Secret Memo Slams Canadian Police On Inaccurate ISP Request Records 18
An anonymous reader writes Last fall, Daniel Therrien, the government's newly appointed Privacy
Commissioner of Canada, released the annual
report on the Privacy Act, the legislation that governs how
government collects, uses, and discloses personal information. The
lead story from the report was the result of an audit of the Royal
Canadian Mounted Police practices regarding warrantless requests for
telecom subscriber information. Michael Geist now reports
that a secret internal memo reveals the situation was far worse,
with auditors finding the records from Canada's lead law
enforcement agency were unusable since they were "inaccurate and
incomplete."
How is this possible? (Score:1)
But when you break the rules you have to keep good records so we can find out how you broke the rules!
Short answer ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Lazy, incompetent, and don't want actual oversight.
So they have sloppy record keeping, because they don't give a crap, and because they have been getting what they want so why bother.
The solution: take away the ability to get this crap without oversight, and let these clowns fall on their face.
If they won't abide by the law and the rules, they get nothing.
This is a classic case of law enforcement not giving a fuck about the law and their legal obligations. Which means you have to distrust them and treat them like children, otherwise they'll just keep abusing us and our rights.
This is precisely what happens when police have sweeping powers and nobody is keeping tabs on them.
It's time to stop giving these idiots the benefit of the doubt, and assume they're lying to us and crapping on our rights -- because, apparently they are.
Unfortunately, the clowns who make up government are keen to give them even more powers with even less oversight
Re: (Score:2)
Unfortunately, the [elected] clowns who make up government are keen to give them even more powers with even less oversight
I think we all know what the real solution is.
Re: (Score:1)
Invent a new form of gov't, which will take a while for the people currently in charge to figure out how to game for their own personal advantage? Or do we have to wait for the singularity, and just hand the reigns over to it?
Re:Short answer ... (Score:4, Insightful)
The RCMP have a lot of problems, this, the officers lying over the tasering in BC. High River(illegal gun seizures), and so on. Some of the major problems stem from the fact that there are no career officers in positions of power and they're all political appointees. Yeah, figure that one out. How does someone become chief of a service without ever having served on it. It's better in a lot of the smaller services here in Canada, where services acts require someone from the service before they can be a chief.
The RCMP can be fixed, if they start pulling out all the political bullshit. The vast majority of police services in Canada work as a bottom to top organization. Meaning the guy at the bottom, gets a problem and decides how to fix it on their own without someone over his shoulder to figure it out or telling him to "bend the rules to make it happen." Services like the RCMP(federal police), OPP(Ontario Provincial), SQ(Quebec Provincial) operate as "top down" meaning there's someone staring over you shoulder, and breathing down your neck while telling you to "do this or else." Now I'm sure you're thinking, but why don't they stand up...some do. And they're quickly drummed out for not following the procedures which is a offence you can be canned for in many cases.
The vast majority here in Canada do follow the rules. Said rules are enforced and have oversight by independent investigation boards made up of ex-police and civilians. And then there's a local police oversight board that anyone can apply to become a member of in many cases. In Ontario for instance, anyone can become a member of the oversight board it doesn't matter who you are--you can apply. The RCMP though doesn't have either, it has, as said that lovely top-down approach.
Now as for the laws here in Canada, the police generally don't line up and say "we need law xyz" because...reasons...usually in Canada laws such as that are based on something happening in society that requires it. And should that be an overstep, then it'll end up before the Supreme Court and will or won't be struck down. A few examples: RIDE programs [wikipedia.org] are a violation in Canada of unlawful search. It was however ruled that it's a reasonable exception under S.1 of the charter because of the needs weighted against society. On the other hand, we have exigent circumstances(allowing entry/taps/etc w/o warrant). Which was struck down by the Supreme Court as being "a extreme violation of individual rights." That was in reaction to another bill, but said ruling stripped it out of the criminal code itself. Exigent circumstances had been on the books for ~100 years at that point.
Double Wammy (Score:2)
Also from a fiscal perspective, I am fairly certain that all those millions of information requests that get sent to ISP's from police services that they get paid per request. So not only are you paying police services to spy on your private information unnecessarily (i.e. unimportant enough not to require a warrant), that your tax dollars are also being funneled into ISP's to provide the information in the first place.
At one point once upon a time when the Feds were looking at expanding the practice (the B
Thought not. (Score:3, Funny)
Which is why the latest round needs more oversight (Score:2)
This kind of abuse is why the latest round of "anti-terrorism" legislation from the Conservative jackboots who currently run our country needs more oversight. Having one person in charge of the oversight is just rife with the potential for sweeping issues under the rug and failure to detect problems.
I firmly believe that a committee of at least three politicians and one "specialist" should be overseeing all of these Canadian privacy-related issues, regardless of "national security" issues -- one from ea
It's hard (Score:3)
>secret internal memo reveals the situation was far worse, with auditors finding the records from Canada's lead law enforcement agency were unusable since they were "inaccurate and incomplete."
To be fair, it's hard to write an accurate and complete records when you're riding a horse.
Chasing US Ignorance (Score:2)
The problem here is chasing idiots US ideas of Law Enforcement. Treat police like Law Enforcement as revenue agents with arrest and ticket quotas and you end up with ignorant guard dogs, not police officers. The reality is policing should be based around the idea of exemplary citizens which is basically what they are mean to be. Citizens who step forward in times of crisis to aid the public. This includes initial response emergency medical services, fire fighting and emergency rescue as they are far more s