Mother Jones' Modest Proposal

Like me, you probably share that sinking feeling that privacy is gone for good, dead without so much as a fight.  If you want a reasonable degree of privacy any more you have to live self-sustainably in a cabin on a lake deep in the forest and hope you're not outside when the satellite passes overhead snapping pictures.  If, on the other hand, you're reading this, somewhere that's being noted and added to everything else that has been noted about you including your utility bills, medical records and that last credit card statement.

 At times it seems our kids couldn't care less.  Theirs is the world of disconnected connectivity where social networking, texting and instant messaging offer acceptable substitutes for real facetime interaction.  I'm sure there's an algorithm somewhere that predicts, with remarkable accuracy, what colour shirts they'll be wearing a week next Saturday; and whom they'll text first, second and third and by when.   A total loss of privacy equals the revelation of predictability. 

So, if we've lost the war without so much as a fight, what are we to do?  Kevin Drum of Mother Jones argues we must accept that surveillance is inevitable but demand that all data be transparent - and public.

Government eavesdropping isn't the only thing we have to worry about. We're also subjected to steadily increasing data collection from private actors. It's true that, unlike a government, a corporation can't put you on a no-fly list or throw you in jail. But there are at least a couple of reasons that corporate surveillance can be every bit as intrusive as the government variety—and possibly every bit as dangerous too.

First, if Target can analyze your shopping habits to figure out if you're pregnant—and it can—another company might figure out that you're in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease and then start badgering you to buy worthless insurance policies. Multiply that by a thousand and "targeted advertising" doesn't seem quite so benign anymore.

Second, there's nothing that prevents the government from buying up all this information and combining it with its programs into an even bigger surveillance octopus. That was the goal of the Orwellian-named Bush-era program known as Total Information Awareness. It was officially killed after a public outcry, but as we now know, it never really went away. It just got split apart, renamed, and dumped into black budgets.

Even the NSA itself is in on the action: The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year that the agency collects more than just phone records and data packets. Via internet service providers and financial institutions, it also gathers web search records, credit card transactions, and who knows what else. In addition, the NSA has long maintained a deep collaboration with the leading-edge data mining companies of Silicon Valley. And why not? As the New York Times put it, both sides realize that "they are now in the same business."

Can we save privacy?

 I call this the "David Brin question," after the science fiction writer who argued in 1996 that the issue isn't whether surveillance will become ubiquitous—given technological advances, it will—but how we choose to live with it. Sure, he argued, we may pass laws to protect our privacy, but they'll do little except ensure that surveillance is hidden ever more deeply and is available only to governments and powerful corporations. Instead, Brin suggests, we should all tolerate less privacy, but insist on less of it for everyone. With the exception of a small sphere within our homes, we should accept that our neighbors will know pretty much everything about us and vice versa. And we should demand that all surveillance data be public, with none restricted to governments or data brokers. Give everyone access to the NSA's records. Give everyone access to all the video cameras that dot our cities. Give everyone access to corporate databases.

This is, needless to say, easier said than done, and Brin acknowledges plenty of problems. Nonetheless, his provocation is worth thinking about. If privacy in the traditional sense is impossible in a modern society, our best bet might be to make the inevitable surveillance more available, not less. It might, in the end, be the only way to keep governments honest.

Interesting points except that governments today are not in the business of being honest - or open.  As our own Shifty Steve's former and future BFF, Tom Flanagan, pointed out, Shifty is a sneak thief, making change incrementally so that no one notices until it's too late.   Flanagan also expounded on Shifty's habit of proposing change and then doing absolutely nothing or saying one thing and then doing whatever in hell suits him.

And, while governments don't respect your privacy, they fully value what they take from you.   It's useful to them and it can be very useful against you should they perceive that need.  Likewise, made public, all that data could be even more useful against them.  Remember these are the people who made us realize the need for Freedom of Information legislation and, even then, they resist.

Harper Government Winging It With Canada's Future

The Auditor General has slammed the Harper regime for spending tens of billions of dollars without cabinet, much less Parliament, knowing the long-term consequences.

In his fall 2012 report released Tuesday, Auditor General Michael Ferguson concluded the Department of Finance Canada often does not take into account the impact of tens of billions of dollars of spending and tax measures on the government’s long-term fiscal sustainability.

 

Furthermore, the lack of federal reporting about long-term economic consequences of major government decisions means parliamentarians are forced to vote blindly on some budget measures without knowing their true impact on the country’s finances, the report says.

 

Just hours after the auditor released his report, the Finance Department unveiled a sweeping study on the economic and fiscal implications of Canada’s aging population. It projects that a greying society will translate into slower growth for the economy and government revenues, and additional stresses on public finances.

 

The auditor’s report says long-term financial projections are important because Canada faces many challenges that could impact the country’s fiscal sustainability, such as changing demographics, climate change and aging infrastructure.

 

The Harper government promised in its 2007 budget to publish a comprehensive report on the government’s fiscal sustainability that would provide a broad analysis of current and future demographic changes, and the implications on Canada’s long-term fiscal outlook. A draft report was prepared in 2007, but it has not been published.

 

Moreover, the long-term fiscal sustainability analyses have been regularly prepared since 2010, but have not been made public.

 

In contrast, governments in several Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries have regularly published such reports.

 

“This lack of reporting means that parliamentarians and Canadians do not have all the relevant information to understand the long-term impacts of budgets on the federal, provincial and territorial governments in order to support public debate and to hold the government to account,” the audit says.

In One-Man Rule the notion of responsible disclosure, analysis and accountability is irrelevant.   The only one who needs to know is Steve, our Ruler.   And contrary to the complaints of the Auditor-General, Steve's approach is anything but unusual in plenty of countries - take North Korea for example.
 

What's Next for Harper, a Gulag?

There are times when Canadians have to put aside their political affiliations and stand up for the country, its institutions and its very democracy.

In my opinion, it speaks volumes for the patriotism of Tories that they sit mute, continuing to support their Leader (do I need to translate that into the original German?) when he steadily gags our government, establishing himself as some sort of autocratic emir served by a cadre of faceless, unaccountable political commissars in the Prime Minister's Office, the PMO.

The essence of democracy is the free flow of information and transparency. There is no free flow of information, no full democracy, when the flow of information is constrained and filtered and manipulated for political advantage. This is not democratic, this is not the Canadian way, but it is very much the way of the Conservative Leader, Harper.

First he gagged Canada's environmental scientists, forcing them to communicate to the public only through the PMO. Information would be submitted to Harper's political commissars to be censored, shrunken, warped and shaped, not to reflect the truth but to reflect Mr. Harper's chosen message. That, friends, is thought control and nothing but.

How many conservatives did you hear howling in protest, coming to defend Canadian democracy when Harper raised that dark curtain around the environment ministry? How many conservatives finally rose up to defend Canada when he did the very same thing to the defence ministry? How many chose Canada over Stephen Harper? Damned few.

Now Harper wants to muzzle Parliament's independent agencies, institutions such as Elections Canada and the Auditor General in the very same way. The Harper regime has issued draft rules that would require even those who are supposed to be independent, at arm's length from the government, to submit their intended public statements to the PMO for vetting or filtering, blatant censorship.

Even with the Tory rank and file sitting mute in the face of this outrage, the rest of us, which includes the overwhelming majority that did not vote for this thug, need to yell "no, enough". We need to show conservatives and their Leader that this is Canada, not Stevieland, and that he's not the choice of most Canadian voters and he can damn well stop acting like he's the Dick Cheney of the True North.

It's time to take the gags off the environment and defence ministries and it's time to stop Harper muzzling Elections Canada, the Auditor General and others.

Here's something to think about. If Harper will so blatantly abuse Canadian democracy while he's in a minority, what excesses will he resort to should we ever be blind enough to give the Tories a majority?