Time to outlaw the collecting of personal information

The Editor,
In 1949 George Orwell’s book “1984” was published. Most people will know it is about the intrusiveness of government in our lives. In the book, Big Brother, i.e. the government, controls all aspects of its citizens lives, even how they think. Orwell predicted that would happen by 1984. He was off by 26 years. P.M. Harper has begun the job in earnest by collecting information on Canadian voters. As of now, it is my understanding, the amount of pieces of information collected by the Conservatives on Canadian voters is in the neighbourhood of 350,000,000. The Liberals have about 15,000,000 pieces of info and I am not sure about the NDP. I don’t know the number of people who voted in 2011 nor am I sure about the number of people who were eligible to vote. However, I do know that only 13,686,146 voted in the 2008 Federal election and I do know that the percentage of the eligible voters declined in 2011.
So the Liberals collected, on average one piece of info on each voter and the Conservatives 25 pieces on each voter. Remember this is an on going activity. Now it would not cost too much to collect one piece of info on each voter, that much is probably in the public domain, but when you start to get 25, then it means that you have people actively working to do it and it would take at least one person in each riding. My questions are how could any party afford to do this and who is funding these efforts. More importantly, what type of info is being collected and how is it being used. So, I will answer both these questions. No party could afford it but big corporations could and share it with their political friends. Aw, come on, surely you did not think that prohibiting any one from donating more than $1100 per year to any party at their central headquarters and barring trade unions and businesses from giving, would stop big money from circumventing the law. All they would have to do is pull their advertising money from the paper or electronic media, to get them to tow the party line on phone ins or editorials. The type of info being collected is, for instance, anyone who writes to the editorial pages of local news papers, such as this very email. Every time you phone in to a talk show on radio they are being monitored.
This info is being collected and the Conservatives then reinforce prejudice by running small, often subtle ads on the radio as you go to and from work etc. The talk show host just cuts off anyone who tries to express opinions that does not support the party line. These ads are run on local radio and are different from one part of the country to the next and sometimes even contradictory. This is how you influence how people think. You keep hammering away on a topic, when  peoples minds are half listening, until they subconsciously believe you. Collecting the info is not so bad, but when you start to use the info against citizens, who do not sympathise with your political views, that is dangerous and if you collect the info the temptation to misuse it is there.
So, now you know why the Conservatives wanted to curtail the census. They want exclusive rights to your personal info! The census is protected by law and personal information cannot be collected from other branches of government nor can personal info be shared with any other department nor anyone and the info can only be presented to the public as statics. In the history of the census, to my knowledge, there has never been a breach of that security. Do you have any confidence that political parties will hold themselves to the same standard? I do not! It is time to outlaw collecting personal information on citizens by any entity, except in criminal cases, at any time, without the person being notified! The worst part of collecting personal info by political parties is that it is a distraction from their real purpose of presenting good legislation and not skewing the legislation to meet the expectations of their ideologues. I’m here to tell you folks that clandestinely collecting personal information, by political parties and big business, in this computer age, is the biggest threat to our freedom.

Jack Kelly,
Hawkesbury
(Letter sent by email
november 28)