Canada’s Privacy Commissioner Now Blogging
September 24, 2007 by Mark Evans
Filed under Business
Now, this is pretty cool: Canada’s Privacy Commissioner has started a blog.
I mean, it’s downright forward-thinking when a government agency does anything interesting on the Web. And even more so when it involves a complex and controversial issues such as privacy. The blog quietly launched about four weeks ago but there hasn’t been a flurry of activity – six posts. Nevertheless, it’s an encouraging development.
Here’s an excerpt from the first blog post:
“Welcome to the official blog for the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. With this tool, we hope to make the activities of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner more accessible to Canadians and to increase contact between the Office and Canadians interested about privacy issues and legislation.
As an Officer of Parliament, the Privacy Commissioner has a mandate to protect the privacy rights of individuals and promote the privacy protections available to Canadians.
While we are optimistic about the usefulness of this blog as a channel for communication on privacy issues, we ask for your patience and understanding as we find our footing online.
For instance, we know that there will be limitations to what we can accomplish with this blog. We will not be able to discuss complaints or investigations launched under either of our two Acts. If you wish to send us a complaint, we will continue to ask that you submit your complaint by mail.”
Hat tip to Fleet Street, which likes the fact the Privacy Commissioner’s blog allows comments, and “provides frank replies to comments. It’s refreshing to see a government communicator write about “boring news release announcements.”
That’s just nutty. The Premier of Ontario can’t respond to people in email because of privacy rules but the Privacy Commission can blog and have comments. (probably different rules, different document types, yada yada yada)