Vickileaks is coming for you Anonymous!

Yikes!

Good Day Readers:

Here's what we don't understand. The person responsible for Vikkleaks was outed (Adam Carroll an Ottawa Liberal Party researcher) and resigned/was fired whichever came first. Although no date has yet been set, he will be called before a Parliamentary Committee. If you're a Conservative the best outcome for making political hay will be if other Liberals were involved and Mr. Carroll rolls on them.

Notice no mention is made in the CBC article (below) of the latest Anonymous YouTube video which references Vic Toews' divorce. Doesn't it, as well as, the previous two make use of publicly available information that could only have been gleaned from Queen's Bench File Registry? We'll have more to say about Anonymous very shortly.

The list of names lawyer Robert Tapper will receive will be flawed because with Canada's open court principle the media is exempt from having to complete the standard request form (date, name, address, telephone number, signature plus one piece of photo identification) and does not have to pay the usual $5 access fee. Litigants in a case still have to provide the aforementioned personal data but the fee is waived.

What about lawyers who regularly attend The Law Courts are they always required to complete the requisite form prior to accessing a file? Besides, these documents are only retained for 3-months - or so we were told by Registry staff.

Vic Toews biggest political liability is currently Anonymous and not Vikileaks which is now passe - yesterday's news. Those responsible scattered God knows where will be a lot harder to track than an individual using a House of Commons server?

Thanks to a couple of our readers we first became aware of the latest Anonymous YouTube the evening of Monday, March 5 (approximately 8:40) at which time there had been 5,810 visitors. It initially appeared on the internet sometime Friday, March 2. As this is being written the number is now 6,423. With Mr. Carroll's upcoming appearance before a parliamentary committee combined with other media coverage, such as the following CBC article, will it go viral?

From a Winnipeg Free Press article (Tweeter takes aim at Toews' Internet bill with flood of alleged details about MP's private life - Melissa Martin, February 16, 2012):


"We made a decision several years ago, after careful review, not to publish the details," said Free Press Editor Margo Goodhand that Toews' personal relationships appeared to have no bearing on his ability to do his job."

With all due respect we beg to differ on a couple levels. How do voters know when a personal relationship has no impact on a politician's ability to effectively represent constituents? Is the person(s) with whom that relationship has taken place of any significance? Speaking hypothetically and generically, if a politician is projecting one public image for reasons of electability but living quite the opposite does the media have any responsibility to advise the public? Is failure to do so deceiving the electorate?

Over the past couple weeks we have attempted to access the Vic Toews divorce file to see for ourself what  the fuss is all about. We have not read any of the Vikileak tweets. On the third unsuccessful try it was noted it might be resident with a court official so we e-mailed an administrator to be quickly re-assured they had indeed checked and it was available. Our concern was it had been inappropriately removed from general circulation. We are aware of only two situations where such would be justified:

(1) Sealed by a judge a rare occurrence but possible - the circumstances would have to be highly unusual/extraordinary

(2) Preparing for an upcoming hearing or trial it was temporarily required by a judge. However, it's now a dead file, that is, until Vikileaks/Anonymous brought it back to life

Still plan to access the dossiere but have been preoccupied with the Mark Stobbe murder trial. As soon as we have an opportunity we'll go for a read.

Sincerely,
Clare L. Pieuk

Vic Toews to find out who saw his divorce file
Details from minister's 2007 divorce tweeded in Vickleaks0

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Toews' private life was the subject of an anonymous Twitter account last month, after he tabled an online vurveillance bill that critics say could infringe on Canadians' privacy rights. (Fred Chartrand/Canadian Press)

A Manitoba judge has ruled that federal Public Safety Minister Vic Toews should be allowed to know who was looking at his divorce file.

A Court of Queen's Bench justice ruled on Wednesday that Toews, the Conservative MP for the Provencher riding in southern Manitoba, has a right to see who read his file at the Winnipeg courthouse.

Details of Toews's acrimonious 2007 divorce, including snippets from affidavits filed by the minister and his ex-wife, were published online in what became known as the Vikileaks affair.

The anonymous Twitter account, which began publishing the divorce details in mid-February, was attacking Toews over Bill C-30, an online surveillance bill that the minister is sponsoring.

The Vikileaks account was eventually shut down. It was later revealed that a Liberal Party staff member was behind the Twitter account. Adam Carroll resigned at the end of the month.

Privacy concerns cited

The Manitoba court registrar originally denied a request by Toews's lawyer to obtain the names of those who had filed a requisition form to view the divorce files, citing privacy concerns.

"The registrar had declined to give it to me because the registrar was concerned … this is a novel thing; this has just never happened before," Robert Tapper, Toews's lawyer, told CBC News.

"So I applied for a court order to compel the registrar to give it to me, which the judge then granted."

In his ruling, Justice Richard Saull said it seems unfair that Toews's personal matters should be "produced at the whim of any passerby and that he not know who had access, regardless of that person's motives."

Saull also said civil court files automatically include the names of anyone who has requested to see them.
"If someone wants to access a public record for mischief purposes … they're not allowed to assert anonymity in the process," Tapper said.

"Public documents contained within a court docket … they're open to the public," he added. "So the fact is, you go down there and you say, 'I want copies of these things.' You can't go there under a mask."