LifeLabs is seeking a court order to prevent the public release of provincial privacy commissioners’ joint report about its 2019 privacy breach.
The privacy commissioners of Ontario and B.C. issued a joint investigation report about LifeLabs’ privacy breach involving millions of its customers.
The commissioners say that the public release of the investigation report is vital to bringing to light the underlying causes of the privacy breach and rebuilding public trust by being transparent about their investigation and findings.
However, LifeLabs is seeking a court order preventing the public release claiming that some of the information it provided to the commissioners is privileged or confidential. This is “a claim which the commissioners take issue with,” as noted in a joint press release issued by the commissioners.
LifeLabs confirmed that it’s going to comply with all of the commissioners’ orders and the recommendations laid out in the report. The commissioners’ offices say they will continue to actively monitor the company’s progress towards full compliance.
For context, last year in December, LifeLabs disclosed that it suffered a data breach that affected the information of about 15 million customers. The information included names, emails, addresses, health card numbers and lab tests.
The commissioners have outlined that LifeLabs was in violation of privacy laws and failed to take the necessary precautions to protect the personal health information of millions of Canadians.
Both of the commissioners have ordered LifeLabs to implement several measures to address these flaws. For instance, LifeLabs must improve its information technology security, and has been ordered to stop collecting specified information.
Further, “LifeLabs is ordered to improve its process for notifying individuals of the specific elements of their personal health information which were the subject of the breach.”
Source: Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario and British Columbia
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