The ‘we’ve had enough’ movement
People everywhere have decided they’ve had enough and are banding together to resist efforts by government and vested-interest corporations and groups to impose unwanted rules, regulations and technology, with taxpayers footing the bills.
Over the weekend, my wife, Liz, and I were at a market in the Nanaimo, Vancouver Island. (Liz created Dad’s Westcoast Wildfire Awesome Sauce to help keep the wolf from our door, and p2pnet online.)
We were selling it there, and on the table opposite us was Chrystel Martin of Citizens for Safe Technology, a non-partisan coalition determined to stop dodgy and health-hazardous privacy invasion technology from being installed in BC homes.
BC Hydro wants what it euphemistically calls ‘Smart Meters’ to measure electrical consumption in individual residences.
Consequently, in BC, p2pnet’s home province, “Your privacy is at risk as never before and the immediate threat isn’t coming from Facebook or Canada’s spy agency – it’s a bill before the B.C. legislature”, writes Vincent Gogolek, executive director of the BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association . in the Victoria Times Colonist, going on >>>
Without consulting you, our premier and a gaggle of techno-bureaucrats have decided to sacrifice B.C.’s privacy law and radically increase their power to collect, use and share your personal information.
The government has put the pedal to the metal in trying to get a vast shift of our privacy rights in place before anyone gets a chance to say boo about it.
Bill 3, which eliminates many of the privacy protections in the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, was introduced Oct. 4 and has already had second reading. It could be law by the end of the month if they keep pushing.
So what is the big scary Halloween shocker?
Hiding behind euphemisms like “citizencentred services,” the government is making a big grab not just to get, but to pass around and use our private personal information as it sees fit.
Some of the proposed amendments to the FOIPP Act would make it easier for government to collect our personal information and pass that information along to other persons, “partner” organizations and other governments (including U.S. Homeland Security). They would also allow the government to bring in (at some unspecified later time) regulations to govern new “data linkages” – while exempting the entire health-care sector from those regulations.
Officials talk about how citizens are demanding convenience in dealing with government, but the convenience they are really talking about is their own.
And they are definitely not talking to British Columbians about how, when, why and with whom the government will be sharing some of our most intimate information.
Successive information and privacy commissioners have called for public consultation on government data-sharing plans. In 2009, then-commissioner David Loukidelis’s annual report said: “It is certainly important that government not move forward with any legislated changes in this area unless and until there has been a full public consultation in the form of a position paper published by the government, followed by meaningful, extensive stakeholder consultations.”
A special legislative committee that recently reviewed the FOIPP Act unanimously agreed that consultation on data sharing is vital.
The government has decided against asking British Columbians what we think about its brave new world. Instead, it conducted a secret process and “provincewide focus groups and surveys to help government gain a better understanding of the public’s expectations of government services,” according to Open Government Minister Margaret MacDiarmid.
The supposed justification for gutting existing privacy protections is that government is now “horizontal” (managed through a variety of public and private-sector partnerships), so it needs to share information without restriction.
The other reason for the big rush is that the government has committed $180 million to a contract with Deloitte to set up an “integrated case management” system which will allow government agents to search and manipulate personal information. It will involve a massive amount of data collection on a forced basis across the entire social services sector. Both government and non-government service providers will be required to report the personal information they gather.
These massive centralized systems have a problematic history, including in this province.
Just last month, a system to centralize information on students called BCesis was found to be an $89-million failure.
In the U.K., the Commons public accounts committee blasted these schemes in a report entitled “Government and IT – ‘a recipe for rip-offs’: time for a new approach.”
It’s time to put an end to this government push to seize more and more of our personal information and spend more and more of our money on IT “solutions” that really aren’t solutions.
It is vital for the government to start paying attention to privacy rights, and consulting British Columbians on how best to protect them.
Premier Christy Clark said: “Our government is changing the style and approach of governing to provide citizens with opportunities to influence and improve policies that impact them and their quality of life.”
“Maybe she (Clark) doesn’t think the creation of a massive data system with hundreds of millions of our dollars is one of those’policies that impacts them and their quality of life,” Gogolek adds.
http://citizensforsafetechnology.org/smart-meter-action-kit-in-communities-governments,73,0
There are also considerations other than those centering on privacy.
Recently Ted Olnyk gave town council BC Hydro’s take on the new wireless “smart meters” they are installing in every building in BC. Much of the information he presented was wrong or misleading, ,” wrote, Mary Lowther in the Lake Cowichan Gazette, continuing >>>
For example, Hydro says the meters only send signals four to six times a day.
Independent readings show that these meters emit pulsed radiation about fifteen times a minute, all day, every day; sometimes reaching 4,000 microwatts/centimeter squared (Canada’s safety limit is 600).
Hydro’s original estimations figured they’d save about $560 million over 20 years, while the cost is about $1 billion to install the meters. Now, they say they’ll save $1.6 billion over 20 years.
Hydro says the World Health Organization’s (WHO) classification of electromagnetic frequency radiation as a 2b carcinogen only applies to cell phones.
Here is what Professor Olle Johansson, who works on these studies for WHO says:
“The recent determination of the World Health Organization to include radiofrequent radiation on the 2B list of carcinogens also applies to devices such as smart meters…
Many smart meters are close to beds, kitchens, playrooms, and similar locations. These wireless systems are never off, and the exposure is not voluntary. The smart meters are being forced on citizens everywhere. The inauguration of smart meters with involuntary exposure of millions to billions of human beings to pulsed microwave radiation should immediately be prohibited until ‘the red flag’ can be hauled down.”
