Privacy rights and a thinning Canada-U.S. border

By Peter McKenna

Commentary

Recently, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and U.S. President Barack Obama launched the Beyond the Border pact in Washington to make trade and travel easier between the two countries. That was the easy part. Now the hard work begins on determining what it means for Canadians.

Besides dealing with economic competitiveness and regulatory reform to dilute a thickening border, the accord also deals with contentious issues around perimeter security. This is obviously the key part of the agreement for Washington and, most significantly, the Department of Homeland Security, which is now largely shaping the Canada-U.S. relationship.

Accordingly, the arrangement makes reference to an entry-exit tracking system (which comes with a price tag of almost $1 billion) for purposes of allaying U.S fears (real or imagined) about securing the border. The Americans have been pressing the Canadian government hard for some time now to collect such data and to turn it over to them for security reasons.

The accompanying "action plan" refers to a joint commitment in this way: "Share relevant, reliable, and accurate information within the legal and privacy regimes of both countries, such as information contained in biographic and biometric national-security watch lists, certain traveller criminal-history records and immigration violations."

The document then goes on to state the intent of the two countries: "To establish coordinated entry and exit systems at the common border, we commit to develop a system to exchange biographical information on the entry of travellers, including citizens, permanent residents and third-country nationals, such that a record of entry into one country could be considered as a record of an exit from the other."

More controversially perhaps is the reference to air travel provisions (as well as common land border ports of entry) to be in place by June 2014: "Canada will develop a system to establish exit, similar to that in the United States, under which airlines will be required to submit their passenger manifest information on outbound international flights. Exploratory work will be conducted for future integration of entry and exit information systems for the marine and rail modes."

So what exactly does this all mean for ordinary Canadians? What sorts of information - and how much - will Canada provide to our American friends? Furthermore, how can we ensure that this data is properly (and legally) used and protected?

More to the point: what happens to Canadian travellers who are wrongly accused of posing a security threat to the U.S. homeland? Most Canadians know what happened to one of our citizens, Maher Arar, when mistaken information that was shared with American intelligence officials resulted in him being shipped off to a grim Syrian prison cell, where he was subsequently tortured for 10 months.

There are a slew of other pertinent questions too: How do you get your name off the watch or no-fly list once it has been erroneously placed there? If you were picked up by police at a G-20 protest or an Occupy movement event, would that information be turned over? What if someone has travelled to Cuba recently?

What's to say that all this information - once collected - will remain solely in the Department of Homeland Security? And once you start opening the information tap, how do you say no to further requests by the U.S. for additional information? What if U.S. officials wanted access to the names of all those who emigrated to Canada in a certain year?

Canada's Privacy Commission Jennifer Stoddard has already raised a red flag about the potential pitfalls of sharing information about Canadians with U.S. border officials in the absence of stringent safeguards against abuse. "Any mistake can have grave consequences, including stranding travellers at airports or branding them as terrorists," she told CBC News.

No one is quite sure what safeguards have been put into place to protect Canadians' privacy or what exactly happens to that same information once U.S authorities get their hands on it. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association has also raised concerns about a shared watch list of travellers and whether there exists a clear appeals procedure for whenever mistakes are made.

There is so much that is not known about this personal information-sharing arrangement. There also seems to be a lot of unanswered questions. Perhaps there are simple explanations for all of them.

However, I would certainly feel more comfortable if there was some parliamentary oversight committee, an ombudsperson or an independent office to ensure that the privacy of Canadians is being well protected. But I doubt that that is going to happen.

Peter McKenna is professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island.

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Source: http://c.moreover.com/click/here.pl?r5667103462

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