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Police In Canada Are Tracking People's 'Negative' Behavior In a 'Risk' Database (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Police, social services, and health workers in Canada are using shared databases to track the behavior of vulnerable people -- including minors and people experiencing homelessness -- with little oversight and often without consent. Documents obtained by Motherboard from Ontario's Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services (MCSCS) through an access to information request show that at least two provinces -- Ontario and Saskatchewan -- maintain a "Risk-driven Tracking Database" that is used to amass highly sensitive information about people's lives. Information in the database includes whether a person uses drugs, has been the victim of an assault, or lives in a "negative neighborhood."
The Risk-driven Tracking Database (RTD) is part of a collaborative approach to policing called the Hub model that partners cops, school staff, social workers, health care workers, and the provincial government. Information about people believed to be "at risk" of becoming criminals or victims of harm is shared between civilian agencies and police and is added to the database when a person is being evaluated for a rapid intervention intended to lower their risk levels. Interventions can range from a door knock and a chat to forced hospitalization or arrest. Data from the RTD is analyzed to identify trends -- for example, a spike in drug use in a particular area -- with the goal of producing planning data to deploy resources effectively, and create "community profiles" that could accelerate interventions under the Hub model, according to a 2015 Public Safety Canada report. Saskatchewan and Ontario officials say the data in the database is "de-identified" by removing details such as people's names and birthdates, but experts Motherboard spoke to say that scrubbing data so it may never be used to identify an individual is difficult if not impossible.
The Risk-driven Tracking Database (RTD) is part of a collaborative approach to policing called the Hub model that partners cops, school staff, social workers, health care workers, and the provincial government. Information about people believed to be "at risk" of becoming criminals or victims of harm is shared between civilian agencies and police and is added to the database when a person is being evaluated for a rapid intervention intended to lower their risk levels. Interventions can range from a door knock and a chat to forced hospitalization or arrest. Data from the RTD is analyzed to identify trends -- for example, a spike in drug use in a particular area -- with the goal of producing planning data to deploy resources effectively, and create "community profiles" that could accelerate interventions under the Hub model, according to a 2015 Public Safety Canada report. Saskatchewan and Ontario officials say the data in the database is "de-identified" by removing details such as people's names and birthdates, but experts Motherboard spoke to say that scrubbing data so it may never be used to identify an individual is difficult if not impossible.
Insufficient maple syrup
Not being a hockey fan
Disdain for Tim Horton's
Lack of deference to the Corgi-Enthusiast-in-Chief
Not translating everything into French
Moose baiting
Too little gravy in the poutine
Mainlining smoked meat
Kraft Dinner addiction (outside of the norm)
and finally...
Insincere and/or infrequent apologies
"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana." --Groucho Marx
In Canada, we call this the "revolving door" where people with mental health issues are simply dumped on the streets until they become an issue. The cops have to intervene, they're held in a hospital until court, which puts them into a psych facility. Where they're treated for a few weeks, then dumped back out on the streets.
Are we enjoying the fact that the courts so heavily overstepped on the MH issue, that when they started shutting down facilities they simply gave them bus tickets if nobody showed up for them.
Om, nomnomnom...