The importance of privacy (II)

Remember George Radwanski, former Privacy Commissioner of Canada?

No, I am not asking you if you recall how he was disgraced by, wait, the Liberals who appointed him. I am not asking you either to recall how much he spent on his lunches, although I am pretty sure they're in the ranges of those spent by, say, Joe Volpe.

I would like to bring your attention instead to what he said on privacy when he was the Privacy Commissioner.

If we have to go through our lives thinking twice about everywhere we go, everything we do, every contact and every purchase because we have to ask ourselves how it might look when it's monitored, recorded, noted, analyzed, interpreted, perhaps misinterpreted, and used against us by agents of the state, we are not truly free.

I am sure you are all free, not like me living in a virtual solitary confinement. Therefore, it is pretty damn hard for you to understand what it is like to be watched every moment of the day (and night).

Remember, though, I have been living more or less like this for quite some time now. Coming back from Ottawa in June, I felt I was at a breaking point both physically and mentally. I not only desperately wanted to FEEL free, but also needed to do so, even though I knew I was not free.

Specifically, I knew that my borrowing records from various libraries were not private. Not wanting to be bothered, I chose to ignore the nuts-cracking by some of you until I realized that a mistake was made on September 3.

Ordinarily it would not be a big deal when someone borrows a wrong video/DVD. Writing about this mistake thus makes me feel wired, like I am confessing a crime. And it is still possible that I could be criticized of being paranoid. In fact, I have been hesitating and debating (thus stuck) for an agonizing while about whether I should blog about it.

I indeed wrote a draft about it a few weeks ago:

Apropos of nothing…

Have you ever picked up a video/DVD from the library (or Blockbuster's) and found out that it was not exactly what you were expecting ONLY after you (or someone else) popped it into the video/DVD machine?

…..

Now that we are on this subject, perhaps I should ask you some questions:

1. If you were to draw some kind of conclusions, or any kind of conclusions for that matter, shouldn't you ask yourself whether it is possible to do so just by analyzing borrowing records?
2. If it was possible, shouldn't you then make sure you have my complete records? And shouldn't you want to know which items I reviewed perhaps several times and which items I simply did not finish watching?
   
3. Now let's suppose you do have my complete borrowing records (although I very much doubt it because it is to the data provider's advantage to spin my information), shouldn't you want to know why I chose each item? (Mind you, don't think too hard because I pick up a lot of them fairly randomly.)

I could go on with all those possibilities. The point is that there is no "intelligent design" in my borrowing records. There is no hidden message either, except for the only time that I sent you a message through my borrowing record on September 10 when I tried to tell you what I had intended to borrow the previous week. And I soon realized that was a real mistake and I stopped borrowing videos/DVDs altogether.

Why am I writing this? Why am I writing this? – I feel like a fool.

The point is, if you want to know what my view is on anything, simply interview me. Given how desperate I am to get my story out, the chance is very good that you will have your questions answered.

The importance of privacy (I)

As you may have noticed – or, have you? – that I had translated the Summary of connections to Cecilia Zhang case and put it up here.

During the translation, the question naturally came to my mind again: Why did Cecilia die?

Hatred. Yes, we all know that by now. But how could anyone be so hateful as to take a 9-year-old's life as innocent and beautiful as Cecilia's?

I believe that the loss of my privacy played an important part in the generation of that hatred. As I wrote in my summary:

Since the defendant has the ears of the government and some politicians, they could spin my case easily. Mostly, I think they spread rumors that connected one of the defendant's (Weldon's) daughters with me. These kinds of rumors had the effect of masking their malicious intention (i.e., destroying my career out of jealousy and/or hatred). Besides, they further exposed me to hatred and contempt.

Of course, I do not think they would tell anybody about the reference letter of 1993 - the origin of my grievances - and the subsequent bullying and harassment.

In this situation, I could be described as bad, as nonsensical, or as extreme as possible because I did not have a chance to present my side of the facts.

My current situation is pretty much the same as before except that the people who are the target of spin are now the journalists, because only through them can my story see the light of the day. And the party that does all the spin is the all powerful governments and politicians.

The point is: I wanted to convince you journalists, provided that you have the conscience to care about what is right and what is wrong. However, I could not possibly win an argument – even if I can be sure what the argument is -- without privacy.

I have been stuck, seriously stuck

And it's primarily because of privacy, or more precisely, the lack of it.