Bill 3 - Proposed changes to Freedom of Info

[KGT]

The government doesn't have money for Education but they just signed a 1.2 BILLION contract with Telus for technology. This is only part of it.

B.C. bill could open up your private information

Proposed changes would radically alter freedom-of-information law

By Vincent Gogolek, Times Colonist October 20, 2011


Your privacy is at risk as never before in B.C., and the immediate threat isn't coming from Facebook or Canada's spy agency - it's a bill before the B.C. legislature.

Without consulting you, our premier and a gaggle of techno-bureaucrats have decided to sacrifice B.C.'s privacy law and radically increase their power to collect, use and share your personal information.

The government has put the pedal to the metal in trying to get a vast shift of our privacy rights in place before anyone gets a chance to say boo about it.

Bill 3, which eliminates many of the privacy protections in the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, was introduced Oct. 4 and has already had second reading. It could be law by the end of the month if they keep pushing.

So what is the big scary Halloween shocker?

Hiding behind euphemisms like "citizencentred services," the government is making a big grab not just to get, but to pass around and use our private personal information as it sees fit.

Some of the proposed amendments to the FOIPP Act would make it easier for government to collect our personal information and pass that information along to other persons, "partner" organizations and other governments (including U.S. Homeland Security). They would also allow the government to bring in (at some unspecified later time) regulations to govern new "data linkages" - while exempting the entire health-care sector from those regulations.

Officials talk about how citizens are demanding convenience in dealing with government, but the convenience they are really talking about is their own.

And they are definitely not talking to British Columbians about how, when, why and with whom the government will be sharing some of our most intimate information.

Successive information and privacy commissioners have called for public consultation on government data-sharing plans. In 2009, then-commissioner David Loukidelis's annual report said: "It is certainly important that government not move forward with any legislated changes in this area unless and until there has been a full public consultation in the form of a position paper published by the government, followed by meaningful, extensive stakeholder consultations."

A special legislative committee that recently reviewed the FOIPP Act unanimously agreed that consultation on data sharing is vital.

The government has decided against asking British Columbians what we think about its brave new world. Instead, it conducted a secret process and "provincewide focus groups and surveys to help government gain a better understanding of the public's expectations of government services," according to Open Government Minister Margaret MacDiarmid.

The supposed justification for gutting existing privacy protections is that government is now "horizontal" (managed through a variety of public and private-sector partnerships), so it needs to share information without restriction.

The other reason for the big rush is that the government has committed $180 million to a contract with Deloitte to set up an "integrated case management" system which will allow government agents to search and manipulate personal information. It will involve a massive amount of data collection on a forced basis across the entire social services sector. Both government and non-government service providers will be required to report the personal information they gather.

These massive centralized systems have a problematic history, including in this province.

Just last month, a system to centralize information on students called BCesis was found to be an $89-million failure.

In the U.K., the Commons public accounts committee blasted these schemes in a report entitled "Government and IT - 'a recipe for rip-offs': time for a new approach."

It's time to put an end to this government push to seize more and more of our personal information and spend more and more of our money on IT "solutions" that really aren't solutions.

It is vital for the government to start paying attention to privacy rights, and consulting British Columbians on how best to protect them.

Premier Christy Clark said: "Our government is changing the style and approach of governing to provide citizens with opportunities to influence and improve policies that impact them and their quality of life."

Maybe she doesn't think the creation of a massive data system with hundreds of millions of our dollars is one of those "policies that impacts them and their quality of life."

Vincent Gogolek is executive director of the B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Association.

© Copyright (c) The Victoria Times Colonist

Read more: http://www.timescolonist.com/news/bill+ ... z1bSTIiTMe

[KGT]

I can't believe no one on this forum is at all concerned about this piece of legislation that is about to go through without any input from the electorate.

[DerKaiser]

....because people are too damn uninterested and passive!

[grumpydigger]

Sadly the people realize, much the same way that the HST was shoved down our throats. Politicians once Elected Can do as they please. And it takes a monumental effort for the Citizens To change their attitudes........

a large group of people believe, that the government and the police always have the best intentions for the citizens......so they blindly follow them.......

