There are very serious issues around the census. In this email you will see that people are poorly informed because the mainstream media won’t deal with it. Also, the stuff about the security of the census data base is propaganda. I found that out through cross-examination of the StatsCan witness at my trial (before the lawyer became involved).
/Sandra
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DONALD:
From: D G T Sent: Thursday, August 05, 2010 12:37 PM To: sabest1 at sasktel.net
Subject: Lochkeed Martin and census – mention on Green Party website.
Hello,
Apologies if I have the wrong person, as this article appears to be a mash of two items about the census.
The first part of the article is about Lockheed Martin running the census. This aspect concerns me. I don’t really care about the long form issue. I clicked on the spreadsheet survey linked from there and it was only about the long form issue.
If you or someone else can get this issue back on the rails, it would be great. We need someone in the media asking the hard questions about the census software.
Here are some suggested questions…
1. Is the data encrypted so that only those who should have access can gain access to it?
2. What is the disaster planning for the census data (standard practice in IT)? Are there multiple copies stored in different geographic locations? If so, where? Is there one or more copies of the database kept at a U.S. location or at a site owned by a U.S. company?
3. Where are backups of the data kept for routinely run backup software? Is it on Government of Canada servers or Lockheed Martin systems?
4. Does Lockheed Martin obtain a copy of the census database for use by software developers and QA (testing).
The answers I saw to questions at the Stats Can site in 2006 did not touch on these issues of how the data might be copied and used.
Regards,
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RESPONSE (SANDRA)
I have been extremely frustrated because the media is not addressing the main issues, in spite of efforts to get them to “ask the hard questions” as you say.
First to your point about the media hard questions, please see 2010-07-24 New York Times interviewed me, this is what they printed. Don’t say Lockheed Martin, say “American technology contractor”. Media black-out on Lockheed Martin in census.
(Most Americans do not know that their Census Bureau is run by Lockheed Martin and IBM (sub-contractor), the same duo as have the Canadian and U.K. census contracts. The NYT will help to keep citizens in the dark. (Recommended reading: “IBM and the Holocaust” for the story of the role of mechanized census data in Nazi Europe, compliments of IBM subsidiaries.) )
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further to your questions re integrity of the system:
Anil Arora, who had been the head of the census operation in StatsCan, was the witness for the prosecution in my trial. (He has since been moved to Natural Resources.) I asked some questions along the vein you have supplied – – many thanks. Arora was terribly evasive and he lied. I think it was pretty clear to the Judge, too (I hope – although I think she is inclined to respect “authority” and not so-called trouble-makers like myself). I ended up saying “The witness is not credible”.
Regarding who has access to the data and questions about audit trails, what are the written criteria, etc. – – It sounds as though they don’t have written criteria or instructions which I can’t imagine is the case. And an anonymous former StatsCan employee told me that there is an audit trail for people who make changes to census records. HOWEVER, there is no audit trail of people who VIEW individual records. Your questions would have been helpful for cross-examination. But as I say, Arora was so evasive that it was hard to get anything of substance out of him.
I think this is what happened: with the other prosecutions the Govt has been able to get away with coercion because citizens can’t marshal the resources needed to defend against the Govt. Up until the 16th they were OK in my case, because I was going to lose. But the game changed when they were confronted by a lawyer whose specialty has been privacy law. The Govt is in serious trouble with the law: the Supreme Court takes a very dim view of police, let alone the Federal Dept of Justice, running roughshod over Charter Rights. And so (I think) Clement announced that the census long form is no longer mandatory. As I have been saying to people: it NEVER WAS mandatory because of the Charter Right. Of course, I could be wrong in all this. But why did the Government make the announcement, coming seemingly out of nowhere? (There has been a furor in the U.S. over the census, maybe it was prompted by that?)
With Lockheed Martin and other developments, this is no time to be giving up Charter Rights.
Best wishes,
Sandra Finley