties: The Transition to an Information Society (Ottawa: Science Council of Canada, Background Study No. 53, 1985)Google Scholar; and more recently: Simitis, Spiros, “Reviewing Privacy in an Information Society,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 135 (1987), 707–746CrossRefGoogle Scholar and David Flaherty, “Privacy at the Dawn of the XXth Century,” Opening Conference at the Annual Meeting of Privacy Commissioners, Québec, September 1987.

2. In preceding inquiries by Westin and the Canadian Government, no classification of firms was undertaken. By contrast, we distinguished between suppliers and users of information and related services. Thus some firms, such as consumer reporting agencies, only gather information and supply it to other firms, often the more important users such as banks, insurance companies and credit institutions. The latter also collect data directly for their own use, as well as resorting to other intermediaries, such as debt collection agencies or employment agencies. This categorization also takes into account the legal pattern in North America, where existing laws apply to particular economic sectors, not to the whole economy. Our survey strategy thus integrated the diversity of economic activities of private firms. The sectors analyzed were credit card issuers, banks, other credit institutions, insurance companies, stock exchange brokers, collection agents, insurance claims adjusters, investigation bureaus and poll firms, employment agencies and computer consultants. Since these companies specialize in various service sectors, or belong to sectors of great economic concentration (e.g., the banks), their small number precluded a quantitative approach based on representative sampling. Taking into account the diverse configurations of the sectors and our financial limits, we solicited interviews from those firms which appeared the most significant in information processing or the most typical in their sector; in sectors with a very few small firms, we could only interview those who agreed to participate.

3. The questionnaire contained ten main questions and numerous sub-questions, some of which were closed and some open.

4. For further details on the survey, the state of the law and a selected bibliography, see the four titles published by the Société québécoise d'information juridique (SOQUIJ) in autumn 1986: L'identité piratée (363 p.); Les renseignements personnels et l'ordinateur, Enquête sur la situation des bases de données à caractère personnel dans le secteur privé québécois (200 p.); Le droit de protection des renseignements personnels, Étude sur les bases privées de données à caractère personel en droit canadien, comparé et international (456 p.) and Droit, informatique et vie privée, Bibliographie sélective, canadienne et Internationale (144 p.).

5. The rate of micro-computer acquisition has grown rapidly from eighteen percent in 1983 to more than forty-one percent in 1984.

6. These attitudes contrast with those taken by employers' organizations, which oppose as a matter of principle any further legislative or public intervention and which deny the very existence of a serious problem or corporate abuse of information banks.

7. For an extensive bibliography on the subject, see: P. Mackay, Pierrôt Péladeau, et René Laperrière, Droit, ordinateur et vie privée. A discussion of the concept of privacy relies mainly on the work of André Vitalis, Informatique, pouvoirs et libertés; Herbert Maisl et André Vitalis, Les libertés, enjeu d'une société informatisée (Études, avril 1985), 472; Cordell, Arthur J., The Uneasy Eighties, 155Google Scholar; Flaherty, David H., Protecting Privacy in Two-way Electronic Services (White Plains, New York: Knowledge Industry Publications, 1985)Google Scholar.

8. It should be noted, in this context, that although it is more developed, European law also lags behind technological developments. For example, some European laws apply only to computerized files as such rather than to their transmissibility; those files not considered damaging to the persons involved are generally not subject to the application of standards, without regard for the fact that they may become damaging when circulated through the networks.

9. The relevance of these recommendations is confirmed by the analysis of Flaherty, David H., “Government Surveillance and Bureaucratic Accountability: Data Protection Agencies in Western Societies,” Science, Technology and Human Values 11 (1986), 7–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar.