The step-by-step guide to legally manipulate the 2019 Canadian election

First, I feel obligated to say this is not serious advice, or intended as an operating manual, but it’s intended to demonstrate how easy it would be to manipulate the Canadian elections this year. Second, while I am associated with a political party, I would go under oath stating that I have not participated in any of these steps for them, or myself as a candidate, even knowing that I could. My political party has a strong policy that mandates proactively transparent and consensual data collection to ensure that citizens are informed and in agreement with how their personal data will be used. Okay, so here we go. The biggest loophole to winning the 2019 Canadian elections is to realize that Canadian privacy laws do not bind Canadian political parties. This is important, as laws like PIPEDA, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, that govern the collection, use, and disclosure of Canadians' personal information, are governed by the Canadian federal privacy commissioner. As an aside, PIPEDA isn’t really respected by the private sector today even though it is regulated, as the commissioner doesn’t have order-making power even if you are guilty of violating privacy laws—and most relevant, there are no repercussions of consequence. Things are even worse in the public sector in terms of lack of repercussions, but let’s get back to the political arena for today. So, the first thing to do to win the Canadian federal election is to register a Canadian political party. Once you have a political party, you are ready to start legally collecting Canadians’ personal information. As another aside, even if you don’t go any further in terms of the steps below, you can now collect, use, and disclose any information on Canadians you want, and the federal privacy commissioner can’t do anything about it as you’re out of his jurisdiction. You could have access to a database of a Canadian’s mental and sexual health, and be selling it on the black market, and as a political party, I don’t see anything that could be done to you. It should be obvious at this stage that the federal privacy commissioner should have jurisdiction to investigate any/all political parties, and on top of that, the ability to administer strict and real penalties for privacy violations. Back to this year’s election. So now you have your privacy law-exempt party. Now you need to collect money. Think of any government, company, or person who might want full influence with the next political party in power, and reach out to them. I would say $10-million is an easy low number (in terms of taking control of a country like Canada), but obviously the higher the better. So now you’ve got a privacy law-exempt political party, $10-million, and are ready to start collecting data. You have to remember, there’s no one who can investigate you today in terms of privacy law, which governs the collection, use, and disclosure of Canadians’ personal information. This means you can ask anyone who has access to any database of Canadians, the bigger the better, and you could offer to pay them for a copy. We’re headed into the election cycle shortly, so you don’t have much time here—collect all of the data sets you can. Merge them. Sanitize them. Sort them by address. Now is where you prepare your social media strategy. This is where the story of Christopher Wylie and Cambridge Analytica comes in. What they needed to accomplish their goals was an understanding of what the different voter target demographics look like. This is where you get down to hyper micro-targeting. You can differentiate ads between neighbours or people in the same house. You use secondary or tertiary interests to automate the creation of digital communities that appear not political party-related, but have aligned interest, and then activate them in the real world by having a coffee shop meeting as the political season comes into full swing. That’s about it—with your micro-targeting, you want a list in order of your strongest to weakest voters, and your first order of business on election day is getting them all to the polls, starting at the top and working your way down. Good luck, and remember me, and this advice, when you’re in power for the next four years. I have several recommendations on how the government can minimize or stop this from being possible, as well as how to minimize the impact of being manipulated as a voter if you want to reach out, otherwise I’ll save those thoughts for another article. Kris Constable is a global security expert, local business and start-up consultant, and international technical adviser in privacy law. He was a candidate for the Green Party in Vancouver Quadra, B.C., in 2015. The Hill Times

The step-by-step guide to legally manipulate the 2019 Canadian election

The biggest loophole to winning the 2019 Canadian elections is to realize that Canadian privacy laws do not bind Canadian political parties.

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The step-by-step guide to legally manipulate the 2019 Canadian election

The biggest loophole to winning the 2019 Canadian elections is to realize that Canadian privacy laws do not bind Canadian political parties.

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