Trilight Zone

[digital8]

The British Columbia Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA) is fighting an outsourcing contract that would put millions of Canadians' health records in the custody of an American-owned company, citing concerns that the data could be seized by the United States government. The protest began in spring 2004, when British Columbia announced plans to contract with Maximus Can to administer the BC Medical Services Plan and Pharmacare. The Patriot Act requires companies to disclose customer and employee data to federal law enforcement upon request and forbids companies from informing those affected by such a disclosure. The BCCLA is concerned that the Patriot Act could apply to American-owned subsidiaries outside US borders. The US government could use Canadian data to test data-mining projects--as it did with JetBlue passenger data--or to deny entry under US Code Title 18, Chapter 12 to Canadians with AIDS. Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), argues that non-citizens have inadequate privacy protection in the United States. In 2003, ChoicePoint created a database of hundreds of millions of Latin Americans living in the United States, which immigration enforcement used to track down illegal immigrants. No law in the US governs the private sale of information to the government, while governments do little to track what information they share with each other.

http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,66497,00.html