Privacy watchdog to investigate Liberals’ online survey
Democratic reform survey asks for highly sensitive information, including postal codes and data on income and education.

thestar.com
By Alex Boutilier
Dec. 14, 2016

The federal privacy commissioner is investigating the Liberals’ new online survey about Canadians’ feelings towards electoral reform.

Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien’s office said it’s looking into the government’s mydemocracy.ca site, which asks for highly personal information such as household income, education and employment status, and for postal codes.

The survey lists the information as “optional,” but it’s actually required if respondents want their views meaningfully counted in a final report for Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef.

A spokesperson for Therrien’s office said that it’s already recommended improvements to the government to “better protect” respondents’ privacy.

But. because the commissioner received a formal complaint about the website, Therrien will open an investigation.

“Our goal is to have these issues resolved as quickly as possible,” wrote Valerie Lawton in an email to the Star.

“I cannot provide further details at this point in time, given that our investigations are conducted in confidence.”

The survey, launched by Monsef last week, was billed as a way for the Liberals to really get at what Canadians want in a new electoral system.

The survey launch came days after Monsef faced accusations of outright lying in the House of Commons after she blasted an all-party committee studying electoral reform for not doing the “hard work” of recommending a new system.

The committee had never been asked to.

Monsef apologized a day later.

The survey soon faced criticism of its own.

While Monsef had attacked the committee for not recommending a system, the survey doesn’t explicitly mention specific systems; instead, it asks how Canadians think Parliament should work, and what values they want to see reflected in the new system.

In an interview with the Star last week, the CEO of Vox Pop Labs, the company who designed the survey, insisted that its system was secure, but said he couldn’t say specifically what security measures are in place, to avoid tipping off hackers on how to get around them.

“(We use) a series of techniques that are both conventional and proprietary to Vox Pop Labs, given that we have unique experience with working with big data sets . . . of these types,” said Clifton Van Der Linden.

“I’m loath to go into the detail, because it gives people who might want to circumvent (the security measures) the information they might need to circumvent them. It’s not something I’m willing to disclose.”

The Star requested a comment from Monsef’s office on the security concerns last Monday. In a statement on Wednesday, her communications director said that providing personal information is completely voluntary for people on the site.

While that’s true, respondents’ answers will not be counted in the analysis provided to Monsef from Vox Pop Labs. Instead, they will be included in the unweighted data, which some pollsters have said isn’t worth much.

Monsef spokesperson John O’Leary said the government is confident respondents’ personal information is secure.

“We look forward to working with the privacy commissioner and reviewing any recommendations the commissioner might make,” O’Leary wrote.