What Would We Do Without Privacy Laws?

16 Replies to “What Would We Do Without Privacy Laws?”

1. And they wonder why gun owners are paranoid about registries.

2. I can tell you from personal knowledge that nothing goes missing in a Federal Government office by mistake.I can guarantee that it was “borrowed” by an employee for personal purposes. Security measures are such that it is nigh impossible for this to happen without purpose.

3. Unauthorized and worse uncontrolled use of USB devices is an open door to abuse and theft of information.
   If the IT department can’t or won’t manage those devices then the users must be held accountable.
   Fire the person who owned that stick and set an example.

4. We are from the government we are here to help you.
   Your privacy is guaranteed.
   Complete confidentiality is guaranteed on census form; but if you lie to us (govt) we will prosecute. This always made me laugh, as to verify my replies to the census would require violating the guarantee.
   Yet fraud, theft and destruction of private persons is not punished. As long as the criminal resigns, nothing is done no-one is accountable, the wilfully blind and malicious enablers are able to carry on as if nothing has happened.
   Because nothing does, beautiful system unless you are outside and forced to pay for it.
   It will fall, because its too big to feed, 600 billion in debt and less than 4 taxpayers to support each “helper”.
   Help it fall become govt dependant.
   Government promises will not be kept, these people are useless, if thats too strong, look at healthcare, a promise indefinitely deferred is no different to a promise denied.
   Law and order? Where? There are more of these boys up on charges than the general populace.
   What are your options when the most dangerous criminal organizations are your govt institutions?
   Environment Canada obeys no law with respect to spills into bodies of water. There is no defined toxins. There is no defined percentage or dilution. There is no specific penalties.
   They define the crime, the fine and the prison sentence. More authority than an unchecked king.
   It gives me great confidence in my society, that a uniformed, uninformed zealot can run me thro a kangaroo court and base my guilt on how poorly I respect their authority.
   It is this kind of overreach that destroys civil society.

5. OMMAG.
   No one will be fired, that’s a given. The owner will be treated like a victim thanks to the union, and will go off on fully paid stress leave for several weeks. If the thief is ever found, they will be characterized by the unions as a poor soul that has been going through difficult times and the act was not in character. Said thief will also go on fully paid stress leave until the whole mess blows over.
   Both employees will then be relocated to other positions within the department.

6. Only 5000? Sheesh.The leftards known as the commies did that in 1 hour. And yeah,PMSH,you are a leftard.As said above,nobody will be fired.We think the Yanks have a screwed up gubermint? Heh.They make ours look good.

7. OMMAG, you are dreaming aren’t you? I’m not disagreeing with you that someone should be fired, I’m just pointing out that it won’t happen.
   First off, when I get up from my desk at Transport Canada, my computer will remain open for ten minutes before it locks out. During that time anyone could jam a USB flashdrive into the port and with a few mouse clicks download any document(s) I have access to. Relax, I have no access to state secrets or anyone’s personal info, but if you want the hot and juicy details of wing spar lug ultrasound reports or engine trend monitoring, I’ve got lots. So even if you know whose workstation the data was downloaded from, it does not follow that he or she is the guilty party and it would be impossible to prove guilt in court unless only one person was in the building at the time.
   Second, this is the government, a large bureaucracy with a unionized workforce protected by stupefying layers of legal agreements. Without a guilty verdict any action taken by management such as changing the data thiefs duties to those where there is no access to the data could be construed as workplace harassment for which the aggrieved employee can sue.
   In short, the chances of being fired for ‘misplacing’ data is probably the equivalent of being struck by lightning while holding the winning Lotto649 ticket.

8. Yeah … I’m dreaming.

9. Al, I worked in Revenue where we had access to all kinds of sensitive info. It was imperative to logoff
   your computer when not in your work station. In addition all access was monitored so if someone accessed a file on your computer it would show as your ID, so it was in our best interests to log off always.
   One time I had a file where one of the principals was a Paul Martin. As I was searching through the data base to locate him, the spies in Ottawa thought I was getting too close to the PM’s personal tax files.
   Took me about 30 minutes in front of the Gestapo to explain away my actions.
   Totally agree that chances of being fired are slim to none.

10. Meanwhile us developers usually have full production access to everything. I used to.

11. What the first two commenters said.
    I wonder who needs to know something about somebody.

12. We have privacy laws? Really?

13. The government has lossed our personal information, and they try to tell you how to protect your personal information??…have these swivel serpents lost what ever brain they had???

14. Original Rick: if it was possible for you to leave your seat without your terminal automatically locking itself, your environment wasn’t as secure as you think.
    My experience with a variety of government departments as a network administrator and occasional consultant is that the technological security is a joke and the social security even worse.

15. There’s no valid reason for copying or removing sensitive data from an otherwise secure database. It’s not all that difficult to inhibit copying data in a networked environment and grant read-only access on a permissioned basis via remote VPN with two factor authentication. Writable devices such as USBs, CDRWs and
    legacy FDDs can easily be managed by centralized network security policies.
    Government is a monopoly, so has no compelling reason (other than lip service) to safeguard your personal data. They have no competition.

16. Bikers have had full access to the gun registry since it started. Also license plates, etc.
    Because bikers have girlfriends. Who get clerical jobs in government offices.
    This phenomenon is not limited to bikers.
    So the next time you’re about to do something that will get you one one of those government lists where they “guarantee” nobody except official government employees will have access, just remember who those employees are going to be and govern yourself accordingly.