Our rights and freedoms have been picked away at in the last 10 years or so ,usually been told it is to protect us and for our safety

[steven lloyd]

I can't believe no one on this forum is at all concerned about this piece of legislation that is about to go through without any input from the electorate.

It’s been just one thing after another with this BC Liberal government ever since they were first elected into power, and yet we keep putting them back there. We have the government we deserve. Lapdogs - assume your position:

[KGT]

New article about the changes. http://www.policynote.ca/bc-government- ... sidelined/

BC government claims new power over personal information. Public comment sidelined.
November 9th, 2011 · Keith Reynolds · No Comments · Transparency & accountability

The BC government has a lot of personal information about you. Legislation passed last month means the government can do a lot more with it. The legislation passed without the public consultation demanded last year by the Information and Privacy Commissioner.

In 2010 a legislative committee undertook a review of Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FOIPPA). In these reviews normally you would expect the government to protest any possible changes to make information more accessible. Not this time. Last year instead the Province delivered a 95 page report asking for dramatically increased rights to share and manipulate your information.

The government was pretty anxious to get the legislative committee’s approval for more power over your personal information. It was a big ticket item. A month earlier in the 2010 Throne Speech the government announced:

A new $180‑million integrated case management information technology system will deliver better front-line services and supports to women, children, income assistance recipients and those most vulnerable.

To make that new $180 million system work the government needed a lot more power to manipulate your information than it was allowed under FOIPPA.

However, the then Information and Privacy Commissioner had misgivings. He told the legislative committee:

Privacy is often, and wrongly, in our view, seen as a “barrier” by government entities to “efficient and effective” service delivery. Government agencies often suggest that the privacy protections contained in FIPPA be weakened to allow for liberal sharing of citizen personal information, within and across government entities. We are adamant that no legislative amendments to FIPPA are needed to authorize data sharing and data matching activities within government, and would strongly oppose any weakening of the existing right to privacy.

Most important, he recommended:

Government should not proceed with any more data sharing initiatives until a meaningful public consultation process has occurred, and the outcome of that process is an enforceable code of practice for data sharing programs.

The committee largely bought the provincial government arguments that it needed more power over our information, hook, line and sinker. But they did at least agree to “consider holding public hearings on data sharing initiatives.”

The calendar moved forward 18 months and these discussions played out with the introduction of Bill 3, The Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Amendment Act, 2011. The legislation widens the scope of personal information that can be released inside or outside Canada including personal information found on social media sites and information obtained about someone commenting on public issues. While there are protections in the legislation, health care entities are exempted from those protections regarding data linking.

Most important, the new law permits the government to link its databases to “mine” information. The databases can come from different public bodies and agencies. It creates a powerful and wide collection of personal information that is permitted broad uses.

Just how broad are the possibilities. Here are the definitions outlined in the legislation:

“data linking” means the linking or combining of personal information in one database with personal information in one or more other databases if the purpose of the linking or combining is different from

(a) the purpose for which the information in each database was originally obtained or compiled, and

(b) every purpose that is consistent with each purpose referred to in paragraph (a);

“data-linking initiative” means a new or newly revised enactment, system, project, program or activity that has, as a component, data linking between

(a) two or more public bodies, or

(b) one or more public bodies and one or more agencies;

All this was done with none of the public consultation called for by the Information Commissioner. But we have a new Information Commissioner who it seems was not willing to press the issue. Even new Commissioner Elizabeth Denham acknowledged, however, that:

The devil is in the details. Some of these changes need more prescriptive rules. There is much work yet to be done.

So the government has a whole new amusement park of our data to play in. The public had no say about it.

These changes were rushed through. In contrast, recommendations to reduce the culture of secrecy by improving freedom of information provisions were ignored. Well, not completely ignored. Section 13 of the legislation that allows the government to refuse to release any “advice of government” actually had its scope widened.

Last July Christy Clark talked about her open government plans in a column in the Vancouver Sun. What we got instead was legislation broadening the government’s power over our personal information without public input.

Does the government need these powers? Will the creation of massive personal information banks be useful? Maybe. But what would have been far more useful would be a public consultation process that allowed us to fully understand and comment on what the government was doing.

That was what the old Information Commissioner wanted. That would have been open government.