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The Woman Who's Making Your Privacy Her Business

Posted by samzenpus on from the never-disobey-mother dept.

davecb writes "The woman who faced down Facebook and was dissed by Silicon Valley business boys as 'an old-fashioned scold' is really one of the early advocates for using the internet for access to information, and to open up government. The Globe and Mail has an interview with Jennifer Stoddart, the privacy commissioner of Canada, who went up against Facebook for all of us, and made them back down."

3 of 120 comments (clear)

  1. Re:For all of us? by d6 · · Score: 5, Informative

    All of us in Canada at least. She seems to take her mandate seriously.

  2. Re:For all of us? by Mashiki · · Score: 5, Informative

    Honestly? For a privacy commissioner she's done a hell of a job. Taking her mandate seriously? I'd say so. Conservative, Liberal, NDP, Green, Bloc, small business, big business, internet related. NGO's, and so on. If you break the privacy act, you'll have her breathing down your neck fast. She's about as non-partisan, and pro-privacy as you can get.

    --
    Om, nomnomnom...
  3. Re:I, deal list by VortexCortex · · Score: 5, Informative

    governments should hoard information, at least in the traditional sense, to keep it hidden from other national governments. Unless you think every nation in the word should have the same information as every other

    Nah, Governments shouldn't hoard information at all.

    They should only keep "vital" information under wraps for at most 2 years, then make it all public (not hording, hording = "never gonna give you up")

    The only exception I can see is for long term military planning. Do we really need to use deceit in our diplomatic affairs? What's wrong with stating our goals and working to those ends? (It's not like we're really confounding our "enemies" by keeping diplomatic secrets).

    Unfortunately, under such an "idealist" information policy, everything will just get categorized as "military planning."

    You know... Just like nearly everything currently finds its way under the "national security" umbrella, even though most info is not. Hint: ACTA was held under the "national security" umbrella, now it's not; Guess it wasn't a matter of "national security" was it?

    Corrupt governments will always hide under the "national security" blanket, even if you rename it to "military planning" or "diplomatic privacy".