Comedian Russell Brand said in a recent video that Canada's government is a good example of how data could be utilized against citizens, particularly when it came to the Liberals' freezing of bank accounts for some who participated at the Freedom Convoy protests.
After the Trudeau Liberals invoked the never-before-used Emergencies Act, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland announced that those found to have been participating in the protests would have their bank accounts frozen.
"The RCMP has given to the financial institutions names of leaders and organizers of the protest and of people whose trucks were part of occupations and blockades. That is the only information, according to the RCMP, that the RCMP has given to financial institutions," she said, one week after the act's invocation.
Freeland would even go on to mock those who were "concerned that their accounts may of been frozen because of their participation in these illegal blockades and occupation," by saying that "the way to get your account unfrozen is to stop being part of the blockade and occupation."
Brand read the comments of Dhakshayini Sooriyakumaran, Director of Tech Policy at Reset Australia, who spoke with the Epoch Times, saying, "There’s no kind of public engagement about what the citizen feels comfortable with in terms of how the government is using that data. And because of the power differential between institutions and individual citizens, data is used and abused. And we see really dire consequences as a result."
"... We are living in an economy where data is one of the most valuable resources any institutional entity can actually capture," she continued.
"Government, like corporations, has been trying to fly under the radar and extract as much data as possible."
"But I think more and more, particularly with the pandemic, people are starting to understand, oh, governments and corporations are actually quite intertwined when it comes to the value chain of data extraction."
Brand would comment on the article and the Trudeau Liberals, saying that we could see how data could be utilized to harm citizens, with "one example being in Canada."
"If you're anything like me, you hear 'the government is stealing my data and corporations are stealing my data' and you get a bit bored, because you're always on your phone going 'yes, yes, manage my cookies... I don't care what you do with my cookies.'
"But what we're starting to see is how this data can be utilized and exploited to increased efficacy by institutions, one example being in Canada where they can just strike out your bank account on a moment's notice... meanwhile in China, they're beginning to be able to shut down your ability to travel, move about," he said.
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