I took your voices to Canada’s Privacy Commissioner. Here’s what happened.

One of my favourite parts of working for OpenMedia is being on our Privacy team. Strong privacy rights are so important in a democratic society, and we cannot have an open Internet without them. In my view, it’s never been more important to stand up and defend privacy than it is right now. That’s why I was excited when OpenMedia was invited to participate in a stakeholder discussion with the Office of the federal Privacy Commissioner, Daniel Therrien. Given recent reports about spy agency CSE warrantlessly monitoring 10 to 15 million visits to popular file sharing websites every single day, and the recently tabled sweeping new surveillance Bill C-51, I knew I would have a lot to say to the Commissioner. One of our core goals here at OpenMedia is to use the Internet to insert citizen comments into policy-making processes that are often closed and inaccessible. This meeting provided me a unique chance to deliver citizen voices directly to Canada’s Privacy Commissioner - so before I flew to Edmonton, we made sure to ask you, members of our community, what you thought I should tell the Commissioner.

Fortunately for me, you didn’t hold back - here are just a few examples of what you asked me to raise. Concerns about the government’s new spying Bill C-51 were a recurring theme:

Why is the government sanctioning warrantless spying on ordinary Canadians at our expense? How can this bill be constitutional when the Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees all Canadian citizens freedom of speech and freedom of assembly? How can we trust the government with private information after it lost the info of hundreds of thousands of student loan borrowers?

Jana, from Facebook

I support the Palestinian struggle for sovereignty - doesn't that make me a supporter of terrorism re: this new bill?

Susan, from Facebook

Ask if his job will have any relevance after this bill.

Thierry, from Facebook

Concerning Bill C-51. Please ask the Privacy Commissioner how Canada can stop the passing of Bill C-51 (mere opposition by thousands of Canadians, including lawyers, is apparently not enough) or have these police state laws repealed once they are inevitably passed by the Conservatives and their Senators. I sure feel terrorised by this Bill.

Bosmar, from our website comments

I am happy to report that I delivered your messages to Privacy Commissioner Therrien directly. The meeting followed Chatham House rules, meaning that in order to participate I had to agree to not disclose what other participants said during the meeting. However, for a window into the Privacy Commissioner’s thinking on C-51, check out the statement he recently released outlining his serious concerns with the bill.

I also told the Privacy Commissioner that our federal government must respect the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, specifically section 8, which protects us from “unreasonable search & seizure.”

I underlined that it is deeply troubling that he, alongside most of Canada’s elected MPs, are being kept deliberately in the dark about the full scope of CSE’s domestic surveillance.

Because of this, many of you wondered (quite correctly) how he, as Canada’s official privacy watchdog, could hope to protect the privacy of Canadians without knowledge of what Canada’s spy agencies are up to. It’s like asking security guards to keep watch over a store while wearing a blindfold - they just wouldn’t be able to do the job.

I was pretty blunt in my remarks, but I got the sense that he appreciated my candour. I told him that it was shameful that Canada is the only member of the “Five Eyes” without a parliamentary security committee overseeing our domestic surveillance activities.

I’m grateful to everyone who took the time to help shape my presentation - thank you for being a part of our community. It’s never been more important to stand up for our privacy rights. Spy agencies like CSE are hoovering up massive portions of Internet traffic and innocent Canadians are being caught up in this reckless dragnet. When you collect the haystack, everything starts to look like a needle.

It falls to us to show the government that we won’t tolerate this approach. If we are to protect the open Internet, we have no choice but to fiercely defend our digital privacy. Our ability to keep our campaigns running comes directly from you; if you haven’t done so already, defend your privacy by speaking out at https://openmedia.org/spyonus.