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One corp (CRIA, aka canuck version of RIAA) is asking another corp (VideoTron) for a list of their customers. In Canada, we have a law call PIPEDA that basically says any business that has client info must protect to info from being leaked out to the public. Here, VideoTron is just giving it out to anybody who asks. http://www.privcom.gc.ca/legislation/02_06_01_e.as p

Indeed. But what I can't figure out is how they are getting away with this at all. I thought that PIPEDA protected us from this sort of nonsense. A business can't divulge personal information about employees or customers without REALLY GOOD reason, or they risk rather steep fines.

Class action suit, anyone?

Nonetheless, the guy is Canadian and Canada has extremely strict privacy laws. So it seems his "performance art" hasn't had as much of a negative effect on the issue of promoting privacy rights as you make it sound.

Suppose now that the blog in question had existed outside the United States. Then the identity of the individual may become difficult or even impossible to determine. For example, I'm running a blogging site in Canada. All the information I collect is protected by PIPEDA. Now, as a matter of fact, the only information I actually collect from a user of my site, is their email address (for forgotten passwords mostly).

In the event that someone posted something that a particular company wanted taken down, it would a violation of that act for me to release any information to said company without a judge ordering it. Now, if a judge did order it, all the information I have would need to released. I don't keep logs around except to gather some stats once a day, after that their flushed. So, the information released would most likely only amount to the persons email address. At that point, the company would have to talk to the ISP or mail host to determine who has that email. Supposing that its an address from gmail or hotmail, they would then have to gather records from there.

That's not to say that they couldn't force me, as the site admin to take the offending article down, however, that's not likely to solve the issue since its likely that something like google cache would have it available anyways

So, if someone really wants to publish something on the web in the form of a blog, its very possible for them to remain anonymous for a very long time, if not forever.

I'd rather not have an easy-to-get number [SSN] used as my very identification. It's too easy here; I don't know about where you are

According to this page, "unless an organization can demonstrate that your [Social Insurance Number]" (equivalent to the American SSN) "is required by law, or that no alternative identifier would suffice to complete the transaction, you cannot be denied a product or service on the grounds of your refusal to provide your SIN."

I've had no problems withholding the number from landlords and banks.

I would give her a shout, as well as your local MP if this concerns you as much as it does me.

Hmm, hopefully our privacy commissioner will step up to the plate on this issue. A few weeks ago, Slashdot was trumpeting the privacy commissioner as a good thing for Canada - now I see a few other posters desparaging Canada. This is good, but hopefully if people raise enough awareness (the Star article will help), and word gets out things can change.

Our government bowed to public pressure with respects to the American ballistic missile defence programme, and they'd bow to any sort of pressure towards the ISPs with regards to this. Of course, it can't hurt to let the privacy commissioner know that people care about this issue.

Privacy Commissioner: http://www.privcom.gc.ca/

> Same at Costco.

Not only that... I actually read my "Membership Agreement" this past year, and in it, I agree to allow them to inspect the receipt as part of the conditions of membership.

The reason I read it this year is they added a number of "sign here" places, which, upon a little bit of inspection, were "permission to give my name to third parties." The newish PIPEDA Act in Canada prevents them from sharing this information without my permission.

I only signed one out of the four places they asked. The others weren't required for membership. yet.

ttyl
srw

If anyone is interested, the Canadian Privacy Commissioner's website can be found here: http://www.privcom.gc.ca/index_e.asp The privacy laws here generally fall under PIPEDA - Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act. Passed just a few years ago, it has made it very easy for the individual to take the upper hand in privacy disputes with corporations as the act greatly favours the little guy.

"Once a traveler has been added to the reported list for a flight, subsequent reporting of a traveler with the same name and date of birth for the same flight will be discarded. Corrections and/or additions to a traveler's data cannot be made after the initial report."

The problem comes when they compare the pax list with their databases. In the US even US citizens don't have the right to correct their data, and the FBI has no obligation to ensure their data about you is correct. Already we've seen how good the TSA's system is, putting every Carlos Garcia, John Lewis and David Nelson on theirs Watch-List as it, doing repeated time-consuming checks on all 10 thousand of them each time they fly rather than doing the actual random checks that keep us safer. And now their database is going to have this data for all travel and travelers around the world (because the gov'ts share this info). They'll be so swamped by the millions of false positives that it'll be far more likely that the extraordinarily rare false negative won't be noticed. Makes me feel safer already: cue theme music to Brazil.

Again the "Its a Warning not a Guidebook" Best Essay Ever...on privacy: "The more information government compiles about us, the more of it will be wrong. That's simply a fact of life.

"[Example of typical gov't database, filled with errors] That was only a research database, so its inaccuracies probably would have remained relatively benign even if it had not been dismantled.

"But if our privacy becomes ever more systematically invaded by the state for purposes of assessing our behavior and making judgments about us, wrong information and misinterpretations will have potential consequences.

"If information that is actually about someone else is wrongly applied to us, if wrong facts make it appear that we've done things we haven't, if perfectly innocent behavior is misinterpreted as suspicious because authorities don't know our reasons or our circumstances, we will be at risk of finding ourselves in trouble in a society where everyone is regarded as a suspect. By the time we clear our names and establish our innocence, we may have suffered irreparable financial or social harm."

When I traveled to Communist China, I expected to have to write down all the addresses. If I were to have traveled to the USSR last century, I would have expected physical or bureaucratic minders to be watching my location and contacts.

But when traveling in free, democratic countries, signers of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? I expect to tell the truth about my length of stay, and that the border-guards will want to protect Article 30:

Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

When I've been on trips to free countries I've generally only made reservations only if it looks like the hotels could be all booked up (Kyoto in autumns leaf season, say). I wouldn't be able to give specific addresses, only a general itinerary.

From the ever-useful and prescient Canadian Privacy Commissioner's Report, writing about Canada, but its especially applicable to the US (as it warns Canadians not to lose rights the US has recently given up):

"The bottom line is this: If we have to live our lives weighing every action, every communication, every human contact, wondering what agents of the state might find out about it, analyze it, judge it, possibly misconstrue it, and somehow use it to our detriment, we are not truly free.

That sort of life is characteristic of totalitarian countries, not a free and open society like Canada. But that is where we are inexorably headed, if the Government's current initiatives are allowed to proceed..."

[Initiative to collect travel data in and outside of the country]

"All this personal information - more than 30 data elements including every destination to which we travel, who we travel with, how we pay for the tickets (sometimes including credit card numbers), what contact numbers we provide, even any dietary preferences or health-related requirements we communicate to the airline - will be available for an almost limitless range of governmental purposes under the broad information-sharing provisions of the Customs Act...

This is unprecedented. The Government of Canada has absolutely no business creating a massive database of personal information about all law-abiding Canadians that is collected without our consent from third parties, not to provide us with any service but simply to have it available to use against us if it ever becomes expedient to do so. Compiling dossiers on the private activities of all law-abiding citizens is the sort of thing the Stasi secret police used to do in the former East Germany. It has no place in a free and democratic society."

The US needs a Canadian style privacy commissioner who acts on the behalf of the people rather than a government that acts on behalf of big business.

