A BC family is reeling after a strange and creepy encounter with border guards in the Dominican Republic – which went a lot further than the doors of the airplane.
The family’s 16-year-old daughter was subjected to a secondary luggage search, and then stalked on the internet two weeks later.
Her father – who does not want to be identified for the safety of his daughter – says the girl initially felt strange about the nature of the search.
“The guy was going through her homework one page at a time, and then asked her if she liked biology. So she just got a creepy feeling out of it,” he says.
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Because they were about to get on a plane to go home, they dismissed it.
However, two weeks later his daughter’s friend – who had travelled with them – received an email from one of the security guards.
Her father says the individual clearly abused his authority as a security officer.
Micheal Vonn from the BC Civil Liberties says the laws protecting private information amount to nothing more than an “honour system”.
“Information is freely available within certain kinds of data portals, certain data systems, and when you look at an audit or something like that, what is so suspicious that the audit could pick it up,” she says.
BC Civil Liberties believes what is happening in the Dominican Republic is almost certainly happening here too.
The only solution, it says, is a return to data minimisation, where only information needed for security purposes is collected.
However, a new agreement between Washington and Ottawa suggests the opposite is on the way.
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