[Editorial] Privacy commisioner right-Canada

[jbugden@smtplink.alis.ca]

Privacy commisioner right
Editorial
Ottawa Citizen, July 31

Bruce Phillips, the privacy commisioner, has again called for reinforcements to
defend personal privacy against the assaults of commercialism and technology. It
is a call that demands action-from the federal government, Parliament and every
Canadian.

The commisioner's annual report proposes two essential recommendations. First,
the government should make the protection of privacy a condition of sale
whenever a government enterprise is sold to the private sector. Second, the
government and Parliament must pass a law extending the enforcement of privacy
rights to private-sector businesses in federal jurisdiction.

Phillips is right. As thousands of public servants are transferred out of
government service, they lose the protection of the Privacy Act -- which covers
only government departments and agencies. And as more personal information about
all of us accumulates in the corporate sector, there is an intensified public
interest in extending legal protections.

*******
Phillips acknowledges the profitability of buying, selling and exploiting
personal data on employees and customers. And he sees the power of new
technologies to make privacy violations faster, cheaper, more comprehensive and
always more intrusive.
*******

But he insists that preserving personal privacy is both possible and necessary:
"If we discard the notion of privacy and simply treat one another as data
subjects, as objects of surveillance, we abandon that fundamental, democratic
notion of autonomy and self-determination."

Right Again.