(3) For the purpose of clause 4.3 of Schedule 1, and despite the note that accompanies that clause, an organization may disclose personal information without the knowledge or consent of the individual only if the disclosure is

(h) made after the earlier of

* (i) one hundred years after the record containing the information was created, and
* (ii) twenty years after the death of the individual whom the information is about;

In Canada, your personal information is protected by the PIPED Act. Such a situation as you are describing with your rental office would be illegal in Canada. They have no option but to perform due dilligence in securing your personal information. That means antivirus software if they are running Windows, a decent hardware, encrypted records if necessary, no relying on MS Office (older versions) to encrypt documents, no emailing personal information through unsecured channels, etc. etc. If they aren't following through ("no problems in the past", etc.), you can complain to the Privacy Commissioner and there'll be hell to pay. I know a small business that was recently slapped with fines and a public reprimand for accidentally faxing personal records to the wrong fax number.

Slightly off-topic, but in Canada, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act ("PIPEDA") (link here) came into effect on Jan 1, 2004. No organization is allowed to solicit your personal information without clearly showing you their privacy policy which must outline what is done with the data (how it's stored, managed, if it leaves the company's hands, the country, etc.). You have the right to say "No thanks" when the clerk at SportMart asks for your phone number, ditto when the clerk at Toys'R'Us when making a return. Sad things about this are 1) most Canadians don't even know about the act and 2) even less corporations know about it. All you fellow Canucks, next time you are making a purchase and they clerk asks for your phone number, say "No" and see what they do. Or better yet, ask the clerk what they need the info for, and what they intend to do with that information. Watch said clerk squirm and stammer ("Umm...ummm... I dunno"). Kinda cruel to the clerk, I s'pose but telling of the management of most Canadian corporations.

We have PIPEDA that says that my home phone number, name, etc. is protected information. Thus calling me at home in this type of situation can be considered a violation of this act. I'm currently in discussions with a car dealership and a bank over violations of both my privacy and my wife's. (We applied for a car loan and got a call from a mortgage specialist - who had our credit history - offering to help transfer our mortgage).

And whatever they claim otherwise, they're still getting data from credit reports and the like. So say you're one of the hundreds of thousands of identity theft victims. With ID theft you have rights, and the credit reporting agencies responsibilities, to attempt to fix bad data. Takes 200 hours of your time and never, ever really finishes, but all you lose is your potential new job and potential new car loan.

But in the meantime the bad data gets into the gov't files: now you never can fix it. And your taint creeps out to touch all your associates (like how the casino software catches ex-roommates of ex-roommates of card counters). Now not only do you not get hired after the NCIC screen in the background check, but your buddies and grandparents all get extra airport searches (they should add a nurse they way they do some of those searches... add in a breast or testicular cancer lump screen while you're there). And of course as 1 in 2500 of us is a terrorist any close check of you will find those suspicious degrees of separation in your Orkut links. Hi Mr.Tuttle, your new name is Toast.

From my favorite precient and well-written essay on privacy losses:

"But there also will be tangible, specific harm.

The more information government compiles about us, the more of it will be wrong. That's simply a fact of life...

"If information that is actually about someone else is wrongly applied to us, if wrong facts make it appear that we've done things we haven't, if perfectly innocent behavior is misinterpreted as suspicious because authorities don't know our reasons or our circumstances, we will be at risk of finding ourselves in trouble in a society where everyone is regarded as a suspect. By the time we clear our names and establish our innocence, we may have suffered irreparable financial or social harm.

"Worse yet, we may never know what negative assumptions or judgments have been made about us in state files... Decisions detrimental to us may be made on the basis of wrong facts, incomplete or out-of-context information or incorrect assumptions, without our ever having the chance to find out about it, let alone to set the record straight.

" That possibility alone will, over time, make us increasingly think twice about what we do, where we go, with whom we associate, because we will learn to be concerned about how it might look to the ubiquitous watchers of the state..."

"The bottom line is this: If we have to live our lives weighing every action, every communication, every human contact, wondering what agents of the state might find out about it, analyze it, judge it, possibly misconstrue it, and somehow use it to our detriment, we are not truly free. That sort of life is characteristic of totalitarian countries, not a free and open society..."

If these errors were merely harmful to the innocent, that would simply be horribly injust and an affront to the ideals of the US. But these errors are also stupidly harmful to safety. From Schneier (via my D.Nelson post)... "almost everyone who fits the profile will turn out to be a false alarm. This not only wastes investigative resources that might be better spent elsewhere, but it causes grave harm to those innocents who fit the profile..."

• As a Californian it is in my Constitution
• As an American its in Amendments IV, IX and X of the Federal constitution. (no, just because "freedom of thought" isn't listed either doesn't mean IX and X don't cover it. And #I too: can you have freedom of association without privacy?).
• And as an American, I think the Constitution isn't just the law, its a Good Idea to be applied widely to all of life, not just narrowly to federal gov't actions.
• As a Human, I'm covered by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights articles 12 and 13 (including 13 because if you can't travel with privacy, you don't have true freedom of movement, and being able to bicycle across the country doesn't count. Article 20- freedom of association- applies too. Plenty of my associates aren't in driving distance.)
• from A Watched Populace Never Boils: "People often ask why a loss of privacy... is a restriction on freedom. ... Some welcome it, feeling that the extra surveillance will cut down on crime, and provide some increased level of safety or imagined safety. ...invasions of privacy invade our freedoms quite directly. This is true even if the surveillance isn't abused by the watchers, even though history shows that it always is. When we feel watched, we feel less free. We censor ourselves and our actions... Yet the mainstream will never fear monitoring that much, just as it is more comfortable with censorship. What civil rights protect is not the majority, but the fringe. "
• And there's the very important and unfortunately increasingly precient best essay ever on why privacy is a right , which includes a list of very specific harms from lost privacy [ for example the specific harms when mistakes are made (and they always are)]

From his essay- which is even more applicable to the US as we've been losing these rights already: "A popular response is: "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. By that reasoning, of course, we shouldn't mind if the police were free to come into our homes at any time just to look around... if all the protections developed over centuries were swept away...

"The truth is that we all do have something to hide, not because it's criminal or even shameful, but simply because it's private. We carefully calibrate what we reveal about ourselves to others... The right not to be known against our will - indeed, the right to be anonymous except when we choose to identify ourselves - is at the very core of human dignity, autonomy and freedom.

"The Government ... has absolutely no business creating a massive database of personal information about all law-abiding Canadians that is collected without our consent from third parties, not to provide us with any service but simply to have it available to use against us if it ever becomes expedient to do so...

"It is difficult to imagine a more flagrant disregard for the rights of Canadians. This database is legally wrong and morally wrong. If the Government can get away with systematically logging and analyzing all the foreign travel activities of every law-abiding citizen, then no other private activity will long be safe from being included in the same personal dossiers - our shopping, our banking, our communications, our movements within the country...

