Involuntary transparency for Canada's spying-bill MP

By Cory Doctorow at 9:31 am Wednesday, Feb 15

Vic Toews is the controversial Canadian Minister of Public Safety whose spying bill will require ISPs to log and retain an enormous amount of your online activity, and then make that available to police without a warrant. Yesterday, Toews drew criticism when he said that opponents of his bill "stand with child pornographers." Today an anonymous party has created a Vikileaks Twitter account that is publishing embarrassing personal details culled from affidavits filed in Mr Toews's divorce, saying, "Vic wants to know about you. Let's get to know about Vic." It's not clear to me whether these affidavits were under seal, or part of the public record (they seem to come from this case: FEHR, LORRAINE K. vs TOEWS, VICTOR E. (FD08-01-86932) Mantioba Queen's Court of Queens Bench). This is an awfully ugly tactic and will likely be counterproductive. It does demonstrate that once material is stored, it is likely to leak, and that the best way to protect private information is to refrain from gathering and aggregating it in the first place. Update: looks like publishing court records is kosher in Manitoba.