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Canadian "Big Brother" Database Scrapped
Pig Hogger writes: "Jane Stewart, the minister responsible for Human
resources development Canada has announced today that the
"longitudinal labour force file databank" will be dismantled.
You can read the official
ministry press release, or the CBC
story.
Amusingly, the minister said that they 'cannot take chances
in the age of Mafiaboy '... "
Could the REAL reason that they're scrapping the DB be because they need to try and recoup some of the billion dollars that Jane Stewart's department "lost"?
.htm
http://www.reach.net/%7Egraphics/govwa1
To get back on topic... the sort of thinking, "protecting our culture," is what holds every nation back but the United States. They protect their culture with the USS Nimitz and company.
A database on every citizen in every nation is going to happen, if it hasn't already. What do you think social security numbers are? If we excuse our governments nutsy actions with "it is protecting our culture" they will get away with too much.
Big brother needs to be watched too.
illenium.net - ultimate sk8 shop online
O.k. Everyone seems to miss the fact that every single piece of information that the government gathered was important to its operation. You can't tax people unless you know where they live, how much they make, and where they worked. You can't pay them welfare/unemployment insurance unless you know what they earned last year, and how much they were paid in benefits, etc...
The only problem was the linking of the two. The intent was to detect things like double dipping, where someone is both working and getting benefits, or other such abuses.
However, as with any large database, there are many ways that it can be abused. They already have problems with government staff joyriding through the data. Every government has that problem, the IRS even tracks it and publishes stats on it.
And before everyone starts complaining about it maintaining a history, rather than simply current totals, remember that they have to maintain records for seven years for audit purposes.
I'm not saying that the large data-wharehouse kind of information is a good thing. It can, however, have several beneficial uses. It would give the government very good demographic data about the majority of its constituency (middle-class tax payers), which would help in resource planning (faster than a census). However, as with anything, there is an increased level of responsability required when using the information.
Jason PollockActually, Ralph Klein (premier of Alberta, for non-cdns out there) did speak out. He thought they should use the system to datamine for criminal activity. I think Ontaria's premier spoke out against it.
The thing is, the federal government has a privacy commissioner (Bruce Phillips is the guy who opened up the whole ball of wax) and operates under fairly strict restrictions vis a vis data collection and use.
The provinces do not have the same restrictions, and most of them don't have their own privacy commissioner. Bruce Phillips' jurisdiction only covers the federal government, he cannot investigate privacy concerns about provincial governments or private corporations. The provinces, could quite legally collect much more detailed databases and use them for whatever they want. The federal government cannot, wihtout breaking laws anyway.
Dana
Of course, this is made stranger by the fact that (until now) they apparently did talk to each other, they just didn't want us to know it... or something...
-Erf C.
-Erf C.
Cthulu always calls collect...
What you say about the Quebec Government is absolutly false.
The federal has a lot more power than the provincial government. They also have a lot more money and they control how they transfer it to each province. The federal is also the one trying to remove power to the provinces by interfering in theire field of power (like education or healthcare).
I cannot see how requiring french display may be compared to nazi regime. They don't prevent anybody from displaying in any other language, they just require that they also display in french and that the french part is predominant. While I don't agree with many of the action taken by the "language police" (like requiring some non-commercial web site to have a french version), I think that this law is important to preserve the french language in that part of the world. When your population is only 6-7 millions in a market of >275 millions, big corporation don't care about you and your preference, they just impose their stuff on you.
Also the US are a lot more protectionist about a lot of other stuff than the Quebec Government.
The privacy laws in the province of Quebec are ones of the strongest in the world. They prevent the government agencies to exchange your personnal info to any one (even to other governement agencies) without your explicit agreement for every transaction. The province of Quebec is the only place in North America that put special restriction on business for exchanging your personnal info. One of those restriction is that they MUST have your agreement to exchange your personnal data. They cannot have just an opt-out box.
Our laws are intended not respect the establishment of religion down here. We concluded over 200 years ago that to do so is a Bad Thing.
When the US govt restricts it's citizen and businesses from doing business with Cuba, it does this to prevent the communist ideology of Cuba to infect it's culture.
No, it does this to weaken the economy of a military dictatorship that sits 90 miles off our shores. We have had plenty of Cuban culture blended with our own for quite some time, and we like it.