"[Bill C-55 would give the RCMP and CSIS unrestricted access to the personal information held by airlines] I have raised no objection to the primary purpose of this provision, section 4.82, which is to ena

• As a Californian it is in my Constitution
• As an American its in Amendments IV, IX and X of the Federal constitution. (no, just because "freedom of thought" isn't listed either doesn't mean IX and X don't cover it. And #I too: can you have freedom of association without privacy?).
• And as an American, I think the Constitution isn't just the law, its a Good Idea to be applied widely to all of life, not just narrowly to federal gov't actions.
• As a Human, I'm covered by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights articles 12 and 13 (including 13 because if you can't travel with privacy, you don't have true freedom of movement, and being able to bicycle across the country doesn't count. Article 20- freedom of association- applies too. Plenty of my associates aren't in driving distance.)
• from A Watched Populace Never Boils: "People often ask why a loss of privacy... is a restriction on freedom. ... Some welcome it, feeling that the extra surveillance will cut down on crime, and provide some increased level of safety or imagined safety. ...invasions of privacy invade our freedoms quite directly. This is true even if the surveillance isn't abused by the watchers, even though history shows that it always is. When we feel watched, we feel less free. We censor ourselves and our actions... Yet the mainstream will never fear monitoring that much, just as it is more comfortable with censorship. What civil rights protect is not the majority, but the fringe. "
• And there's the very important and unfortunately increasingly precient best essay ever on why privacy is a right , which includes a list of very specific harms from lost privacy [ for example the specific harms when mistakes are made (and they always are)]

From his essay- which is even more applicable to the US as we've been losing these rights already: "A popular response is: "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. By that reasoning, of course, we shouldn't mind if the police were free to come into our homes at any time just to look around... if all the protections developed over centuries were swept away...

"The truth is that we all do have something to hide, not because it's criminal or even shameful, but simply because it's private. We carefully calibrate what we reveal about ourselves to others... The right not to be known against our will - indeed, the right to be anonymous except when we choose to identify ourselves - is at the very core of human dignity, autonomy and freedom.

"The Government ... has absolutely no business creating a massive database of personal information about all law-abiding Canadians that is collected without our consent from third parties, not to provide us with any service but simply to have it available to use against us if it ever becomes expedient to do so...

"It is difficult to imagine a more flagrant disregard for the rights of Canadians. This database is legally wrong and morally wrong. If the Government can get away with systematically logging and analyzing all the foreign travel activities of every law-abiding citizen, then no other private activity will long be safe from being included in the same personal dossiers - our shopping, our banking, our communications, our movements within the country...

"[Bill C-55 would give the RCMP and CSIS unrestricted access to the personal information held by airlines] I have raised no objection to the primary purpose of this provision, section 4.82, which is to ena

• As a Californian it is in my Constitution
• As an American its in Amendments IV, IX and X of the Federal constitution. (no, just because "freedom of thought" isn't listed either doesn't mean IX and X don't cover it. And #I too: can you have freedom of association without privacy?).
• And as an American, I think the Constitution isn't just the law, its a Good Idea to be applied widely to all of life, not just narrowly to federal gov't actions.
• As a Human, I'm covered by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights articles 12 and 13 (including 13 because if you can't travel with privacy, you don't have true freedom of movement. 20- freedom of association- fits with this as well)
• from A Watched Populace Never Boils: "People often ask why a loss of privacy... is a restriction on freedom. ... Some welcome it, feeling that the extra surveillance will cut down on crime, and provide some increased level of safety or imagined safety. ...invasions of privacy invade our freedoms quite directly. This is true even if the surveillance isn't abused by the watchers, even though history shows that it always is. When we feel watched, we feel less free. We censor ourselves and our actions... Yet the mainstream will never fear monitoring that much, just as it is more comfortable with censorship. What civil rights protect is not the majority, but the fringe. "
• And there's the very important and unfortunately increasingly precient best essay ever on why privacy is a right, which includes a list of very specific harms from lost privacy [ for example the specific harms when mistakes are made (and they always are)]

From his essay: "A popular response is: "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear... the truth is that we all do have something to hide, not because it's criminal or even shameful, but simply because it's private. We carefully calibrate what we reveal about ourselves to others... The right not to be known against our will - indeed, the right to be anonymous except when we choose to identify ourselves - is at the very core of human dignity, autonomy and freedom.

"If we allow the state to sweep away the normal walls of privacy that protect the details of our lives, we will consign ourselves psychologically to living in a fishbowl. Even if we suffered no other specific harm as a result, that alone would profoundly change how we feel. Anyone who has lived in a totalitarian society can attest that what often felt most oppressive was precisely the lack of privacy."

And continuing his argument:

"Now "September 11" is invoked as a kind of magic incantation to stifle debate, disparage critical analysis and persuade us that we live in a suddenly new world where the old rules cannot apply... If Parliament and the public at large have been slow to react, it is probably because for most people, most of the time, privacy is a pretty abstract concept. Like our health, it's something we tend not to think about until we lose it - and then discover that our lives have been very unpleasantly, and perhaps irretrievably, altered.

But though we tend to take it for granted, privacy - the right to control access to ourselves and to personal information about us - is at the very core of our lives. It is a fundamental human right precisely because it is an innate human need, an essential condition of our freedom, our dignity and our sense of well-being...."

"When people are worried about their safety, when we have seen the horrors of which toda

• As a Californian it is in my Constitution
• As an American its in Amendments IV, IX and X of the Federal constitution. (no, just because "freedom of thought" isn't listed either doesn't mean IX and X don't cover it. And #I too: can you have freedom of association without privacy?).
• And as an American, I think the Constitution isn't just the law, its a Good Idea to be applied widely to all of life, not just narrowly to federal gov't actions.
• As a Human, I'm covered by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights articles 12 and 13 (including 13 because if you can't travel with privacy, you don't have true freedom of movement. 20- freedom of association- fits with this as well)
• from A Watched Populace Never Boils: "People often ask why a loss of privacy... is a restriction on freedom. ... Some welcome it, feeling that the extra surveillance will cut down on crime, and provide some increased level of safety or imagined safety. ...invasions of privacy invade our freedoms quite directly. This is true even if the surveillance isn't abused by the watchers, even though history shows that it always is. When we feel watched, we feel less free. We censor ourselves and our actions... Yet the mainstream will never fear monitoring that much, just as it is more comfortable with censorship. What civil rights protect is not the majority, but the fringe. "
• And there's the very important and unfortunately increasingly precient best essay ever on why privacy is a right, which includes a list of very specific harms from lost privacy [ for example the specific harms when mistakes are made (and they always are)]

From his essay: "A popular response is: "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear... the truth is that we all do have something to hide, not because it's criminal or even shameful, but simply because it's private. We carefully calibrate what we reveal about ourselves to others... The right not to be known against our will - indeed, the right to be anonymous except when we choose to identify ourselves - is at the very core of human dignity, autonomy and freedom.

"If we allow the state to sweep away the normal walls of privacy that protect the details of our lives, we will consign ourselves psychologically to living in a fishbowl. Even if we suffered no other specific harm as a result, that alone would profoundly change how we feel. Anyone who has lived in a totalitarian society can attest that what often felt most oppressive was precisely the lack of privacy."

And continuing his argument:

"Now "September 11" is invoked as a kind of magic incantation to stifle debate, disparage critical analysis and persuade us that we live in a suddenly new world where the old rules cannot apply... If Parliament and the public at large have been slow to react, it is probably because for most people, most of the time, privacy is a pretty abstract concept. Like our health, it's something we tend not to think about until we lose it - and then discover that our lives have been very unpleasantly, and perhaps irretrievably, altered.

But though we tend to take it for granted, privacy - the right to control access to ourselves and to personal information about us - is at the very core of our lives. It is a fundamental human right precisely because it is an innate human need, an essential condition of our freedom, our dignity and our sense of well-being...."

