Some Canadians are counting down the days till Christmas. Some are counting the nights till Hanukkah. But in the Senate, we're counting down the sitting days until we receive Bill C-4, which will, among many other things, exempt federal political parties from provincial privacy law. At QP today, I had questions. I think anyone who cares about privacy rights will want to listen. https://youtu.be/ZB501otrMwQ?si=jbJj626Pcd7P47U9 #BillC4 #C4 #cdnpoli #SenateofCanada #LCJC #privacy #BillC2 #BillC8 #BillC12 #privacy
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I was thinking recently about how people in California, where most of the big tech companies are headquartered, have better privacy protections against those companies than Canadians do.
Not exactly relevant to your post but I guess it's along the same theme.
@Paulatics why would a political party need a special exemption on privacy laws ?
@rhempel Oh that is THE question. The govt says they don鈥檛 want a patchwork of rules that vary from province to province, that they need one consistent national standard. And fair enough. But, I鈥檇 argue, the standard shouldn鈥檛 be so much lower than provincial rules. It should be on par with the best regulations.
@Paulatics It's frustrating enough that we seem to always want a "made in Canada" solution to problems that other countries just take for granted - like the fantastic MitID system used for authentication in Denmark when we lived there.
Or the digital health and pharmacy record tied to your national ID card (plus an authentication step) that lets you renew a prescription at any pharmacy.
Put a "made in province" condition on these basic government services and yes, the result is chaos.
Privacy in general is a tough nut. Exempting the Feds from provincial privacy regulation, begs the question "OK, what privacy policy DO you want to adopt?" Or do they just want a general exemption from privacy regs all together because it's hard to do?
@rhempel They are creating new rules - but at a much lower standard. And of course all parties agree - because they all want to use the data they collect.
@Paulatics Also, congratulations on coming to Mastadon. We need more direct engagement on platforms like this with politicians - thanks for taking the time to reply to my armchair criticism. You are the ones doing the hard work of government and it's much easier to be an expert on the outside :-)
@rhempel Thanks. I鈥檝e been here for more than three years now - looks like I joined about a week before you did! I really enjoy the energy of this platform.
@Paulatics I'm guessing the end result is more gerrymandered riding boundaries as regions shift in which party they lean towards ... which may be a good reason to go with ranked choice.
If only someone ran with a platform regarding changes to the electoral system ... Oh wait, they did and won a majority of seats with a substantially smaller port铆on of votes?
But back to privacy, yes. The non-anonomysed? and retained data is valuable, and I'll bet there won't be safeguards against resale for non party business.
I think digital ID is a good thing, but I don't trust Canadian politicians are capable of directing the legislation and design of a system like this without turning it into a boondoggle.
At least that's what the historical record shows ...
@Paulatics When you ask a question as you did prior to a bill getting to the Senate, does that informally find its way to the government in the House as a warning that the Senate has second doubts about provisions in a bill? or is the House generally oblivious to what happens in the Senate prior to a bill being sent to it ?
@jfmezei It should be the former. Too often, it seems like the latter.
@Paulatics At least your video as made citizens aware of issue C-4.
I followed the Cambridge Analytica investigations, and found out Canadian political parties also have sophisticated databases to allow to target specific demographics.
AIQ, based in Victoria BC who worked with SCL to bypass referendum restrictions during Brexit had also done work for NDP before. (SCL was the real company, Cambridge Analytica was a US shell company funded by Steve Bannon , the Mercer family and SCL to make use of SCL services as a US firm).
For 2016 US election. the GOP bought credit card data to find out who bought fire arms and worked to associate the data with their own databases so they would then taget "Hillary will kill 2nd amendment" ads to Facebook accounts that were gun owners. They specialized their ads in variety of topics like abortion, F150/Dodge RAM owners etc.
This is why I beleive political parties should not be allowed to target individuals and have save ads for everyone.
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