People, in obvious error, expect the RCMP to follow the law - but as we see here they cannot be trusted to do so and have been illegally tucking bits and pieces of information on us away in databases that are exempt from the public eye.

The national privacy watchdog says the RCMP is illegally hiding sensitive information about Canadians in secret data banks.

In a special report to Parliament, Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart says the Mounties broke the law and their own policy by unnecessarily squirrelling away files or keeping them longer than they should in what are known as “exempt” information banks.

“What we found when we took a close look at the RCMP’s exempt data banks is disturbing and important to Canadians,” Stoddart told a news conference yesterday.

As I type this I can hear the cries of the sheeple echoing across the land, “but if you’ve done nothing wrong you’ve nothing to fear“, except in this case information they have on you may be completely wrong, but they’ve decided to keep it anyway.

Stoddart said people could become the subject of an exempt bank file as a result of information passed on by a neighbour, by talking to the wrong person, or being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The commissioner cited one case in which a man on a bus tour was reported to U.S. customs for joking that maybe he should “hijack” the bus to get even with a chronically tardy tour guide. Some five years later, the incident was still in RCMP exempt files even though it was clearly a bad joke and not a security threat, she said.

So there you have it. The information on you could be from the hysterical wailings of your paranoid neighbour who thinks you had something to do with terrorists after September 11, 2001. Maybe it’s someones tip about you being a “terrorist sympathizer” because you spoke out about Bush’s illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq. Or maybe its notes on your blog post about undercover police agents in Montebello trying to start a riot, and then getting caught telling lies about their very existance when called on it… it’s pretty hard to tell; they are, apparently, the arbitrators concerning what goes into their secret databases, how long it stays there, and what it gets used for.

“These two exempt data banks were crowded with thousands of files that should not have been there,” Ms. Stoddart told a news conference after tabling the findings of a special audit in the House of Commons.

The audit found 50% of the national security files and 60% of the criminal operational intelligence files that the commissioner’s office tested did not meet the established threshold for continued exempt status under the Privacy Act and RCMP policy.

(emphasis mine)

The privacy commissioner said that “Canadians should be upset”, but most of us won’t be, the herd instinct is strong here, and when Canadians are told by their government not to worry far to many of us listen.

Who reading this now thinks that the federal government will take this seriously?

Who thinks we will see a full and unfettered public inquiry into this latest illegal activity?

And, when it is issued in heavily redacted form, doubts that the official RCMP report on the inquiry into its’ own illegal activity will tell us that ’simple mistakes’ and ‘clerical errors’ were made, but that ‘the issues have been addressed< '/em>?

And how many Canadians will, if they bother to follow the event at all, let go a sigh of relief and accept the findings of the RCMP inquiry because it’s proof that ‘the system’ worked and everything is OK now?

Baaahhhhhhhh!