Part of the Maclean’s Magazine article Vanishing Canada: Why we’re all losers in Ottawa’s war on data is dangerous.
Please see my next attempt to make the danger clear: Advocating for detailed files on citizens . Below is my first attempt.
THE ARTICLE:
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/vanishing-canada-why-were-all-losers-in-ottawas-war-on-data/#comments
MY RESPONSE (Sept 19):
I applaud Anne Kingston for valid points. I must strongly challenge her and some others on another point. Have the lessons of history been forgotten? Are Canadians ignorant of important details of the last decade?
Work at Statistics Canada was out-sourced to Lockheed Martin Corp of the American military beginning in 2003. Its website lists “surveillance” as a specialty. Lockheed Martin’s website discloses that it does work for the NSA. Edward Snowden provided the information to show that the American “security” forces get back-door entrance to important data bases, if they can’t get front-door (i.e. legal) access. It does not matter which country.
The historic lesson is that states with detailed files on citizens are police states. “IBM and the Holocaust” by Edwin Black is a powerful documentation of the enabling role played by mechanized data (census) files on citizens in Nazi Europe. You are wrong if you think that names are not on the data files at StatsCan. There is an urgent reason why Canadians have a Charter Right to Privacy of Personal Information. – – I can only think that a citizen would seriously advocate for “supply your personal information, and if not you will be prosecuted” as I and others have been, if you are unaware of what we’ve gotten ourselves into with integration of the U.S. and Canadian military.
StatsCan demands very detailed personal information. Even the lengthy National Household Survey is conducted under threat of prosecution, although there is a strong case to say that surveys are voluntary under the law.
But further, Canadians have to decide whether to cooperate with giving our money to Lockheed Martin Corp. They were the number one contract interrogator at overseas U.S. prisons like Abu Ghraib and Bagram. Torture – illegal. They produce illegal weapons. They break U.S. Arms Export rules meant to keep weapons out of the wrong hands. They are very corrupting of democratic processes. And they are a large part of the reason that American tax-payers are burdened with debt of more than $18 Trillion dollars (wars). Canadians should be careful what they wish for. It is a travesty that Lockheed Martin Corp got anywhere near the data base at StatsCan.
That is still no reason why one should advocate for the tools of a police state (detailed files on citizens) in Canada. I find it very troubling that anyone would do so.