That's the difference between the US and Quebec... we believe that the "melting pot" of cultures strenthens us, you fear the influence of non-french culture.
To be fair, we have polititians down here that wish to keep our culture "pure" of alien influence (like Pat Buccannan, the Reform Party candidate for President), but the vast majority of us reject such thinking as Xenophobic, over-protectionist, and perhaps even racist.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Those of you that would rather live in the US will find that immigrating here is remarkably easy, especially if you are a geek with lots of usefull skills. If nothing else, you could probably come in as a "resident alien" for a few years on a work visa, and get the citizenship as time goes on.
If you are from northern Canada, Alaska might be the ideal state for you... oil money pays for almost everything, so compared to Canadian taxes it's practically a free ride!
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
As if they're really going to get rid of such a useful tool for any modern government! This is just another government reshuffle where nothing really gets lost or removed, just moved into a new position out of the public eye. It's just with data this time, not people.
Every government has a database similar to the LLFF, made up from the vast amounts of personal data which we provide various organisations throughout our lives - police records, tax records, insurance, health etc etc. Of course they're not going to admit this sort of thing, because in this age "privacy" has become a cult whose members demand anonymity above everything else, including national security and prosperity.
No, the fact is that this kind of information is essential for an efficient government. Without it, they cannot make informed decisions about the populace, since they do not know who and what the populace is! Of course, the privacy nuts don't care if we all have to pay higher taxes and fill in ten times as many forms to ensure that the uninteresting details of their lives remain "hidden" from people who couldn't care less about what they do.
And when it comes to national security, a database of the civilian population can come in very handy, to allow people who are engaged in criminal activities to be caught more easily than is the case when records can be hidden across any number of separate organisations. This alone makes the LLFF or its equivalent an essential tool for the modern government, and one that Canada won't want to do without.
Anyone who thinks that Canada is really going to get rid of the LLFF is a fool. Like everything else useful to a government, it'll just be hidden elsewhere.
"Given public concerns about privacy issues in this era of advanced and constantly changing technology, I have chosen an approach that addresses future threats to privacy," she said.
I don't see how dismantling this current project is really addressing future threats. The change of an administration can change this policy fully and this decision will have had no effect whatsoever.
The other thing that strikes me as strange, is that there wasn't really a big protest about this database, it was simply people asking to see their data which caused them to shut it down. Why does the government not want the people to know what the government knows about them? That is the thing that scares me.
--------- Beware the dragon, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.
This completely ignores unauthorized access physically perpetrated (resentful bureaucrats abusing their access to harass cheating SO or pesky neighbour, cleaner script kiddie at the terminals) or the stretching of the confines of legal uses of the information. At the start it will be only used for tracking abuses of ssubsidies and tax evasion, but if you believe that's where it stays, I have this bridge I've been planning to sell.
Stefan.
If you don't know: SO="significant other".
The truth shall make you fret. (Ankh-Morpork tImes motto)
Or at least his dad is...
Hacker probe nets 2nd suspect: dad (MSNBC)
"There may be more to the computer moniker "Mafiaboy" than first believed. Montreal police said today that they moved in on the 15-year-old hacker last weekend after learning from wiretaps that his father had taken out a contract to harm or frighten a business associate and that the attack was imminent. They had wiretapped the boy's house shortly after U.S. and Canadian investigators identified that someone who lived there had launched a disabling computer attack that had shut down CNN's Web site and possibly other big sites in February."
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Hunh? The RCMP are federal, in teh sense that they are a nationally organized police force. MANY MANY jurisdictions use RCMP. Only a handful of cities don't, actually.
Vancouver (not greater vancouver, just vancouver) has the vancouver city cops.. the rest of greater van and BC has rcmp. Calgary has city cops, I'm not sure about edmonton, but the rest of alberta has rcmp.
In fact.. almost all of canada uses RCMP.
They might not realize it, but they have just validated the creed that black hats are doing us a service by exploiting holes to show us they exist...
*clap*
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Hi, you're wrong.
It's simply called "freedom of expression". Look up Section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It is in fact more comprehensive than the American "freedom of speech".
Subject to reasonable limitations, as are all sections of the Charter, but our court system is pretty good about that stuff.
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If a tree falls on an anonymous coward yelling 'first post' in the forest, does anybody hear?