statism watch

StatismWatch has been noticing a pattern in Ms. Stoddardt’s reporting – that while she will identify a few isolated horror stories, she then goes on to validate the existence of these liberty-destroying programs as a whole. Take the case of the virtual strip-search machines being put in place at Canadian airports as an example. Justifed by the Federal Privacy Commissioner’s office. Why is that, Ms. Stoddardt? And why did you greenlight Facebook’s keeping private data indefinitely? Why does your expanded privacy law allow for DNA collection and live surveillance feeds once a ‘Section 1′-styled test has been dispensed with? And why don’t you let Canadians know that the demands for biometric data, and DNA, the aforementioned digital strip search, and the notion of GPS tracked vehicles that’s being floated, and the no-fly list, and the laptop searches, and the cameras going in everywhere – why don’t you just mention to Canadians (whose privacy it’s your office’s job to protect) that it’s not for ‘terrorists’. Why don’t you tell Canadians it’s for them. Could the fate of your predecessor, Mr. Radwanski, have anything to do with this? It’s unlikely that anyone could accuse him of producing a report equivocal about the threats to the privacy and liberty of Canadians. When it comes to your aims, this journal, unfortunately, has its doubts since the net effect of their media coverage of your reports is to make Canadians stand down. Since you’ve our best interests at heart perhaps you could ask yourself this simple question- do you want to enable a system that will train the next generation to know their place, tracked and traced? Do you want to be a functionary or a revolutionary for privacy?

Flashback: Abdelrazik vows to clear name from ‘unjust’ UN no-fly list | Former US congresswoman, presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney barred from boarding plane to human rights conference | Retired B.C. woman surprised to find herself on international no-fly list | U.S. air-security rules cause Canadian turbulence | Montreal man changing name to escape U.S. no-fly list | Ottawa warns on gold-backed Web trades | Family of Canadian stranded by no-fly list to make public appeal| Canada to launch no-fly list in June

Tonda MacCharles, The Toronto Star
November 17, 2009

Ottawa is collecting too much information through anti-money laundering agency and failing to regulate no-fly list, Privacy Commissioner says in annual report

OTTAWA – Were you the person who recently cashed a government-issued cheque for under $300 at your local trust company?

You probably never expected to be flagged as suspicious, but you were, says Canada’s privacy commissioner in a new audit of Canada’s financial watchdog agency.

Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart’s annual report, tabled in Parliament Tuesday, warns that Ottawa, in the drive to combat terrorism and money-laundering with the aid of modern technology, has developed a “seemingly insatiable appetite for personal information about individuals.”

Tackling what she called two of the most serious threats to privacy, Stoddart combed through the past year’s activities of FINTRAC, the powerful agency that is responsible for tracking financial transactions among Canada’s banks, trust companies, law firms and other money-handling institutions.

As well, she audited how Canada’s air carriers and transport authorities manage the “no-fly” list — known in official Ottawa as the “passenger protect” list.

Her conclusions echo previous warnings that in its post-9/11 efforts to be on the watch for terrorists, the federal government has often gone overboard.

“The unprecedented scope of government data collection that we are witnessing today heightens the risk of misuses and unauthorized disclosure. The consequences for individuals can be grave,” Stoddart says.

Normally, a $300 transaction would trigger no alarms, but Stoddart says the trust company’s decision to red-flag the cash withdrawal to FINTRAC has created “a lasting record of that trivial little transaction in the data vaults of the Government of Canada.”

The trust company notified FINTRAC of their customer’s activity “because of the woman’s ethnic origin and the fact she had visited a particular country.”

The financial agencies, realtors, accountants, casino operators, and others that are monitored by FINTRAC face stiff fines, up to $2 million, if they fail to scrutinize and report on suspicious monetary transactions of clients, which is a powerful incentive to over-report, suggests Stoddart.

In her review of the operation of the passenger screening list that took effect in June 2007, Stoddart found that overall, Transport Canada discloses personal information “selectively to officials who actually need it, and takes steps to restrict the disclosure of personal information only to that which is essential to operate the program.”

But she also discovered that the deputy minister, whose job it is to place someone on the list, got little or no information about who he was blacklisting, just “a simple recommendation to sign.”

Not good enough in an era where being placed on the list can have severe job and travel consequences, she says.

Stoddart found that technology to share “no-fly” information with air carriers has not been certified as secure enough; the smaller air carriers, some of which use paper lists, are not required to report breaches of privacy; and there is no review of those carriers’ compliance by Transport Canada.

Stoddart found other privacy breaches in federal agencies were the direct result of technology with gaps:

- In 2008-2009, several federal departments and agencies reported the theft of laptop computers and flash drives containing the personal information of Canadians.

- Computers were stolen from the residences of government employees. Some contained no personal information, but others held data on refugee and Employment Insurance claimants.

- A hacker using off-the-shelf software was able to penetrate a computer at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, exposing about 60,000 personal data records of farmers using a federal loan guarantee program.

- Stoddart cited a case where more than 1,200 employees at the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade had access to a database containing confidential personal information about a citizen jailed abroad.

But she says after concluding reviews of 990 public complaints last year, some breaches of privacy have “decidedly low-tech origins.”

- An inmate at the Saskatchewan Penitentiary turned over to an assistant warden a document he found in a garbage bin inside the prison. The document contained the names, prisoner numbers and work and other program assignments for 184 inmates. Seven were identified as participating in sex offender programs.

- A Justice Canada official on a business trip to Kingston lost a briefcase containing the personal information of 145 taxpayers, including their social insurance numbers and some details of their investments in a tax shelter. The briefcase was never recovered.

- The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) advised that documents containing personal information of about 63 medical professionals and students were lost from a briefcase carried aboard a domestic airline flight. “The documents were never found but they are thought to have been discarded by cabin-cleaning crews,” said Stoddart.

Stoddart said problems of “human error” are common in the handling of information requested under the Access to Information or Privacy Acts, with private data sometimes being released to the wrong person.

Stoddart also concluded that shortcomings in the way Elections Canada handles the personal information of Canada’s 23 million registered voters could expose people to “serious consequences such as identity theft.”

The audit found that some voter lists “simply vanished during elections and by-elections, the agency collects “too much personal information on voters, including on teenagers too young to vote”; and that Canadians are not fully informed about how their personal information will be used.

A key concern of Stoddart’s is that voter lists are drawn up from the National Register of Electors and include not only names and addresses, but also birthdates.

“There is evidence that these lists go missing. As well, lists distributed to political parties and candidates can be endlessly photocopied and circulated.”

She said as political parties and candidates are not governed by the privacy act, Elections Canada has been urged to develop policies “to better track such electoral documentation, and that returning officers and poll workers be better trained to safeguard voter information.”

Stoddart’s report says however, that overall, in the 26 years since the enactment of privacy legislation, “for most part, Canadians should be satisfied with the way the federal government handles their personal information.”

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 at 9:48 am and is filed under money, privacy, terror. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.