Dufresne expressed particular concerns about the RCMP’s contract with U.S. company Babel Street for its Babel X service.
The report says the Mounties did not properly verify that the personal information given to the RCMP by Babel X and its data providers was collected in compliance with Canadian privacy laws.
The report says the RCMP “was unwilling to commit” to implementing the commissioner’s recommendations.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In a report released Thursday, Privacy Commissioner Philippe Dufresne also recommends the Mounties be more transparent with Canadians about their collection of personal information from open-source intelligence gathering.
Dufresne investigated the RCMP’s Project Wide Awake, which uses third-party services to collect personal information from sources that include social media, the darker reaches of the internet, location-based applications and fee-for-access databases.
The RCMP uses the data to probe possible crimes, locate missing persons, identify suspects, detect threats at public events and ensure awareness during an unfolding scenario, the report says.
Those recommendations included a call for the RCMP to stop collecting personal information via Babel X from sources that require logins or authentication for access until it has completed a thorough review of each one for compliance with the law.
Clearview AI’s technology allows for the collection of huge numbers of images from various sources that can help police forces, financial institutions and other clients identify people.
The commissioner was “therefore unable to conclude that the RCMP’s ongoing collection of personal information from the wide range of data sources available via Babel X is compliant” with the Privacy Act.
The original article contains 510 words, the summary contains 188 words. Saved 63%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Let me get this straight:
Private corporations are doing surveillance that gives people the creeps when that information is being bought without a warrant by police … but doesn’t give authorities the creeps intrinsically, for its having been produced, in the 1st place??
