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But in Thunder Bay: "Thunder Bay police accessed the personal health information in the database more than 14,800x — a rate of access 10x higher than the provi

But in Thunder Bay: "Thunder Bay police accessed the personal health information in the database more than 14,800x — a rate of access 10x higher than the provincial average — even though the area reported a total of just 100 COVID-19 cases while the database was active. "

sokoloff 6y ago
Ironically, this could be (but probably was not) evidence of a better tradeoff between privacy and protection. Imagine if a computer system were integrated with first-responder dispatch systems that cross referenced every address dispatched against the database and reported only the presence/absence of any positive case to dispatchers, discarding all other information. Such a system would have vastly more queries to the database but, implemented as described, would be much less troublesome to me than other, manual uses of the records.
- interestica 6y ago
  You're right. # of database queries certainly isn't evidence of misuse. But, it is highly suspect when it's being utilized this heavily in a city noted for it's high crime rate. I suspect that the police are faced with big challenges there and suddenly had this large new database to access... "For the third consecutive year - and the fourth time in the last five years - Thunder Bay was the homicide capital of Canada in 2018." https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/tbay-murder-capital-canada-2018-1.5220828 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/tbay-murder-capit...
II2II 6y ago
Which is why the government should not have granted access. That being said, there is another thing to consider: whether that access was for legitimate purposes. Thunder Bay is in a unique position since it is a hub for travel and shipping to isolated communities. This has implications, one of which is the poor access to health care in those communities since these are small fly-in only communities. If the police were called upon to enforce public health measures, access to the database could be interpreted as legitimate from the public health perspective. That being said, I don't know if this was the case. This does not explain Durham region either. (I was working in one of those isolated communities during the H1N1 outbreak. Keeping H1N1 out of those communities was a major concern.)

sokoloff 6y ago

Ironically, this could be (but probably was not) evidence of a better tradeoff between privacy and protection. Imagine if a computer system were integrated with first-responder dispatch systems that cross referenced every address dispatched against the database and reported only the presence/absence of any positive case to dispatchers, discarding all other information. Such a system would have vastly more queries to the database but, implemented as described, would be much less troublesome to me than other, manual uses of the records.

interestica 6y ago
You're right. # of database queries certainly isn't evidence of misuse. But, it is highly suspect when it's being utilized this heavily in a city noted for it's high crime rate. I suspect that the police are faced with big challenges there and suddenly had this large new database to access... "For the third consecutive year - and the fourth time in the last five years - Thunder Bay was the homicide capital of Canada in 2018." https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/tbay-murder-capital-canada-2018-1.5220828 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/tbay-murder-capit...

II2II 6y ago

Which is why the government should not have granted access. That being said, there is another thing to consider: whether that access was for legitimate purposes. Thunder Bay is in a unique position since it is a hub for travel and shipping to isolated communities. This has implications, one of which is the poor access to health care in those communities since these are small fly-in only communities. If the police were called upon to enforce public health measures, access to the database could be interpreted as legitimate from the public health perspective. That being said, I don't know if this was the case. This does not explain Durham region either. (I was working in one of those isolated communities during the H1N1 outbreak. Keeping H1N1 out of those communities was a major concern.)