"When people are worried about their safety, when we have seen the horrors of which toda

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.

"Hi, could you tell me what the most recent 10 books the Rep has read?"

"You can't? How about the last 10 books and magazines the Rep has read on taxpayers' time?"

"No, the Rep doesn't read then? OK, how about you or one of the other staffers go ahead and read him/her something. It's called the Constitution. Spelled c-o-n-s-t-i-t-u-t-i-o-n. You should be able to get a copy at the Library of Congress. You know where that is?"

"Oh, you do know where the Library of Congress is? You have an account? Then could you tell me what the last 10 books the Rep has received from the library?..."

And perhaps send them a copy of this great essay on the value of privacy and what Americans have lost (he warns Canadians not to lose the same ones):

"[The gov't] appears to have become convinced that privacy must be sacrificed bit by bit, day by day, in pursuit of greater goods: reassuring a public frightened by the outrages of September 11; mollifying an insistent U.S. government; meeting the wishes of police, security forces and other Government institutions that have recognized the aftermath of September 11 as an opportunity to expand their powers... Now "September 11" is invoked as a kind of magic incantation to stifle debate, disparage critical analysis and persuade us that we live in a suddenly new world where the old rules cannot apply.

If Parliament and the public at large have been slow to react, it is probably because for most people, most of the time, privacy is a pretty abstract concept... But though we tend to take it for granted, privacy - the right to control access to ourselves and to personal information about us - is at the very core of our lives...

[if privacy isn't protected] Decisions detrimental to us may be made on the basis of wrong facts, incomplete or out-of-context information or incorrect assumptions, without our ever having the chance to find out about it, let alone to set the record straight. That possibility alone will, over time, make us increasingly think twice about what we do, where we go, with whom we associate, because we will learn to be concerned about how it might look to the ubiquitous watchers of the state.

• You stopped briefly in Thailand during a business trip...But might repeat travel to Thailand get you flagged by the Government's analysts as a possible pedophile...? Could you find yourself detained for questioning every time you travel?
• You're passing time browsing on the Internet and you're idly curious about what kind of propaganda in favour of al-Qaeda various extremists might be putting out. But could visiting such Web sites get you identified as a potential terrorist yourself and bring CSIS or RCMP officers knocking on your door?
• You're stopped on the street by a stranger asking for directions. But if by then proliferating street video surveillance cameras are linked to biometric face-recognition technology, what if the system immediately identifies the stranger as a known or suspected terrorist? If the police officer then calls up your name and address by matching your onscreen image to your driver's license or passport photo, will you go into security files yourself as a suspicious individual who had a street meeting with a terrorism suspect? Would you do better to keep walking whenever any stranger tries to talk to you?

So, what if the data is wrong? I'd say the results would be worse than identity theft or a simple bad credit report.

With ID theft, bad data gets attached to you and affects your ability to find jobs, get loans, rent housing, etc. But, it only affects you (perhaps also a spouse). You can get your data and try to fix it. Takes 200 hours and never quite finishes, but you have rights and the credit agencies have duties.

With this system, bad data will affect you and your ability to travel. The government has admitted that it has no responsibility to fix bad data in government files. So, you'll have few to zero chances to fix it. And the best part is bad data about you will creep out to taint anyone you've associated with. If you look bad, then so do your old roommates. And your new business partners. And whoever you call regularly. So now grandma will get a free breast cancer screening whenever she flies (mmmmm. Wand searches).

From my favorite essay written by a precog on privacy post 9/11( the former Canadian privacy czar's excellent essay), as I commented here in this thread on airlines gave away your privacy (and it definitely applies to those of us in the US, he's warning Canadians not to do what the US was doing already):

• The more information government compiles about us, the more of it will be wrong. That's simply a fact of life...
• wrong information and misinterpretations will have potential consequences. If information that is actually about someone else is wrongly applied to us, if wrong facts make it appear that we've done things we haven't, if perfectly innocent behavior is misinterpreted as suspicious because authorities don't know our reasons or our circumstances, we will be at risk of finding ourselves in trouble in a society where everyone is regarded as a suspect...
• Decisions detrimental to us may be made on the basis of wrong facts, incomplete or out-of-context information or incorrect assumptions, without our ever having the chance to find out about it, let alone to set the record straight...
• That possibility alone will, over time, make us increasingly think twice about what we do, where we go, with whom we associate, because we will learn to be concerned about how it might look to the ubiquitous watchers of the state.
• The bottom line is this: If we have to live our lives weighing every action, every communication, every human contact, wondering what agents of the state might find out about it, analyze it, judge it, possibly misconstrue it, and somehow use it to our detriment, we are not truly free. That sort of life is characteristic of totalitarian countries, not a free and open society like Canada.

"[gives example of Canada wanting to collect data, US style]... This is unprecedented. The Government of Canada has absolutely no business creating a massive database of personal information about all law-abiding Canadians that is collected without our consent from third parties, not to provide us with any service but simply to have it available to use against us if it ever becomes expedient to do so. Compiling dossiers on the private activities of all law-abiding citizens is the sort of t

All people are by nature free and independent and have inalienable rights. Among these are enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, possessing, and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining safety, happiness, and

privacy.

That's California. I also have Amendments IV, IX and X of the Federal constitution. (And just because "freedom of thought" isn't listed either doesn't mean IX and X don't cover it.)

Plus the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Articles 12 and 13:

Article 12.

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
Article 13.
(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.
(2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

I include 13 because if you have to give up your privacy entirely to travel, you don't have freedom of movement. And no, the ability to bicycle cross-country as a substitute for flying doesn't count.

In other person's words:

From A Watched Populace Never Boils:

"People often ask why a loss of privacy... is a restriction on freedom. ... Some welcome it, feeling that the extra surveillance will cut down on crime, and provide some increased level of safety or imagined safety.

But the truth is that invasions of privacy invade our freedoms quite directly. This is true even if the surveillance isn't abused by the watchers, even though history shows that it always is.

When we feel watched, we feel less free. We censor ourselves and our actions...

Yet the mainstream will never fear monitoring that much, just as it is more comfortable with censorship. What civil rights protect is not the majority, but the fringe. The fringe is usually feared by the majority, and most subject to its oppression. Yet the fringe is the lifeblood of a society's future. When I say a watched populace never boils, I refer to the ability to bubble with change and novelty. Yes, it also means unrest, for there are both positive and negative elements to the fringe. Yet the fringe today becomes the mainstream in the future. That is how a healthy, dynamic society works. That is how our society works...

And as I just commented there's the best essay on privacy post 911:

"Now "September 11" is invoked as a kind of magic incantation to stifle debate, disparage critical analysis and persuade us that we live in a suddenly new world where the old rules cannot apply.

If Parliament and the public at large have been slow to react, it is probably because for most people, most of the time, privacy is a pretty abstract concept. Like our health, it's something we tend not to think about until we lose it - and then discover that our lives have been very unpleasantly, and perhaps irretrievably, altered.

But though we tend to take it for granted, privacy - the right to control access to ourselves and to personal information about us - is at the very core of our lives. It is a fundamental human right precisely because it is an innate human need, an essential condition of our freedom, our dignity and our sense of well-being...."

