Canadian government outsourcing and the Patriot Act

Just to avoid any lack of editorial clarity, I am not a big fan of what the US Patriot Act means for civil liberties (see the ALA on the Patriot Act, The EFF on the Patriot Act, the ACLU on the Patriot Act, and in contrast, the Bush administration on the subject), or any legislation passed in two days, regardless of the events of the day. Now on with the story.

It is not new news that the British Columbia Government and Service Employees' Union has challenged the BC government's outsourcing of its Medical Services Plan data base to an American firm, Maximus Inc. (see the BCGEU campaign site). The argument is that this contract would bring British Columbian's personal information under the the US Patriot Act. The Patriot Act lets the FBI secretly search information held by companies operating in the US without any form of judicial review or notification of parties whose information has been disclosed. In response to this legal challenge, the BC goverment made ammendments to provincial privacy legislation to address this concern. Critics say these ammendments do not go far enough. The BC Information and Privacy Commissioner published this 150 page review (pdf) in October.

You can be certain that all other public jurisdictions in the country are thinking about this while they read the BC Commissioner's report and await the decision of the Supreme Court.