Michael Geist reports that the Alberta government has proposed legislation that blocks the US Patriot act:

The Alberta government last week introduced Bill 20, which is designed to stop compelled disclosures of personal information under the USA Patriot Act. The bill creates fines of up to $500,000 for violating provincial laws governing disclosure of records. The fines arise for violation of the following provision:

“A person must not wilfully disclose personal information to which this Act applies pursuant to a subpoena, warrant or order issued or made by a court, person or body having no jurisdiction in Alberta to compel the production of information or pursuant to a rule of court that is not binding in Alberta.”

With B.C. and Alberta leading the way on this issue, the pressure for action at the federal level should continue to grow.

The link to the Bill will provide more detail. This current Alberta government is interesting as it has always had a perplexing stance on privacy laws. While it writes bills to improve privacy and protection of information for every citizen of the province, Premier Klein has also made a new bureaucratic (new as in the last decade) office solely directed towards the purpose of limiting the public’s access to the goings-on of the provincial government (of course it’s not advertised as such but just TRY to get some information Klein doesn’t want you to get). Quite an interesting paradox because that information is NOT private is belongs to every citizen of the province, including myself.

Also interesting about this rather progressive legislation is that on the other hand, the AB Government’s health care legislation is completely REgressive, aiming to replace our public medicare with US-style profit-based health insurance (the talking heads deny this, but we KNOW it to be true).

Off-Topic, last night I saw the movie for “V for Vendetta,” which while being a watered down version of the great graphic novels, is still a good movie by it’s own right (even though Alan Moore’s name doesn’t appear in the credits, and despite a single innapropriate Wachowski-Brothers fight scene). It provides some great extrapolating of the current ID-and-Surveillance madness in Britain, especially a scene in which V uses Evey’s ID-card to commit a crime, thereby implicating her instead. The policemen on the case know that it’s unlikely she did it, but the government goes along with it because it’s not only easier, but they CAN. Don’t TELL me this wouldn’t happen in real life! Another great scenes involves a routine patrol van canvassing a neighborhood at night, listening to every phoneline and coversation they pass, monitoring and logging any cases of sedition or independant thought. That being said, the fascist National Front-esque government portrayed is still a bit soft compared to what WE know they are capable of.

PS: There maybe should be a category for Film?

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 18th, 2006 at 8:20 pm and is filed under Politricks, The Law, Yes yes yes!.