Trust Us, You Don’t Need to Know
Another story about the structures that we allow to be put in place to serve us, turning around and being more of a hindrance than a help.
This Vancouver Sun account of how government and police seem to be withholding information from citizens about debit card scams.
If the sensitive information that we provide to a business with the understanding that the process is secure, turns out to have been compromised by a criminal activity, shouldn’t we be allowed to know enough facts to be able to decide whether said business can be trusted again? Or put another way, if the loss of our private information was because of incompetence, carelessness, etc?
As the editorial states, the public has a right to know “when and where a crime has been committed.”
And IMO, to have enough information to be able to be able to scrutinize our criminal justice system enough to decide whether or not our faith in it is warranted.
Here in London, I’m still fighting with police via a complaint that I made to the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario months ago, in an attempt to force them to release information about vehicle/pedestrian and vehicle/cyclist collisions. London Police Service currently only sends out a media release about these types of incidents very infrequently, which doesn’t come anywhere close to reflecting the extent of the problem in our community.
To me, the refusal of police to properly inform media so that citizens can be informed, smacks of political interference.
Are the police being funded enough to adequately enforce traffic laws? Do they have a bias in cases of collisions which involve cyclists or pedestrians? Are there particular problem locations that municipal traffic management staff should address? Should City Council be paying more attention to pedestrian/cyclist issues than what it currently is?
Do you have a right to know?
City Council once again voted to bury my request for a pedestrian advisory committee until after the municipal election. Now there’s a Transportation Master Plan review under way.
Will everything be a “done deal” before the data that I’ve requested is finally (or ever) ordered to be released?
Do you have a right to know, in a timely fashion?
Or only when the police and politicians feel like letting you know?
© Fowler Media