If we want the meters placed in a different part of our property, BC Hydro says they will do this if we pay for it. This won’t stop radiation from pulsing across the yards, since these meters send signals to a central meter on someone’s house, which then sends the signal to other meters until it eventually reaches BC Hydro’s hub, said Mary, adding,
“These meters can be hard-wired to be just as safe as our present analog meters.
Idaho’s and Italy’s are completely hard-wired. All we ask is that the Liberals give their own constituents at least the same consideration.”
For references and information, please check the website: citizensforsafetechnology.org
November 2nd, 2011 at 9:16 pm
Thank you so much for raising awareness to the serious issues. It is evident we need to bombard our government with letters phone calls e-mails voicing our opposition to disk the data ship approach that will not work. Gordon Campbell went from drunk on booze too drunk on power and had to resign. Christy Clark following his lead is like a drunk on steroids and must be stopped. The new citizens initiative may yet be required to stop this insanity. The sooner it is brought on the sooner we can save the cost of going back to analog meters. Preventing the installations makes more sense than going back and reinstalling analog meters. Everyone should know they have the right to refuse smart meters. We need new legislation that would hold politicians personally accountable for their actions with consequences resulting in loss of their position pensions and fines if not a lengthy stay in Stephen Harper’s soon to be built prisons.
November 2nd, 2011 at 11:41 pm
Sorry my earlier post on line 2 should of read. Voicing our opposition to this dictatorship approach. Thank you.
November 10th, 2011 at 3:22 am
Bell has been keeping records of all calls and content in them since start of digital revolution with some very health destructive and pervasive devices. They have massive databases across the country and in every city larger than 10,000. Similar for Rogers and all ISPs. All databases, hospital records, insurance, etc. are linked and can be accessed by elites any time they want. They don’t give a shit about your laws and constitution, they just do it, and without your knowledge.
In addition: Oh so it’s OK for you to post about government & corporate shills, but not for visitors to do so .. who have done all along since the start of this site?
You delete visitors comments which have proof attached, call them names, get your conservative shills like DA and dredd and like to attack and make fun of them.
You just wait, all the things educated visitors have been saying are coming, ancient tech and records and all. History repeats itself every 12,500 yrs or so. Failure to realize this can cost you your life and your family’s life in the coming yrs … if you don’t learn, and quickly.
Everything you see around you, made by corporations and global elite, is designed to slowly or not so slowly kill ya. Everything.
Can you realize that elites plan to dispose of 7 Billion ppl .. down to 500 Million yet?
Even the most conservative, hard headed, stubborn, followers of elites are learning this by leaps and bounds.
* Your ONLY solution is to learn history and glean from it natural and positive systems for your and everyone’s well-being, your actual rights, and ways the elites hide them. And for this you need to come to us, the historians, whistle blowers, independent investigators, researchers and rest of 99.99%
“thank you .. u have just proven to us [anonymous, 99.99% and everyone] how you use social engineering to hide the truth about what canada is and rest of info on ruling class british imperial elite system and rest of 0.01%
”
whether you like it or not the info is getting out and 100s of millions are tuning in, they in turn are spreading it to everyone they know
your bullshit bills, legislation, acts and rest are all part of governing the populace .. and this is not acceptable any more.
get ready , the world as you know it is about to change. simply put, you don’t adapt and you die.
these are the universal , natural and common laws .. we have compiled them from all over the world and beyond
welcome to the info war and subsequent elimination of ruling class of 1000s of yrs
“There seems to be a lot of confusion here about what’s Law and what’s not.
It has been successfully argued in front of the Supreme Court of Canada that one has The Right to Choose to be Governed, or not. This Right has been enshrined, in stone, since start of civilization.
CANADA: Canada is defined, per se, as 12 miles of seas and inland waterways. It says nothing about the Land. Therefore Canada is only a Corporation on water and has NO Rights on the Land besides contracts it has made with Natives. In most part Canada is operating against these Contracts and in addition doing so Fraudulently.
United States for America is a different story. It has declared it’s Sovereignty by Deceleration of Independence, away from tyranny and Governance of European colonial powers. See documents made with each country. Yet a great magical trick is being played on Citizens of United States by imposing corporate law on it’s Sovereign Citizens.
The question is:
How can you be bound by a contract which you have not signed? … and you do actually have to sign it in blue ink before it’s Legal or Lawful.
Let me be perfectly clear, No Signature = No Contract.
All those online checkboxes, OK buttons, agreements and so on are Not Legally or Lawfully binding. They are only a gesture of courtesy.
You have the Right and the Choice to refuse. You have the Right to rescind or dissolve any contract you have not made by your signature. .
All it takes is a phone call, email, notice, sign or some form of communication to let the party know one thing; “I do not consent to [insert your beef here]”
To do it publicly and on record, so it shows at Canada Gazette, do a Notice of Understanding and Intent via Notary Public and send it to party whom created such a thing. http://www.gazette.gc.ca
Similar can be done in USA.
As fundamental and Natural Rights take precedent over any Corporate things they are “obligated” to respect your wishes and your words.
Furthermore, you have the Right to Charge the offender and seek Remedy for troubles they have caused you.
What do you think would happen if 10k or 100k or even 10 million would charge the corporations for looses? I would think it would be instant bankruptcy for them.
If you want a Free Internet and a Free Life then you have some work to be done.”