Date: Sat, 1 Sep 2001 03:02:37 -0400 To: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com> From: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com> Subject: Canada's Privacy Czar Wants Questions Dropped from Firearms Licence Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed"Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2001 21:03:17 -0700 Subject: interesting news from Canada From: "2nd. Amend." <d-walker@juno.com> Dennis Walker www.peoplesrights.org
Privacy fears over gun licensing Drop personal questions from applications: privacy czar; Gun-control lobby appalled at suggestion Tim Naumetz The Ottawa Citizen
Privacy Commissioner George Radwanski is urging the government to eliminate questions about marital problems, suicide, alcohol abuse and other sensitive personal matters from the screening process for firearms licensing.
In a scathing report released yesterday, Mr. Radwanski said the questions are overly intrusive, violate the federal Privacy Act and cannot be justified.
The Justice Department has failed to prove that answers to the questions can predict violent behaviour by individuals applying for gun licences, he said.
"We very carefully reviewed those questions and the research and evidence that the Department of Justice put forward to justify them, and I am completely convinced that the particular questions -- the
two questions we recommend dropping -- very seriously invade privacy without in any way significantly enhancing public safety," Mr. Radwanski said in an interview.
His report said information about violent behaviour and other dangerous tendencies is already obtained through the exhaustive search of criminal and police records that is required before gun licences are approved.
"Although the firearms program has the authority to collect personal information for the purposes of determining eligibility, the amount of information collected is excessive," Mr. Radwanski said in his report on a privacy issue that predecessor Bruce Phillips had refused to consider.
National Firearms Association president Jim Hinter welcomed the report as a "vindication" of the association's longstanding fight against the personal history questions, but gun-control advocates angrily denounced it as a step backward.
Wendy Cukier, a Ryerson University professor who heads the Coalition for Gun Control, said questions about criminal records and mental illness were part of the previous firearms acquisition system and the current set of questions was developed from extensive research on suicide and violence as well as homicide inquest reports and the advice of a stream of public safety experts.
"Given the risks associated with firearms, we need to be rigorous," said Ms. Cukier. "I am not sure what, exactly, would satisfy the commissioner as constituting demonstrable need for this information."
In a statement from several experts organized by the coalition in response to Mr. Radwanski's report, Prof. Tim Quigley of the University of Saskatchewan law faculty said he and others who contributed to the development of the Firearms Act ensured it conformed to the Privacy Act and verified that all the personal information being collected was necessary.
Dr. Antoine Chapdelaine of the Quebec Public Health Association, who worked on the development of the federal gun-licensing system in 1991, said the questions were based on "solid, peer reviewed" research into risk factors for suicide and domestic violence.
The elimination of the sensitive personal questions from the licence application was among 34 recommendations Mr. Radwanski made to tighten the security of information in the gun-licensing system and bring it into conformity with the Privacy Act.
Among other things, Mr. Radwanski said firearms officers who investigate applications should no longer be given free access to the RCMP Police Information Retrieval System, which contains a range of sensitive information about individuals.
"Access to police information should be tightened, restricting firearms officers to limited, specific and relevant information only," said Mr. Radwanski, who also questioned the need for firearms officers to gather personal information on licence applicants from credit-reporting agencies.
Mr. Radwanski said even researchers on whom the Department of Justice relied to develop the questions about personal problems admitted the questions could not be used to predict violence.
He said the reference to divorce in the screening question is useless because there are 73,000 divorces every year in Canada.
"If divorce itself were a predictor of violence, and given the numbers of people who are affected by a divorce, we would have literally mayhem in the streets," Mr. Radwanski said.
He also challenged the need to question applicants about job loss, noting job dislocation can occur with no financial difficulty in some cases and, therefore, less risk of emotional or psychological problems. On the other hand, emotional problems can surface even with job security.
The questions also deal with whether the applicant has been treated for depression, alcohol, drug or substance abusive or behavioural and emotional problems.
"I have not made these recommendations lightly," Mr. Radwanski said in response to the criticism of his report, "and there may be people who believe that having firearms under any circumstance is so reprehensible that there should be no limits to the degree to which privacy is invaded, necessarily or otherwise, but my task is to find and recommend the appropriate balance between privacy rights and important social goals."
He said he has no authority to force the Justice Department to follow his recommendations.
The Canadian Firearms Centre will consider Mr. Radwanski's report and consult with him to see how the system can be improved, said spokesman David Austin.
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