How government can restore public confidence in our privacy rights

Digital security doesn’t just mean using a different password for every account and avoiding suspicious links. It also means worrying that your sensitive, personal data has been stolen by hackers simply because you bought gas. Those affected by the recent Suncor breach are experiencing the increasingly accepted new normal for Canadians—data is a currency, being accessed, stolen, bought and sold with complete disregard for those impacted. And years of inaction and broken promises have undermined trust in the institutions meant to protect us. Ninety-three per cent of Canadians are concerned about the protection of their privacy, according to a recent poll released by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. Promising change isn’t enough—Canadians need action. We need urgent, comprehensive measures to protect our privacy and restore trust in government. Here’s how Parliamentarians can do it: First and foremost, we need corporate accountability. The federal government must deliver on its promise to overhaul Canada's outdated privacy laws. It’s been over four years since privacy reform was first promised. And even though the government has made Big Tech public enemy No. 1, its current privacy reform proposal, Bill C-27, The Digital Charter Implementation Act, is effectively written to let Big Tech off the hook. Not only has C-27 moved at a snail’s pace, but it’s riddled with loopholes and flaws that fail to provide the public with the confidence that the government is truly going to hold companies to account. If the government truly wants to show Canadians that our privacy rights matter, it needs to pass strong data protection legislation as soon as possible. It needs to empower the privacy commissioner to issue binding orders and substantial fines for violations, establish a private right of action for individuals whose privacy has been violated, and remove all the new exceptions that will let the private sector dodge accountability for their data handling practices. Second, we need new guardrails around how our information is protected within the government. We’ve seen Bill C-59's failed attempt to hold national security agencies to account for their repeated overreach, plans to update the pre-internet era federal Privacy Act abandoned, and now law enforcement renewing its push for warrantless access to sensitive data held by internet companies. In short, we've watched continued expansions of surveillance and data collection powers without any meaningful efforts to safeguard how the government handles and shares our data. If Canadians don’t know that government and intelligence officials are respecting our rights, how can we trust them? Lastly, and most importantly of all, we need renewed trust in our democratic institutions. The allegations of potential foreign election interference have rattled Canadians’ faith in our elections. To save it, we need to be able to trust those who are charged with upholding and protecting our democratic processes to correct any injustices, and strengthen our elections. Unfortunately, our politicians’ most recent actions have been to exempt themselves from accountability. Just last month, MPs used Bill C-47, the Budget Implementation Act, to carve political parties out of our basic privacy laws. If politicians don’t respect their own citizens in the face of an election, how can we trust them to hold others to account? As a basic starting point, politicians must hold themselves to the same standards to which they hold the rest of us, subjecting themselves to the same Canada’s privacy and data protection laws as everyone else. Canadians’ trust in the digital world has taken a tumble. The current digital security environment is complex and intimidating. Very few of us are privacy or cybersecurity experts, and yet the government’s lack of action means that we’re all increasingly made to feel individually responsible for our own privacy protections. The only way to restore trust is by taking action. It’s one thing to say you’re serious about privacy; it’s another thing to show it. We need parliamentarians to pick from the list of ideas above and get on with it. Restoring trust in the digital world isn’t going to be easy. But until we do, our privacy and frankly our democracy is at stake. Laura Tribe is the executive director at OpenMedia, a grassroots organization which works to keep the internet open, affordable, and surveillance-free. The Hill Times