New technologies for surveillance and concealment have been welcome in organized criminal circles and the internet has provided a medium for perverts and pornography. Big brother is on line gathering information about citizens also. While Canadian law offers consumers more privacy protection than American law does, don't forget that it is as yet all untested in the courts. The Personal information protection and electronic documents act came into force Jan. 1 st. It requires all federally regulated companies to get consumers consent before collecting information about them. Its power to protect Canadians dealing with big American players like Amazon, eBay however; is uncertain at this time. Last year in the U.S. Dow Chemical Co. fired 74 employees for using company computers to circulate pornography. E-mail abuse is happening in the workplace and I am glad these people were caught. It does point out that you are being watched. Canadian corporations routinely invoke anti-viral firewall features to counteract this abuse. Are these measures working? We talk about paper trails left by criminals, what about electronic trails? What is private anymore? What should be private, where do we draw the line? Cell phones are a road safety hazard, a health hazard and open to interception. What about some of the other examples of new technologies available? We live in a surveillance society good and bad.
Last summer a firm in Florida announced that it had developed a microchip implant to keep track of people's heart rate, respiration, glucose levels etc. AND... also track exactly where they were at any time. It was called the digital angel and it was suggested that it would be great for keeping track of children, elderly and the sick. The chip never made it to market due to public out cry. Even the media denounced it as a privacy matter, civil rights groups compared it to Nazi plans of tattooing prisoners and Christians said the chip was the mark of the beast. The company is presently working on an attachable, not implanted device instead. Yours in truth..
