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>Personally I think it's the business of the government to protect the interests of the majority... maybe... I'll have to think about that a bit more.
>Anyway. I'm English

And that's why you have 1/5th of the world's CCTV cameras, yet your country has a crime rate higher than Canada, a country where CCTV is rarely found and when it is, is fought by a government appointed privacy commissioner.

The majority of Britons wanted the police to watch what their neighbors do 24x7. They got that. The majority also realized that this is morally improper, so the majority decided to use the veil of reducing the crime rate (in reality, the crime rate, at best, has remained steady with CCTV) to get what they wanted.

One could argue CCTV has prevented an increase in the crime rate, but perhaps your country needs to find out what makes it so incredibly dangerous it needs TWENTY-FIVE TIMES more cameras to control your citizens than the average country.

Or you could just agree with me, and realize that the majority of people in your country (*and mine!*) are curious to know what their neighbors are doing and are willing to do immoral things to find out, as long as they know they won't get the blame.

Privacy legislation in Canada is largely a provincial jurisdiction, and British Columbia is thought to have some of the strongest privacy legislation of all of the provinces. But privacy legislation is largely designed to restrict what organizations can do with data they collect on private individuals (eg. through subscriptions, application forms, etc.). It is not necessarily designed or intended to restrict what the government or law enforcement may do to dig up dirt on suspected illegal behaviours, which may or may not be what the poster was really asking abuot.

And as an aside, the OP asks who has the most "libertarian" laws on privacy. I would have thought that would be no laws at all. What they really want is the most draconian laws on privacy, just in favour of the private individual instead of the state or corporations.

They are implementing quite a different system, which will actually pass the BC privacy standards... which aren't as strong as they could be. See http://www.oipcbc.org/publications/speeches_presentations/speech_04.html for an idea of just how hard this is for personal medical records.

--dave (who has worked on personally identifying health information in the past) c-b

Exactly. That's what's being recommended here in Canada.

Canada still remains a functioning democracy to a large degree, so when ombudsmen like the privacy commissioner castigate the government, public pressure often forces a change in policy.

If that doesn't work, like the Americans, you can always sue.

First, a sensible editorial from the Vancouver Sun.

Second, some words from the Canadian privacy commissioner, in which he comes down on video surveillance.

Third, the cameras are ruled illegal.

Canada has a privacy commissioner who is independent of the government and police and who has one overriding concern above all else: ensuring that the constitutional privacy rights of the Canadian public are respected.

In the past, he's also prevented the government from creating a super database that merges all information from all sources -- police, medical, political, taxation, etc -- into one system. So ruled because it would make it far too easy for the various branches of government to look at data they shouldn't have access to.

Thank goodness Canada's got the foresight and commonsense to have an independent commissioner!

Survelliance Camera Players. Others are in the UK: mtp2001, in Belgium here or in Germany - Chaos Curcuit Club.

If you want to think about all of pros and cons of camera systems, read Public Surveillance System Privacy Guidelines.