1. This shouldn't have happened, cops should have known better.
2. It shouldn't have been possible for this to happen, the design & implementation should have prevented this from occurring.
3. Nothing will come of it. A number of years ago police in Ontario illegally arrested & detained protesters at the G20 summit. After years of litigation some people got a small amount of money, and no one was held responsible.
This is never the case. Government workers are as likely to let their curiosity get the better of them, ignoring those that act maliciously, and there is very little incentive to making sure that access is only granted when necessary.
Not only was no one held responsible, the chief of police at the time is now our federal minister for public safety...
They know that they won't be punished for it in any way and it helps whatever KPIs they get measured on. So it's logical for them to take advantage of the data due to the incentive structure in play.
Same with all law that makes police (and politicians) invincible to repercussions: the law is the main reason for the broken system.
Why is the law so broken? Well, I argue because politics are broken (they should update/fix the law). The democracies don't actually serve the masses, but the rich elite.
This is my sticking point. Technical implementation details aside, is there no policy that prevents Police from accessing what is essentially a medical record. As an American this screams HIPPA VIOLATION to me
What was the reasoning behind it? So police can raid/arrest covid-19 patients?
Also, Nobody was arrested.
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2015/06/27/adam-nobody-and-...
So yup.
Some did. From the article:
"York Region police said they asked the province to revoke access to the database after an internal review found the risks associated with accessing personal health information outweighed any benefits."
Toronto police likewise didn't access the database. Their rationale isn't so much privacy related, but it does cite a major problem with databases (the accuracy of data).
At the end of the day, it is the government's responsibility to say no. While some organizations are professionally run and consider the implications of their actions, some aren't or don't.
"Thunder Bay police accessed the personal health information in the database more than 14,800x — a rate of access 10x higher than the provincial average — even though the area reported a total of just 100 COVID-19 cases while the database was active. "
Imagine if a computer system were integrated with first-responder dispatch systems that cross referenced every address dispatched against the database and reported only the presence/absence of any positive case to dispatchers, discarding all other information.
Such a system would have vastly more queries to the database but, implemented as described, would be much less troublesome to me than other, manual uses of the records.
"For the third consecutive year - and the fourth time in the last five years - Thunder Bay was the homicide capital of Canada in 2018." https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/tbay-murder-capit...
That being said, there is another thing to consider: whether that access was for legitimate purposes. Thunder Bay is in a unique position since it is a hub for travel and shipping to isolated communities. This has implications, one of which is the poor access to health care in those communities since these are small fly-in only communities. If the police were called upon to enforce public health measures, access to the database could be interpreted as legitimate from the public health perspective. That being said, I don't know if this was the case. This does not explain Durham region either.
(I was working in one of those isolated communities during the H1N1 outbreak. Keeping H1N1 out of those communities was a major concern.)
That right there should be a huge red flag. Any time the citizenry gives the government the option to behave wrongly, the rights and freedoms of citizens are eroded.
And I've gone quite deep even contacting the police agency especially created for such things (they don't even track complaints against these statutes) and searching the public database with judgements. The only thing we do is persecute clear graft. So the worst thing that could happen left is one government office getting fined by another, which is somewhat disappointing. It's taxes afteral going around. All I have for my deep-dive is a professor agreeing with me (hey N=2 beats N=1).
To me, this is the most disappointing thing, that people will still continue to use devices that spy on them, even when they know that the device is spying on them. Many will say "we need better laws! punish those police!". Why even give them the opportunity to use your data maliciously in the first place? Why place all that trust into a complex system, a system with so many points of failure? It's inherently untrustworthy. "Oh, we won't use your data for malicious purposes, promise ;)". All it takes is one bad actor to inherit that system to cause problems. Again, don't even give them the opportunity; don't forfeit your freedom to begin with.
Delete your facebook. Delete your twitter. Get rid of your spyphone. Breathe the free air again.
Of course all this would need to be backed by penalties as specified for violations at the time the entire process was implemented. The only way to guarantee government won't abuse data is to make it public that any occurrence carries automatic penalties and full public disclosure.
This would just be approximately example number 10 million of this happening in the US.
They're not accountable for their budget approvals, or to follow their own regulations, so the main thing limiting them is whether the public is familiar enough with what their actions mean to be disgusted.