Big brother is watching

How dangerous is C-51? You might be surprised.

As witnesses line up to warn about the dangers associated with Bill C-51, Canada’s anti-terrorism bill, it’s increasingly clear that the proposed legislation is an unprecedented undermining of Canadian privacy protection.

Much of the focus on the bill has related to oversight: the government implausibly claims that it increases oversight (it does not), the Liberals disappointingly say they support the bill but would like better oversight, and much of the NDP criticism has also centred on oversight. Yet with respect to privacy and Bill C-51, lack of oversight is only a part of the problem.

The privacy-related concerns stem from Bill C-51’s Security of Canada Information Sharing Act, a bill within the bill that goes far further than sharing information related to terrorist activity. It does so in three steps.

First, the bill permits information-sharing across government for an incredibly wide range of purposes, most of which have nothing to do with terrorism. The government has tried to justify the provisions on the grounds that Canadians would support sharing information for national security purposes — but the bill allows sharing for reasons that would surprise and disturb most Canadians.
Second, the scope of sharing is exceptionally broad, covering 17 government institutions with government granting itself the right to expand sharing to other departments. In fact, the bill even permits further disclosure “to any person, for any purpose”. In other words, there are few limits on how information the government collects can be shared internally, with other governments, or with any entity it sees fit.

The privacy community may be unanimous in condemning Bill C-51, but perhaps the biggest disappointment is to see how Harper has flipped on the importance of privacy protection over the information collected by governments.

Third, oversight is indeed a problem since the privacy protections found in the Privacy Act are widely viewed as being already outdated. In fact, Bill C-51 effectively neuters the core protections found in the Privacy Act by opening the door to the very kind of information-sharing that the law is intended to prevent







READ MORE: http://ipolitics.ca/2015/03/19/how-dangerous-is-c-51-you-might-be-surprised/