Let us not go down the path described by George Orwell in The Animal Farm. Forgetfulness of how democracy works, the importance of our Charter Rights, the fact that it is only citizens who will, in the end, defend them. We stand on guard.
3:28 minutes total
At the 1:03 minute mark, and which is WRONG:
. . . Privacy is not enshrined or protected in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Privacy protection is really only something which we’ve agreed to foster because it’s the right thing to do.
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MY RESPONSE TO THE CBC:
RE statement (June 11): “Privacy is not enshrined or protected in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms”
Good grief Michael Enright! Did you check your statement with CBC lawyers?
The case law (R. v. Plant) associated with Section 8 of the Charter (protection against undue “search and seizure”) protects the privacy of our personal information, and for good reason:
R. v. Plant, [1993] 3 S.C.R. 281
“In fostering the underlying values of dignity, integrity and autonomy, it is fitting that s. 8 of the Charter should seek to protect a biographical core of personal information which individuals in a free and democratic society would wish to maintain and control from dissemination to the state.”
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That may be enough information for your listeners. For your benefit, I add this that I wrote in June 2016. It directly and horrifically links the Right to Privacy of Personal Information to detailed files on citizens as used by the Nazis and collaborationist governments. (It was personal information in Census files in the U.S. that enabled the Japanese internment during WW2, also.)
Canadians have the Charter Right for a very good reason – – PLEASE do not do anything to undermine it!:
I did not know about the Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup in Paris, 1942. Many French people were likewise in the dark.
Bless Tatiana de Rosnay for her compelling novel, Sarah’s Key. She says:
I was . . . appalled by what I discovered concerning the Vel’ d’ Hiv’ Roundup, especially about what happened to those 4,000 Jewish children, and I knew I had to write about it. I needed to write about it. . . . writing Sarah’s Key took me to Drancy and Beaune La Rolande, places around Paris which have a dreaded past that cannot be forgotten despite time going by.
I hope I do not see everything through the lens of Lockheed Martin Corporation, the Censuses & Surveys, and the Charter Right to Privacy of Personal Information! For 13 years (2003 – 2016) I have hammered on the fragility of democracy, the reason we need to defend to the death, the Charter Right to Privacy of personal information.
Citizens cross over from civility and thoughtfulness for others, to barbarity, some in short order.
Tatiana de Rosnay says (Author’s Note at the beginning of Sarah’s Key):
. . . It (the novel) is my tribute to the children of the Vel’ d’Hiv’. The children who never came back. And the ones who survived to tell.
My (Sandra’s) Tribute:
The removal and extermination of those children was made possible by detailed census files (ref: IBM and the Holocaust). The appalling treatment of them was done by otherwise ordinary people. From their blood came the Charter Right to Privacy of Personal Information that we have today in Canada.
Does the Charter Right just wither and slither out through our fingers? why? because we are slovenly and ignorant? . . .
Can’t we understand: the depravity of the perpetrators and collaborators sixty years ago has not changed (how about Lockheed Martin, number one Contract Interrogator at American offshore prisons? – – Abu Ghraib, Bagram, Guantanamo . . . ). The detailed files on citizens are being constructed (Lockheed Martin in charge of the “steerage” for the censuses, Lockheed Martin with its specialty in Surveillance).
The lives of those 4,000 children, their mothers and fathers, were worth something, surely. But only if we are willing to act on behalf of the legacy of those children.
EXCERPT from the letter to PRIVACY INTERNATIONAL at bottom of Official correspondence reveals lack of scrutiny of MI5’s data collection
There is a connection not mentioned in the article. You may know it, but just in case you don’t!
The issue of surveillance enabled by collection of personal data through censuses and continuously on-going surveys is
additional to what is happening through “Security” forces and legislation regarding police powers.
The involvement of Lockheed Martin Corp in the data base at the UK Office for National Statistics is a vehicle for loss of Privacy of personal information (surveillance), if the UK situation is similar to the Canadian.
You might be interested in Glenn Greenwald’s TED Talk on the subject: The surprising reason you should care about privacy,
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Michael Enright – – I hope your statements generate a storm of protest: Privacy is not enshrined or protected in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Privacy protection is really only something which we’ve agreed to foster because it’s the right thing to do.
Let us not go down the path described by George Orwell in The Animal Farm. Forgetfulness of how democracy works, the importance of our Charter Rights, the fact that it is only citizens who will, in the end, defend them. We stand on guard.
Best wishes,
Sandra Finley
From: Louise
Sent: June 15, 2017 1:21 PM
If people assume they have no right to privacy, they won’t notice when it was taken away and by whom.
Aldous Huxley introduced the 1965 radio broadcast of Brave New World with “Eternal vigilance is not only the price of liberty; eternal vigilance is the price of human decency.”
Ah! You make an important observation, Louise: “If people assume they have no right to privacy, they won’t notice when it was taken away and by whom.” Bang on.
Follow that up with Huxley’s ““Eternal vigilance is not only the price of liberty (incarceration in death camps); eternal vigilance is the price of human decency.” There is the indecency of the death camps; but more recently there is the indecency of what the American forces did in Abu Ghraib, Bagram and Guantanamo, along with other outrages. So yes, “eternal” vigilance is required, and even then, we are not successful in stopping the fall into tyranny.
In the posting above, I added the link to the info for “number one Contract Interrogator”, Lockheed Martin Corp. There is pretty complete documentation there. The U.S. Senate Report on the Torture (illegal) done by American forces, was another piece of the evidence. It confirms the role of “Contract Interrogators”.