The House of Commons Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics committee met yesterday to discuss the Public Health Agency of Canada’s use of anonymised mobile phone data to assess the efficacy of public health orders. As expected, this was little more than a partisan dog and pony show wrapped up in a bow of concern trolling that ignored the actual privacy issues involved in favour of trying to score points. Which is pretty much how we knew this was going to go down.
This is not to say there aren't significant issues to be discussed about this type of thing.
But we should be clear about what is actually at play, here.
— Alex Boutilier (@alexboutilier) January 13, 2022
OPC was consulted on the overall program. PHAC relied on their own privacy experts to verify the data was sufficiently de-identified. That's what OPC is verifying now.
— Alex Boutilier (@alexboutilier) January 13, 2022
ETHI is now debating whether the PHAC program should be suspended in order to make sure Canadians' privacy isn't being violated …
… Without acknowledging that the private sector companies that sell this data will continue to collect it with or without PHAC.
— Alex Boutilier (@alexboutilier) January 13, 2022
There could be actual privacy issues that they could discuss, and summon witnesses from telecom companies that sell this data, or the health companies that use it and track it, but no, they’re going to bring in the minister and Chief Public Health Officer to grill them about the programme, because accountability. And yes, the minister would be accountable politically, but that solves none of the actual issues that might be at fault here, but hey, this is about putting on a show rather than doing something useful, so good job with that, guys.