Saanich mayor vindicated by privacy commissioner's report on spyware

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VICTORIA — Less than two weeks after being sworn in as mayor, Saanich Mayor Richard Atwell learned he was being spied upon.
A whistleblower sidled up to the rookie mayor at a community event, last December, and suggested the mayor’s own staff had bugged his municipal computer.
Distrustful of Saanich’s top bureaucrats — many of whom were loyal to the six-term incumbent that Atwell had just upset at the polls — the mayor of Vancouver Island’s largest municipality felt he had only one option left: Launch his own investigation.
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Atwell’s suspicions were vindicated Monday in a report by privacy commissioner Elizabeth Denham, who said Saanich staff broke the law by installing spyware software called Spector 360 onto several municipal computers.
The district collected too much unnecessary personal information and didn’t provide proper notification to those being monitored, Denham ruled.
The software was also too invasive, tracking not only Atwell’s Internet and email usage, but also recording all the keystrokes he made and taking screenshots of his screen every 30 seconds, said Denham.


So the employee's of the Mayor decided they didn't like the new mayor and they put spyware on his machine .

Atwell has asked the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner to review Saanich police conduct, as well as the conduct of the regional traffic unit that has pulled him over four times without issuing any infractions.


And they tried to get you arrested . And the police investigation was tainted of course , since the police were in on it. They were all loyal to the mayor of 6 terms who just got booted (6x4= 24 years )


See, this is the kind of nonsense I'm talking about. The police were in on the scam. If you can't trust the police who can you trust. Apparently , no one, because even the police were in on this effort to oust a duly elected mayor.

I do not know if Atwell is a good mayor  , or a terrible mayor. But I do know , it is the responsibility of the electorate to decide who is mayor , not the police , and not some bureaucrat in IT who owes the previous administration a favor. For us to permit someone to take away our right to vote , and have that vote actually mean something , is to turn us into the blacks of Ferguson , Missouri, who were abused and even murdered by the politico's , because their vote didn't matter. They never got to vote.

Mark my words. Let someone take your vote from you , and that's what your town / city will turn into.