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Political parties police themselves on using voters’ personal data: watchdog
OTTAWA — The federal privacy watchdog is calling on the government to address what he calls significant gaps in the law that allow political parties themselves to police how they gather and use voter data.
Political parties are only bound by internal, voluntary privacy policies in the absence of an independent body to ensure they follow their own rules, federal privacy commissioner Daniel Therrien told a parliamentary committee Tuesday.
Therrien has been calling for changes to strengthen privacy laws to cover how political parties use data — a campaign that has been attracting fresh attention in recent weeks following revelations about how Facebook and other companies treat the personal data of its users.
“Neither I nor any other independent person can verify what’s going on,” said Therrien, who reasserted his demand for stronger privacy laws as he appeared before MPs in Ottawa.