"When people are worried about their safety, when we have seen the horrors of which today's breed of terrorists are capable - and there may be more - it's easy to lose perspective. It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that security is all that mat

"A popular response is: "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear... the truth is that we all do have something to hide, not because it's criminal or even shameful, but simply because it's private. We carefully calibrate what we reveal about ourselves to others... The right not to be known against our will - indeed, the right to be anonymous except when we choose to identify ourselves - is at the very core of human dignity, autonomy and freedom.

If we allow the state to sweep away the normal walls of privacy that protect the details of our lives, we will consign ourselves psychologically to living in a fishbowl. Even if we suffered no other specific harm as a result, that alone would profoundly change how we feel. Anyone who has lived in a totalitarian society can attest that what often felt most oppressive was precisely the lack of privacy.

But there also will be tangible, specific harm.

• The more information government compiles about us, the more of it will be wrong. That's simply a fact of life...
• wrong information and misinterpretations will have potential consequences. If information that is actually about someone else is wrongly applied to us, if wrong facts make it appear that we've done things we haven't, if perfectly innocent behavior is misinterpreted as suspicious because authorities don't know our reasons or our circumstances, we will be at risk of finding ourselves in trouble in a society where everyone is regarded as a suspect...
• Decisions detrimental to us may be made on the basis of wrong facts, incomplete or out-of-context information or incorrect assumptions, without our ever having the chance to find out about it, let alone to set the record straight...
• That possibility alone will, over time, make us increasingly think twice about what we do, where we go, with whom we associate, because we will learn to be concerned about how it might look to the ubiquitous watchers of the state.
• The bottom line is this: If we have to live our lives weighing every action, every communication, every human contact, wondering what agents of the state might find out about it, analyze it, judge it, possibly misconstrue it, and somehow use it to our detriment, we are not truly free. That sort of life is characteristic of totalitarian countries, not a free and open society like Canada.

Here's where Ashcroft is using the essay as a guidebook:

"Last summer, the CCRA informed me that, contrary to its past undertaking, it has decided to keep all API/PNR information about Canadian travellers for six years in a massive new database.

All this personal information - more than 30 data elements including every destination to which we travel, who we travel with, how we pay for the tickets (sometimes including credit card numbers), what contact numbers we provide, even any dietary preferences or health-related requirements we communicate to the airline - will be available for an almost limitless range of governmental purposes...

"This is unprecedented. The Government of Canada has absolutely no business creating a massive database of personal information about all law-abiding Canadians that is collected without our consent from third parties, not to provide us with any service but simply to have it available to use against us if it ever becomes expedient to do so. Compiling dossiers on the private activities of all law-abiding citizens is the sort of thing the Stasi secret police used to do in the former East Germany. It has no place in a free and democratic society...

It is difficult to imagine a m

From a a very well-written essay on why privacy is a fundamental and important right (written by the former privacy czar of Canada, warning Canadians not to lose rights Americans already have):

"But though we tend to take it for granted, privacy - the right to control access to ourselves and to personal information about us - is at the very core of our lives. It is a fundamental human right precisely because it is an innate human need, an essential condition of our freedom, our dignity and our sense of well-being.

If someone intrudes on our privacy - by peering into our home, going through the personal things in our office desk, reading over our shoulder on a bus or airplane, or eavesdropping on our conversation - we feel uncomfortable, even violated.

Imagine, then, how we will feel if it becomes routine for bureaucrats, police officers and other agents of the state to paw through all the details of our lives: where and when we travel, and with whom; who are the friends and acquaintances with whom we have telephone conversations or e-mail correspondence; what we are interested in reading or researching; where we like to go and what we like to do.

A popular response is: "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear."

By that reasoning, of course, we shouldn't mind if the police were free to come into our homes at any time just to look around, if all our telephone conversations were monitored, if all our mail were read, if all the protections developed over centuries were swept away.It's only a difference of degree from the intrusions already being implemented or considered.

The truth is that we all do have something to hide, not because it's criminal or even shameful, but simply because it's private. We carefully calibrate what we reveal about ourselves to others. Most of us are only willing to have a few things known about us by a stranger, more by an acquaintance, and the most by a very close friend or a romantic partner. The right not to be known against our will - indeed, the right to be anonymous except when we choose to identify ourselves - is at the very core of human dignity, autonomy and freedom.

If we allow the state to sweep away the normal walls of privacy that protect the details of our lives, we will consign ourselves psychologically to living in a fishbowl. Even if we suffered no other specific harm as a result, that alone would profoundly change how we feel. Anyone who has lived in a totalitarian society can attest that what often felt most oppressive was precisely the lack of privacy.

But there also will be tangible, specific harm..."

Go read the rest of this prescient article. Unfortunately its being used as an 'antiblueprint' by Ashcroft et ilk. Everything warned against Ashcroft wants to implement.

From a a very well-written essay on why privacy is a fundamental and important right (written by the former privacy czar of Canada, warning Canadians not to lose rights Americans already have):

"But though we tend to take it for granted, privacy - the right to control access to ourselves and to personal information about us - is at the very core of our lives. It is a fundamental human right precisely because it is an innate human need, an essential condition of our freedom, our dignity and our sense of well-being.

If someone intrudes on our privacy - by peering into our home, going through the personal things in our office desk, reading over our shoulder on a bus or airplane, or eavesdropping on our conversation - we feel uncomfortable, even violated.

Imagine, then, how we will feel if it becomes routine for bureaucrats, police officers and other agents of the state to paw through all the details of our lives: where and when we travel, and with whom; who are the friends and acquaintances with whom we have telephone conversations or e-mail correspondence; what we are interested in reading or researching; where we like to go and what we like to do.

A popular response is: "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear."

By that reasoning, of course, we shouldn't mind if the police were free to come into our homes at any time just to look around, if all our telephone conversations were monitored, if all our mail were read, if all the protections developed over centuries were swept away.It's only a difference of degree from the intrusions already being implemented or considered.

The truth is that we all do have something to hide, not because it's criminal or even shameful, but simply because it's private. We carefully calibrate what we reveal about ourselves to others. Most of us are only willing to have a few things known about us by a stranger, more by an acquaintance, and the most by a very close friend or a romantic partner. The right not to be known against our will - indeed, the right to be anonymous except when we choose to identify ourselves - is at the very core of human dignity, autonomy and freedom.

If we allow the state to sweep away the normal walls of privacy that protect the details of our lives, we will consign ourselves psychologically to living in a fishbowl. Even if we suffered no other specific harm as a result, that alone would profoundly change how we feel. Anyone who has lived in a totalitarian society can attest that what often felt most oppressive was precisely the lack of privacy.

But there also will be tangible, specific harm..."

Go read the rest of this prescient article. Unfortunately its being used as an 'antiblueprint' by Ashcroft et ilk. Everything warned against Ashcroft wants to implement.

I do believe you are wrong.
From this site:
"In Canada, it is well established that we are not required to identify ourselves to police unless we are being arrested or we are carrying out a licensed activity such as driving. The right to anonymity with regard to the state is a crucial privacy right."
Of course the information might be dated, after 9/11 the government has tried to introduce new laws to curb rights, mostly to satisfy the United States government.

