A landmark decision handed down by the Supreme Court of Canada will have a wide-ranging effect on privacy going forward, according to a Western University law professor.

On Thursday, the court found London high-school teacher Ryan Jarvis, who used a hidden pen camera to record female students, guilty of voyeurism.

Sam Trosow explains, “What this case does is it eliminates that rigid distinction based on location, and substitutes in its place a very fluid contextual list of various factors that you would consider.”

With the Supreme Court ruling, Trosow says the entire idea of privacy has changed.

But it begs the question, with the technology today; do people feel like they have privacy when they step outside?

Some say yes, others say no, but with Thursday’s ruling, Trosow believes surveillance, and how it is used, will have to be reconsidered in future.

“What the court is saying here is that privacy is an important enough value in human society that we’re going to change those rules to take into account the nature of the emerging technology.”

How this alters the perception or future challenges to privacy laws and surveillance is to be seen.

But with this new definition and precedent, a clearer picture comes into focus for how privacy will be dealt with in the future.