What does the election in Canada and cloud computing have in common? Issues with Article 329.

Canada is a big country. Really. Big. So big, it has 6 time zones; by the time the West coast wakes up, the East coast has already had 3-4.5 hours of productive time. So big, in fact, that election results from the East coast are available before polling stations close on the West coast. And, if you Tweet, blog, or post on a wall in Facebook about results in the East before polls have closed in the West, you're breaking the law. Go figure.

In this day and age of social media and ubiquity of computing, the ability to share information is so great, that it can accelerate revolution. You know, the kind that deposes authoritarian governments? Despots aside, this technology can land you in trouble if you share election results. There is a section of the Canada Elections Act that governs "Premature Transmission":

"329. No person shall transmit the result or purported result of the vote in an electoral district to the public in another electoral district before the close of all of the polling stations in that other electoral district."

In a sense, social media is the wild west: it is difficult to control and regulate, applicable laws are a grey area at best, and there are as many opinions are there are users. What, then, is the responsibility of the service providers such as Twitter and Facebook? Private information being what it is, and terms of use being what they are, are Twitter and Facebook, US based companies, obligated to divulge private information of users who are being investigated by Elections Canada and/or the RCMP for violations of Section 329? Can Canadian users hide behind US companies?

Assuming that the charges are specific, which they would be considering the infraction, these organizations would simply comply with a subpoena or warrant. Not to mention that your hardware would be confiscated and used to collect evidence against you. What does this mean? Your footprint is out there. Even if you delete an account, data persists in backups and can be used to build a case against you.

Obviously this was intended to keep elections fair and to avoid influencing voters in an era of television and radio broadcasts. Clearly, the Elections Act never contemplated that information could be shared in such an environment as the Internet, and particularly, in social media. Changes to the electoral procedure have reduced this discrepancy between East and West down to 1.5 hours but this gap is sufficient to be in violation of the law.

Legalities and discourse on right and wrong aside, this is a good example of a Government's right to prosecute an individual and obtain private information in an effort to enforce law. However archaic it may be.