While the ongoing issue of Statistics Canada looking for financial transaction data continues, the actual privacy practices in the institution aren’t being adequately explained to Canadians – and they certainly aren’t being represented accurately by the opposition. So with that in mind, here’s professor Jennifer Robson to explain just what she has to go through in order to access data for her research at StatsCan, in order to give you a better sense about how seriously they take this kind of thing.
I know some folks worry about being reverse-ID’d by unscrupulous users, as the fmr Privacy-Commish vociferously argued on my radio this AM. Privacy worries are real & shouldn’t be dismissed.
— Dr. J Robson (@JenniferRobson8) November 6, 2018
I also get screened for security risk, finger-printed, photographed and sign a legally binding agreement on how I’ll use the data. I need to swipe in & out each time I go in the data centre or leave to get coffee. Each log-in is recorded.
— Dr. J Robson (@JenniferRobson8) November 6, 2018
I can’t have a tablet, computer or my cell (no, not even to listen to music) in the data centre. No paper (except green paper I’m issued and have to keep locked on site). None of the computers connect to the web. None allow external drives/sticks.
— Dr. J Robson (@JenniferRobson8) November 6, 2018
I also can’t send anything to myself in the data centre except via Stats Can who vets it to make sure no malicious content comes in. It is a sealed system.
— Dr. J Robson (@JenniferRobson8) November 6, 2018
For example: ING Direct makes account data available to researchers through the Think Forward Initiative https://t.co/fDJEJjnoGP
— Dr. J Robson (@JenniferRobson8) November 6, 2018
But, is it in the public interest to let banks continue to decide, alone, if/how/when de-identified can be used for research? Is it in public interest for regulators & policymakers to be at major info asymetry? These are important debates.
— Dr. J Robson (@JenniferRobson8) November 6, 2018
I do hope privacy experts/advocates will look carefully at data handling practices at Stat Can.And I hope Stat Can might do a better job of explaining (concretely) what they do to protect Canadians’ private data.
— Dr. J Robson (@JenniferRobson8) November 6, 2018
https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1059641954021990400
This is why the complaints that the data won’t be secure as it’s being anonymized is pretty specious, and the pearl-clutching that StatsCan would have a person’s SIN is also overblown considering that they already have it – they matched up people’s tax returns with their census forms to ensure that they had accurate data regarding household incomes, and lo, nobody made a peep about that when it happened. Again, this overblown rhetoric around what is being planned about this financial transaction data is not only risible, but it’s actively mendacious (particularly when Conservative MPs keep saying things like this is a project by the Liberal Party or by Justin Trudeau himself). And yes, StatsCan has done a woeful job as to explaining what it needs these data for, and this government is largely too inept to communicate any of that information either. And yet here we are.
Meanwhile, Andrew Coyne points out that while the Conservatives have been spending years attacking StatsCan, the real privacy threat comes from the unregulated use of personal information by political parties, not the country’s statistical agency.