On needless disclosure

The federal Privacy Commissioner weighs in with her suggestion to limit the damage that could be done through systemic disclosure of voters' birthdates to political parties (as the Cons, Libs and Bloc want under Bill C-31):

The federal Privacy Commissioner is criticizing a bill that would provide the birthdate of electors to political parties, which could then use the information to send birthday cards or target their fundraising efforts to specific age groups.

In a letter to NDP MP Paul Dewar, Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart said that Bill C-31 is designed to prevent electoral fraud, and that providing personal information to political parties is unnecessary.

"I fail to understand how the disclosure of birth information in this way would contribute to protecting or improving the integrity of the electoral process," Ms. Stoddart said in a letter sent last week.

"Providing date-of-birth information to politicians for the purpose of target marketing of constituents is neither a use consistent with protecting the integrity of the electoral system nor a use that a person would reasonably expect when registering to vote," she said.

Ms. Stoddart added that if preventing electoral fraud was truly the intent of Bill C-31, it would be preferable to use "the year of birth, as opposed to the date of birth." That way, privacy rights would be better protected, while officials on voting day would still be able to vet voters by having a sense of their age.

Stoddart's suggestion would undoubtedly help to mitigate some of the problems which would almost certainly arise under C-31. But at the same time, even a disclosure of a voter's year of birth alone would leave the door open both for targeted political marketing based on age, and for whatever other uses any political operative (or somewhat organized group of any kind) can find for a list of the ages of all voters within a riding.

Meanwhile, there's still no compelling reason for disclosing any part of a voter's birthdate. And the "preventing electoral fraud" argument looks particularly threadbare when the same bill goes to such great lengths to require each voter to provide personal ID.

Unfortunately, it looks like the NDP remains the only party willing to put the privacy and safety of voters ahead of increased party power - meaning that the bill will all too likely become law in the near future. And unfortunately, it'll be Canadian voters who bear the consequences once the risks materialize.