Google owns Orkut, Blogger.com, the largest search engine on the 'net, and is now offering free, high quality web-based email accounts with a gig of storage. Except for a few lone voices, I haven't seen any serious discussion about why this huge corporation is spending so much resources on providing these services for free.

The advertising revenue couldn't possibly amount to a significant fraction of the costs involved with these services. The value must lie in the personal information that people are donating to Google, Inc.. What are their plans for it? They obviously plan to datamine it - but how will and how can it be used? What new knowledge can be generated by correlating and cross-referencing your orkut, blogger, gmail and google search information?

It is troublesome that it seems to be popular and hip to be totally unconcerned about privacy. Attitudes like "we have none anyways" seem to prevail, and its funny to criticize those who voice some concern as tinfoil-hat-black-helicopter-seeing schitzos. It looks like people have forgotten that privacy matters. Like many other companies that try to collect personal information, Google's privacy policy is subject to change at any time. This makes it almost meaningless! It is effectively the same as saying, "We respect your privacy right at this moment, so have complete trust in us. Tomorrow we might change our minds."

>This is not an invasion of privacy, nor is it some grandiose conspiracy.

No, it's just a big fat boring waste of my time and absolutely illegal just a couple of hundred miles north (where I am), because it is, in fact, an invasion of privacy (ask the canadian privacy commissioner if you don't believe me).

Personally, I don't read any NYT stuff because I have more important things to do, like actually ENJOYING wasting my time on slashdot posting comments like this. I'd also tell someone handing out free physical newspapers to screw off if they handed me a multipage form to fill out to get one.

You'd be surprised at what a slippery slope this information requirements can be. That's the whole reason we got this legislation in Canada. We got tired of telling the teenager at radioshack where we live so we can buy a pack of batteries. We got tired of handing over our Driver's Licence or SIN just to buy a satellite system (no, not subscribe, just to walk out the door of a store with one). People are too busy for that.

>This is not an invasion of privacy, nor is it some grandiose conspiracy.

No, it's just a big fat boring waste of my time and absolutely illegal just a couple of hundred miles north (where I am), because it is, in fact, an invasion of privacy (ask the canadian privacy commissioner if you don't believe me).

Personally, I don't read any NYT stuff because I have more important things to do, like actually ENJOYING wasting my time on slashdot posting comments like this. I'd also tell someone handing out free physical newspapers to screw off if they handed me a multipage form to fill out to get one.

You'd be surprised at what a slippery slope this information requirements can be. That's the whole reason we got this legislation in Canada. We got tired of telling the teenager at radioshack where we live so we can buy a pack of batteries. We got tired of handing over our Driver's Licence or SIN just to buy a satellite system (no, not subscribe, just to walk out the door of a store with one). People are too busy for that.

In Canada, maintaining this information after you have lost the customer is illegal under the PIPED Act which came into effect for corporations unrelated to the government on January 1st, 2004.

Basically, you are allowed to use personal information only for the purpose you originally stated. Companies that collected this data to provide you with service are therefore legally bound to delete it once the customer cancels their account.

Very few companies actually do this.

The Office of the Privacy commisioner of Canada

The Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Jennifer Stoddart, is an Officer of Parliament who reports directly to the House of Commons and the Senate. In addition to the Privacy Commissioner, the Office has two Assistant Privacy Commissioners, Heather Black and Raymond D'Aoust. The Office also has an External Advisory Committee, launched in February 2004.

The Commissioner is an advocate for the privacy rights of Canadians. Her powers include:

* investigating complaints and conducting audits under two federal laws;
* publishing information about personal information-handling practices in the public and private sector;
* conducting research into privacy issues; and
* promoting awareness and understanding of privacy issues by the Canadian public.

The Commissioner works independently from any other part of the government to investigate complaints from individuals with respect to the federal public sector and the private sector.

Individuals may complain to the Commissioner about any matter specified in Section 29 of the Privacy Act. This Act applies to personal information held by the Government of Canada.

For matters relating to personal information in the private sector, the Commissioner may investigate complaints under Section 11 of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act.

Why should any regular individual be worried about these systems? From the best essay on privacy and 9/11 laws I've seen (from the former privacy czar of Canada- warning Canadians not to lose rights Americans have already lost):

"...But there also will be tangible, specific harm. The more information government compiles about us, the more of it will be wrong. That's simply a fact of life.

"But if our privacy becomes ever more systematically invaded by the state for purposes of assessing our behavior and making judgments about us, wrong information and misinterpretations will have potential consequences.

"If information that is actually about someone else is wrongly applied to us, if wrong facts make it appear that we've done things we haven't, if perfectly innocent behavior is misinterpreted as suspicious because authorities don't know our reasons or our circumstances, we will be at risk of finding ourselves in trouble in a society where everyone is regarded as a suspect. By the time we clear our names and establish our innocence, we may have suffered irreparable financial or social harm...

"Decisions detrimental to us may be made on the basis of wrong facts, incomplete or out-of-context information or incorrect assumptions, without our ever having the chance to find out about it, let alone to set the record straight...

"The bottom line is this: If we have to live our lives weighing every action, every communication, every human contact, wondering what agents of the state might find out about it, analyze it, judge it, possibly misconstrue it, and somehow use it to our detriment, we are not truly free. That sort of life is characteristic of totalitarian countries, not a free and open society like Canada...

" Compiling dossiers on the private activities of all law-abiding citizens is the sort of thing the Stasi secret police used to do in the former East Germany. It has no place in a free and democratic society."

"...When people are worried about their safety, when we have seen the horrors of which today's breed of terrorists are capable - and there may be more - it's easy to lose perspective. It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that security is all that matters and that human rights such as privacy are a luxury. But such extremes can only reward and encourage terrorism, not diminish it. They can only devastate our lives, without commensurately safeguarding them. Of course we all want to be safe. But we could be safer from terrorism - perhaps - if we permanently evacuated all the high-rise office towers, if we closed down the subways, if we forever grounded all airplanes. Yet no reasonable person would be likely to argue for adopting such measures. We'd say, "We want to be safe, yes - but not at the price of sacrificing our whole way of life." The same reasoning should apply, in my view, to arguments that privacy should indiscriminately be sacrificed on the altar of enhanced security..."

Yes, until a few centuries people didn't have anonymity if they stayed in the towns they were born in. They also didn't have voting rights, freedom of assembly / press / religion / petition / etc. That doesn't make those rights any less real- it just makes olden days seem barbaric. Privacy might be a younger right- but rights don't have an age of majority. And technology today can be used to take away other rights- but that doesn't make those rights "falsely expected," just in need of more guarding.

Yet even two centuries ago they knew the value of anonymity: from A Watched Populace Never Boils"

...the fringe today becomes the mainstream in the future. That is how a healthy, dynamic society works. That is how our society works.

You can't have the same sort of counterculture in a monitored society. It gets driven even further underground. You won't find the counterculture in the small towns where everybody knows one another. Usually the youth, full of anger and novelty and art and invention, leave those small towns to discover themselves in the city. Will they do it as well if mom, or big brother, is watching? ...The founders of the USA knew this. They wrote much of their founding doctrine anonymously in the Federalist Papers. That legacy exists today online... They are boiling, opening doors, and changing the world.

We might be safer if people had less privacy. We could be as safe as the people in the small towns, which have low crime rates. We would also be as lukewarm as the people in those towns; content but never boiling."

