Comment by revolvingocelot | Hacker News Reader

Comment by revolvingocelot | Hacker News Reader

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revolvingocelot

I actually did read the article; I even grabbed a quote from it! Still, the governmental privacy authorities suggest that the law was broken; I'm aware that they aren't enforcement, because I read the article, but the language is pretty clear that they think these actions broke the law.

>You'd need a lawsuit for that

Can you elaborate? Is there Canadian privacy law being violated here that doesn't stipulate any penalty other than exposing Tim Hortons to private lawsuits? Forgive the directness of my question, your comment reads like you'd know.

edit: reading the Report of Findings [0] on the page itself suggests that because the violations ceased once, er, the violating entity had been informed of the investigation and had suggested that it'd delete the harvested data, the joint investigation "therefore found this matter to be well-founded and conditionally resolved". So, nobody really cares

[0] https://www.priv.gc.ca/en/opc-actions-and-decisions/investig...

Yeah Canada isn't the US, we have remedies available to us other than sending people to jail.

>Yeah Canada isn't the US, we have remedies available to us other than sending people to jail

Can you elaborate? Is there Canadian privacy law being violated here that doesn't stipulate any penalty other than exposing Tim Hortons to private lawsuits? Forgive the directness of my question, your comment reads like you'd know.

...to be perfectly honest, "launch a civil suit and get pennies!" sounds much more American than throwing people in jail for privacy violations. The data is already out there.

Yeah I can, the The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Commission d’accès à l’information du Québec, Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia, and Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta collectively and individually do not have the power to imprison people. There is no determination they can make under the law that results in people or corporations going to jail.

Kind of a non-sequitur of a response, not sure you read my comment, with its direct question? Even if you were responding to the second paragraph only -- and construed it as my suggesting people be imprisoned -- weird! Anyway, you answered, in a roundabout way, my direct question in another comment, namely

>>They also have the power to refer their determinations to other branches of government / Attorneys General etc for further enforcement of the law should their concerns not be addressed [0]

from which I can infer that this ""voluntary" "compliance"" thing they've got going on is the extent of the shit they're willing to give. My layman's reading of PIPEDA [1] suggests that court orders are eventually possible, but this act of obvious malfeasance (or, if that encroaches on a legal term, try 'fuckery') deserves a... promise to do better?

Seems like the message is "if you get caught, we'll politely ask you to stop". Not the kind of response I'd like for the granularity of this kind of tracking. Sets a bad standard.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31588094

[1] https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/P-8.6/index.html

Lol, nothin'. Serves me right for trying to engage with an Internet Lawyer

I mean, given the article, it doesn't seem like Canada has availed itself of any remedy, let alone sending people to jail, which is the point in this thread.

Like, in America, we might slap the company on the wrist, fine them something like the equivalent of $1 for a normal person. And then business continues as usual.

There's not even an ineffectual fine, here.

What are they in this case? And I guess your comment is true as long as you ignore the incarceration rates for First Nations. Which is coincidentally something we canadians really like to do whenever it's time to feel smug about our southern neighbors.

> And I guess your comment is true as long as you ignore the incarceration rates for First Nations. Which is coincidentally something we canadians really like to do whenever it's time to feel smug about our southern neighbors.

The US is at least as bad, absolutely and even relative to the White population, with Native Americans, though it gets less attention because Native Americans get less attention in US politics than First Nations do in Canada, and because it's further masked by the attention to both the general runaway incarceration in the US and the racial impact on Blacks of unequal incarceration.

That might be all true but saying "what about the US! they are even worse" is irrelevant to the fact that it also happens in Canada. While GP was saying that it doesn't happen here because we're not like those stupid Americans.

Though I'd still heavily dispute your claim. Native Americans in the US have much stronger treaty rights, much more autonomy and while they still face tons of discrimination, IME its very hard to beat Canada in that regard. In any case, between the Highway of tears and the fact that some reservations don't even have access to water in the north... comparing ourselves with other countries just comes off as pointless deflection.

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