Vive's friends also say we should keep an eye on Senate Bill S18--change of confidentiality after 92 years.
If you're still wondering "who is Lockheed?", here's an excellent article that explains it all. A quote:
LOCKHEED MARTIN doesn't run the United States. But it does help run a breathtakingly big part of it.Over the last decade, Lockheed, the nation's largest military contractor, has built a formidable information-technology empire that now stretches from the Pentagon to the post office. It sorts your mail and totals your taxes. It cuts Social Security checks and counts the United States census. It runs space flights and monitors air traffic. To make all that happen, Lockheed writes more computer code than Microsoft.
Of course, Lockheed, based in Bethesda, Md., is best known for its weapons, which are the heart of America's arsenal. It builds most of the nation's warplanes. It creates rockets for nuclear missiles, sensors for spy satellites and scores of other military and intelligence systems. The Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency might have difficulty functioning without the contractor's expertise.
But in the post-9/11 world, Lockheed has become more than just the biggest corporate cog in what Dwight D. Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex. It is increasingly putting its stamp on the nation's military policies, too.
Stumble It!
Any Vive campaigns involving the public should definitely make the LM connection between BMD and the census, as well as pointing out what the BC Privacy commissioner said.
The objectives of the 2004 Census Test were to assess content of the census questionnaire, the interoperability of the various systems developed for the 2006 Census, the newly developed internet response channel and new methods in field operations. Statistics Canada has never had any intention of disseminating data from the 2004 Census Test.
We are aware of the concerns of the BC Privacy Commissioner and have been working with the Privacy Commissioner of Canada in assuring that the information provided by Canadians is totally safe. Moreover, Statistics Canada has asked that three independent security verifications of the Agency's census confidentiality protection measures be conducted prior to the 2006 Census.
No confidential data ever leave the country. At no point is any contractor in possession of any confidential census data. The work that Statistics Canada has contracted-out relates solely to the provision of hardware, software, printing and support services. All census databases, facilities and networks containing confidential data are in Canada and are, at all times, under the exclusive control of Statistics Canada. Therefore, even if a request were made by a U.S. authority to any contractor, it would be physically impossible for them to provide any information, given that they are never in possession of this confidential information.
Greg Peterson
Statistics Canada
Privacy reasons and Patriot act aisde, I for one am against Lockheed Martin having anything to do with our census. They should not be a contractor for the government of Canada for any reason other than military procurement.
There are many Canadian companies perfectly capable of "hardware, software, printing and support services". lowball bid aside, the Government of Canada can afford to deny politicians and bureaucrats their $200 a day lunch allowance, and hire Canadian companies. Let them bring their lunch, like the rest of us do, and give more Canadians jobs!
And I still don't trust the Lockheed Martin won't somehow have access to the raw data. I can't trust that a company won't do whatever it's largest customer asks it to do.
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"If you must kill a man, it costs you nothing to be polite about it." Winston Churchill
I think we've gone over your points before have we not?
So these are the points I would like to reiterate for you.
1.If we are not building the hardware/software you cannot guarantee that access has not been built into it.
2.What's the rush to have a US contractor do the work when we could use the system that we have until a Canadian solution has been created? That alone has created skepticism in me.
3.The very idea that you would use Canadian tax dollars to support the military machine is beyond justifiable.
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"Yeah, well, [Mr. President] we used all five fingers because that's the way our mittens are made." Antonia Zerbisias
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"If you must kill a man, it costs you nothing to be polite about it." Winston Churchill
Now...back to the guts of the issue: trust. Why don't you trust LM? Give me specifics, please...how have they wronged you? How have they hurt you? Do you think that LM is giving our data to the US government? How do you know this? What facts can you provide to back up this claim? Does it boil down to something you read on the internet that sounded scary? Something like "if LM does the census they are obligated by the patriot act to turn over data to Bush!" ? Can you back that up? Please show me where it says that Bush cares about where we live or how many cats we own? THEY DONT CARE ABOUT US! Stop thinking that they care! They don't! If you believe otherwise, you are living in an alternative reality and need to see a medical professional.
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Dave Ruston