[and anecdotally, all those Westerns with the "tall dark stranger" coming to town couldn't have happened if you never had strangers. People could see you come to town or go to someone's house. But once you left town, or went around the corner- even the best gossipers weren't going to know too much more about you.]

But privacy is far more than whether or not you are recognized... quoting from my favorite essay...

"...But though we tend to take it for granted, privacy - the right to control access to ourselves and to personal information about us - is at the very core of our lives. It is a fundamental human right precisely because it is an innate human need, an essential condition of our freedom, our dignity and our sense of well-being...

...A popular response is: "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear."

By that reasoning, of course, we shouldn't mind if the police were free to come into our homes at any time just to look around, if all our telephone conversations were monitored, if all our mail were read, if all the protections developed over centuries were swept away. It's only a difference of degree from the intrusions already being implemented or considered.

The truth is that we all do have something to hide, not because it's criminal or even shameful, but simply because it's private. We carefully calibrate what we reveal about ourselves to others. Most of us are only willing to have a few things known about us by a stranger, more by an acquaintance, and the most by a very close friend or a romantic partner. The right not to be known against our will - indeed, the right to be anonymous except when we choose to identify ourselves - is at the very core of human dignity, autonomy and freedom.

A camera tapes you. If one tape-reviewer doesn't know you, he can ask until he finds someone who does. The tape can be matched with other tapes to see where you were and where you're going. The tape will be stored and reviewed by ever better automatic recognition tech, and those results stored in ever larger and cheaper databases.

I think this is a quantitative change in the "expectation of privacy" one has in public.

We are getting very close to "P-day" (coined by Brad Templeton): the last day of privacy, because from then on all our actions will be tracked retroactively if not currently. Or, as he puts it: "So you're already being watched. The computer that is watching you just hasn't been born quite yet."

Two good essays on why this type of surveillance hurts society and violates our rights:

• From the Best Essay Ever on why privacy is a fundamental right: [Its not too long- just go read it]

  "[Talking about Canada...] If these measures are allowed to go forward and the privacy-invasive principles they represent are accepted [then before long] our movements through the public streets will be relentlessly observed through proliferating police video surveillance cameras. Eventually, these cameras will likely be linked to biometric face-recognition technologies ... [indentifying] us by name and address as we go about our law-abiding business in the streets... I am well aware that these scenarios are likely to sound, to most people, like alarmist exaggeration. Certainly, the society I am describing bears no relation to the Canada we know. But anyone who is inclined to dismiss the risks out of hand should pause first to consider that the privacy-invasive measures already being implemented or developed right now would have been considered unthinkable in our country just a short year ago."

  The place to stop unjustified intrusions on a fundamental human right such as privacy is right at the outset, at the very first attempt to enter where the state has no business treading. Otherwise, the terrain will have been conceded, and the battle lost...

  Imagine, then, how we will feel if it becomes routine for bureaucrats, police officers and other agents of the state to paw through all the details of our lives: where and when we travel, and with whom; who are the friends and acquaintances with whom we have telephone conversations or e-mail correspondence; what we are interested in reading or researching; where we like to go and what we like to do...

  If we allow the state to sweep away the normal walls of privacy that protect the details of our lives, we will consign ourselves psychologically to living in a fishbowl...Anyone who has lived in a totalitarian society can attest that what often felt most oppressive was precisely the lack of privacy.

• A Watched Populace Never Boils "People often ask why a loss of privacy... is a restriction on freedom. ... Some welcome it, feeling that the extra surveillance will cut down on crime, and provide some increased level of safety or imagined safety. But the truth is that invasions of privacy invade our freedoms quite directly. This is true even if the surveillance isn't abused by the watchers, even though history shows that it always is.

  When we feel watched, we feel less free. We censor ourselve

This could be changed. Technologies have gone from public (non-private) to private and protected before. Consider the switch from party lines to private lines in the telephone system. Now that we live in the 21st century shouldn't we demand a similar switch for email?

Because privacy is, at its core, a fundamental human right. Every communication system we use should have privacy built in: if its not, there should be a very good reason why not. "Oh dear, it will take extra computational cycles" is not a good reason, not with the small footprint crypto already here. "Oh, Ashcroft doesn't want it" is even a worse reason.

Why is privacy a basic right? From the well-written essay by Canada's former privacy Czar

"If Parliament and the public at large have been slow to react, it is probably because for most people, most of the time, privacy is a pretty abstract concept. Like our health, it's something we tend not to think about until we lose it - and then discover that our lives have been very unpleasantly, and perhaps irretrievably, altered.

But though we tend to take it for granted, privacy - the right to control access to ourselves and to personal information about us - is at the very core of our lives. It is a fundamental human right precisely because it is an innate human need, an essential condition of our freedom, our dignity and our sense of well-being."

" ...A popular response is: "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.

"By that reasoning, of course, we shouldn't mind if the police were free to come into our homes at any time just to look around, if all our telephone conversations were monitored, if all our mail were read, if all the protections developed over centuries were swept away. It's only a difference of degree from the intrusions already being implemented or considered.

"The truth is that we all do have something to hide, not because it's criminal or even shameful, but simply because it's private. We carefully calibrate what we reveal about ourselves to others. Most of us are only willing to have a few things known about us by a stranger, more by an acquaintance, and the most by a very close friend or a romantic partner. The right not to be known against our will -- indeed, the right to be anonymous except when we choose to identify ourselves -- is at the very core of human dignity, autonomy and freedom.

"If we allow the state to sweep away the normal walls of privacy that protect the details of our lives, we will consign ourselves psychologically to living in a fishbowl. Even if we suffered no other specific harm as a result, that alone would profoundly change how we feel. Anyone who has lived in a totalitarian society can attest that what often felt most oppressive was precisely the lack of privacy...

"...The bottom line is this: If we have to live our lives weighing every action, every communication, every human contact, wondering what agents of the state might find out about it, analyze it, judge it, possibly misconstrue it, and somehow use it to our detriment, we are not truly free. That sort of life is characteristic of totalitarian countries, not a free and open society..."

Canada's new Personal Information Protectiona and Electronics Document Act is starting to be tested with the issue of wheather or not companies can release private information to third parties. For an ISP like Shaw to release customer names to the CRIA would require consent (not likely) or the occurance of an illegal act.

Canada's latest round of privacy laws, introduced in January of this year, will stop them. Read about it here. In fact Canada has a Privacy Commissionaire who fights for the peoples' privacy.

How does this fit in with Canada's new privacy law that came into effect January 1st? Is this a legitimate business purpose?

The plantiffs (recording industry) would probably not be able ot show the judge that there are reasonable grounds for them to be able to anyalyze records of indivduals that are not associated with the lawsuit. If you are involved in a personal injury lawsuit, you can't subpoena the hospitals entire patient file.
Canada also has a privacy law.

The PIPED Act will start being enforced for private companies on January 1st, 2004 here in Canada. You can read about this legislation here. This will make it illegal to scan your driver's license and store it in a computer and/or share with other companies without your knowledge and consent.

I would be surprised if there were any common law country where the identify of users of an IP address were NOT subject to subpoena in a civil suit. Why should it be? There's no presumption of confidentiality.

a) The Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act

b) Bell, probably the biggest ISP in cananda (also the biggest provider of phonelines!!!) has this document about private customer information.

