By guest blogger Karen Wirsig
The Canadian Media Guild has signed on to a broad-based coalition seeking to improve protections for Canadians against government intrusion into our private lives. The push comes as concerns mount about the secretive Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC), which may have unlawfully targeted Canadians’ private Internet use according to a watchdog report released this summer.
The Protect Our Privacy Coalition is also concerned that the government will reintroduce legislation to allow spying on our online activities, an expensive proposition that would require our ISPs to hand over our data to the government without a warrant. The kind of data collected would allow the government to know who we associate with and in what ways.
And if the Canadian government seems more and more interested in the activities of ordinary citizens, it is less and less eager to share what it is up to. My twitter feed is peppered with complaints from journalists about access-to-information requests to the government that get mired in long delays before producing largely redacted material. Canada was recently ranked a disappointing 56th of 95 countries when it comes to the effectiveness of our access-to-information legislation.
Unfortunately, instead of making a good faith attempt to improve the ATI legislation, the government has backed a private member’s bill to amend the law narrowly but in a way that will actually make it more difficult for CBC to do investigative reporting.
Karen Wirsig is an organizer with the Canadian Media Guild. Find her on twitter @karenatcmg