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Canadian "Big Brother" Database Scrapped

Posted by Hemos on from the taking-it-down dept.

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 '... "

4 of 83 comments (clear)

  1. The information is needed! by Jason+Pollock · · Score: 3

    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 Pollock
  2. Re:Not really addressing it - Canadian Politics by javatips · · Score: 3

    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.

  3. mafiaboy's dangerous... by Barbarian · · Score: 3

    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."

    --

  4. Mafiaboy by Hard_Code · · Score: 4

    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?