Ummm yeah .. In most countries (I'd bet), even the police would have to get a warrant of some sort, before they can just get this information from a company. Why on God's green earth does an association of stupid record labels, have the power to bypass all these laws?!?!?

3) For the purpose of clause 4.3 of Schedule 1, and despite the note that accompanies that clause, an organization may disclose personal information without the knowledge or consent of the individual only if the disclosure is

[...]
* (c) required to comply with a subpoena or warrant issued or an order made by a court, person or body with jurisdiction to compel the production of information, or to comply with rules of court relating to the production of records;

It's usually pretty easy to subpoena these records in a civil suit, but I don't want to generalize across countries. There's nothing exceptional about this part of the process. The RIAA does not have any special powers and is not bypassing any laws.

I would be surprised if there were any common law country where the identify of users of an IP address were NOT subject to subpoena in a civil suit. Why should it be? There's no presumption of confidentiality.

a) The Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act

b) Bell, probably the biggest ISP in cananda (also the biggest provider of phonelines!!!) has this document about private customer information.

Ummm yeah .. In most countries (I'd bet), even the police would have to get a warrant of some sort, before they can just get this information from a company. Why on God's green earth does an association of stupid record labels, have the power to bypass all these laws?!?!?

"...If Parliament and the public at large have been slow to react, it is probably because for most people, most of the time, privacy is a pretty abstract concept. Like our health, it's something we tend not to think about until we lose it -- and then discover that our lives have been very unpleasantly, and perhaps irretrievably, altered. But though we tend to take it for granted, privacy -- the right to control access to ourselves and to personal information about us -- is at the very core of our lives. It is a fundamental human right precisely because it is an innate human need, an essential condition of our freedom, our dignity and our sense of well-being.

If someone intrudes on our privacy -- by peering into our home, going through the personal things in our office desk, reading over our shoulder on a bus or airplane, or eavesdropping on our conversation -- we feel uncomfortable, even violated.

Imagine, then, how we will feel if it becomes routine for bureaucrats, police officers and other agents of the state to paw through all the details of our lives: where and when we travel, and with whom; who are the friends and acquaintances with whom we have telephone conversations or e-mail correspondence; what we are interested in reading or researching; where we like to go and what we like to do..."

"... The truth is that we all do have something to hide, not because it's criminal or even shameful, but simply because it's private. We carefully calibrate what we reveal about ourselves to others. ... The right not to be known against our will -- indeed, the right to be anonymous except when we choose to identify ourselves -- is at the very core of human dignity, autonomy and freedom.

"If we allow the state to sweep away the normal walls of privacy that protect the details of our lives, we will consign ourselves psychologically to living in a fishbowl. Even if we suffered no other specific harm as a result, that alone would profoundly change how we feel. Anyone who has lived in a totalitarian society can attest that what often felt most oppressive was precisely the lack of privacy.

But there also will be tangible, specific harm.

"The more information government compiles about us, the more of it will be wrong. That's simply a fact of life...

"... The bottom line is this: If we have to live our lives weighing every action, every communication, every human contact, wondering what agents of the state might find out about it, analyze it, judge it, possibly misconstrue it, and somehow use it to our detriment, we are not truly free.That sort of life is characteristic of totalitarian countries, not a free and open society like Canada.

Again, this essay is well worth reading and sending on to others. Other than to Ashcroft and the TSA- don't send it to them, as they'd use it as an antiblueprint. "Don't track everyone all the time? OK, lets track everyone all the time." "Don't allow unsubstantiated data to influence how we treat people? OK, lets use any data available, true or not..."

"...If Parliament and the public at large have been slow to react, it is probably because for most people, most of the time, privacy is a pretty abstract concept. Like our health, it's something we tend not to think about until we lose it -- and then discover that our lives have been very unpleasantly, and perhaps irretrievably, altered. But though we tend to take it for granted, privacy -- the right to control access to ourselves and to personal information about us -- is at the very core of our lives. It is a fundamental human right precisely because it is an innate human need, an essential condition of our freedom, our dignity and our sense of well-being.

If someone intrudes on our privacy -- by peering into our home, going through the personal things in our office desk, reading over our shoulder on a bus or airplane, or eavesdropping on our conversation -- we feel uncomfortable, even violated.

Imagine, then, how we will feel if it becomes routine for bureaucrats, police officers and other agents of the state to paw through all the details of our lives: where and when we travel, and with whom; who are the friends and acquaintances with whom we have telephone conversations or e-mail correspondence; what we are interested in reading or researching; where we like to go and what we like to do..."

"... The truth is that we all do have something to hide, not because it's criminal or even shameful, but simply because it's private. We carefully calibrate what we reveal about ourselves to others. ... The right not to be known against our will -- indeed, the right to be anonymous except when we choose to identify ourselves -- is at the very core of human dignity, autonomy and freedom.

"If we allow the state to sweep away the normal walls of privacy that protect the details of our lives, we will consign ourselves psychologically to living in a fishbowl. Even if we suffered no other specific harm as a result, that alone would profoundly change how we feel. Anyone who has lived in a totalitarian society can attest that what often felt most oppressive was precisely the lack of privacy.

But there also will be tangible, specific harm.

"The more information government compiles about us, the more of it will be wrong. That's simply a fact of life...

"... The bottom line is this: If we have to live our lives weighing every action, every communication, every human contact, wondering what agents of the state might find out about it, analyze it, judge it, possibly misconstrue it, and somehow use it to our detriment, we are not truly free.That sort of life is characteristic of totalitarian countries, not a free and open society like Canada.

Again, this essay is well worth reading and sending on to others. Other than to Ashcroft and the TSA- don't send it to them, as they'd use it as an antiblueprint. "Don't track everyone all the time? OK, lets track everyone all the time." "Don't allow unsubstantiated data to influence how we treat people? OK, lets use any data available, true or not..."

You don't have to worry about DMCA-style laws up here. Check out here for why. Basically, we have bill C-6 (The Privacy Act) and the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act to protect us. To boil it down, when the last stages of these laws come in to effect in jan2004, any non-journalistic/artistic business has to have a court order signed by a judge (not just a stamp from a clerk) to release any information about an identifiable person. So if an (RI|MP)AA-type organization sends just a subpoena to your ISP, your ISP is then supposed to tell them to go screw themselves. Gotta love it!

In 2004, these same laws will apply to EVERY company that collects your information for any reason other than "artistic or journalistic purposes". IE: Unless they are a news reporting agency, they can't give out your info without a court order, and those are more difficult to get up here. I take a lot of comfort in that. And if the RIAA tries to sue me, not only is the burden of proof on them, we have a "loser-pays" court system.

True, we pay that f***ing levy on blank CD media, but if you can prove you don't use it to copy music illegaly (like educational or archival purposes), you can get that refunded. We also get to make fun of Americans in a dry, sarcastic fashion! We're also home to the funniest SNL comedians and superior beer. And since we exported Celine Dion to Vegas, what's not to love a-boot Canada? Except Hamilton. We're sorry for Hamilton, ONT. That ond the cold. And the taxes. And a senile PM that won't retire. And SARS. And Mad Cow. And West Nile. And a very expensive but (thankfully) useless gun registry the police refuse to enforce. And Anne Murray.

Dang, I'm starting to wonder if I should move to Switzerland.