Privacy: A double-edged sword

For inherently social beasts that crave the latest gossip, humans demonstrate an entirely different attitude toward personal privacy. Though technology in general, and the database in particular, has made information gathering a breeze, it has been hell on personal privacy. There are megabytes of information on each and every one of us. From medical records, which may show a propensity to high blood pressure and obesity, to supermarket loyalty cards which demonstrate our inability to resolve the apparent dietary hypocrisy between our love of junk food and buying of tofu.

For the most part, Canadians agree that technological advances have improved their lives. Many societal advances can be directly attributed to computers, such as safer air travel and improved medical diagnostics. But the potential for privacy abuse grows exponentially as the terabytes of data accumulate. It is not that technology is to blame, it has just made privacy abuse that much easier.

This is something that IT departments across the country are going to have to start worrying about, if they haven't already. In January 2004, all Canadian companies will have to comply to the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). The act will apply to all personal information collected, used or disclosed in the course of commercial activities by all. This is all occurring as hypothetical worst case scenarios are slowly, but inexorably, becoming reality.

It might only be a matter of time before police start trolling for suspects in a database knowing an assailant has AB+ blood, suffers from arthritis and is between the age of 43 and 52. For many this seems Orwellian.

Recently police in Iowa caused a privacy furor. Attempting to solve the murder of a newborn, they subpoenaed the names of women who had undergone pregnancy tests at a nearby Planned Parenthood.

The case involved hundreds of medical records. Obviously the data matching could be done by hand. But what if it was in Toronto or Montreal and the list contained tens of thousands? Since databases would be needed, technology would come to the forefront.

"Technology can bring some efficiencies to the abuse of privacy," said Peter Hope-Tindall, chief privacy architect with Oakville, Ont.-based dataPrivacy Partners Ltd. "It is becoming cheaper and more efficient to do nefarious things with databases."

While it is debatable whether use of a database in such a way is nefarious by definition, it is an unquestionably intimidating event for those who fear Big Brother.

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