(Aired on September 22, 2010)
Imagine you are fighting for something. You have a cause that is completely righteous in your eyes, and in fighting for it, you make your fair share of enemies - including people in the government. Now imagine those enemies have information about you that no one else should have. That includes your banking information and your medical information. It even includes a psychiatric report, spelled out in painstaking detail.
That's exactly what has happened to Sean Bruyea. He has been an outspoken critic of Veterans Affairs for a long time, and certainly made himself a lot of enemies. In 2006, Veterans Affairs Minister Greg Thompson found that personal information relating Bruyea in his briefing notes. That means that someone, likely in the bureaucracy, managed to dredge those documents up.
How that happened is the scary part. It is quite frightening that, given enough impetus, people who don't like you can find your most sensitive information and potentially use it against you. That's a paranoia-inducing reality of Orwellian proportions.
It's imperative that there be a full investigation into how this happened. That investigation, interestingly for us, could unearth former MP Betty Hinton, who has made herself scarce since deciding not to run in the last federal election. Hinton was once Greg Thompson's parliamentary secretary, a position she once famously mistook for a cabinet seat.
The investigation is crucial, not just for Mr. Bruyea himself, but for the principle of the thing. It's an egregious incident, and we need to know that it is an isolated one.
Showing posts with label privacy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label privacy. Show all posts
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Friday, May 28, 2010
Privacy or Protection?
(Aired on May 27, 2010)
There is a fine line somewhere that says "here’s the line over which you don’t cross, and here’s what’s acceptable." We waver around that line continually when it comes to privacy. What’s private, what’s not, and when is it reasonable to assume that the public good is more important than the rights of the individual.
We’re facing that scenario right now when it comes to the fight against crime, particularly against gangs and drugs. The Court of Appeal recently ruled that a program designed to shut down grow ops was against the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. That program would allow Fire Inspectors to trace power spikes and then enter homes without warrants to try and find grow ops.
It seems pretty draconian at first glance. That’s unfair, the civil libertarians cry. But on the other side of the coin, grow ops are causing increasing problems. They’re becoming more sophisticated, they lead to many people getting involved in criminal activity, either to reap the profits of the sales, or getting hooked on these illicit drugs. They allow gangs to flourish, and they cause untold amounts of physical damage to homes, not to mention the theft of hydro, threat of fires from poorly set up systems, and the list goes on. So whose rights are more important? The individual who gets searched, or the rights of the many who suffer at the hands of the drug dealers and the gangs? It’s not an easy question to resolve, and the Courts wrestle with a tough decision.
If I had my way, I’d vote in favour of protecting the many at the expense of the few. I’m all for the greater good. But protecting the greater good can also open the door to things we might not find as favorable. How much power do you put in the hands of Big Brother? The program at issue here has resulted in a dramatic increase in marijuana grow-ops. So it seems like the right thing to do. But what the Courts have to wrestle with, and here’s the crunch, is how many other doors does that open. And those other doors may lead us to such destruction of our rights that we would find repugnant.
There is a fine line somewhere that says "here’s the line over which you don’t cross, and here’s what’s acceptable." We waver around that line continually when it comes to privacy. What’s private, what’s not, and when is it reasonable to assume that the public good is more important than the rights of the individual.
We’re facing that scenario right now when it comes to the fight against crime, particularly against gangs and drugs. The Court of Appeal recently ruled that a program designed to shut down grow ops was against the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. That program would allow Fire Inspectors to trace power spikes and then enter homes without warrants to try and find grow ops.
It seems pretty draconian at first glance. That’s unfair, the civil libertarians cry. But on the other side of the coin, grow ops are causing increasing problems. They’re becoming more sophisticated, they lead to many people getting involved in criminal activity, either to reap the profits of the sales, or getting hooked on these illicit drugs. They allow gangs to flourish, and they cause untold amounts of physical damage to homes, not to mention the theft of hydro, threat of fires from poorly set up systems, and the list goes on. So whose rights are more important? The individual who gets searched, or the rights of the many who suffer at the hands of the drug dealers and the gangs? It’s not an easy question to resolve, and the Courts wrestle with a tough decision.
If I had my way, I’d vote in favour of protecting the many at the expense of the few. I’m all for the greater good. But protecting the greater good can also open the door to things we might not find as favorable. How much power do you put in the hands of Big Brother? The program at issue here has resulted in a dramatic increase in marijuana grow-ops. So it seems like the right thing to do. But what the Courts have to wrestle with, and here’s the crunch, is how many other doors does that open. And those other doors may lead us to such destruction of our rights that we would find repugnant.
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