Canada.com (Link was broken earlier, fixed now. UPDATE: Now altogether dead.)
- Abuse of the term "fingerprinting" (see also, this post).
- International trade & politics
- Inflated expectations of privacy
- A public official called a Privacy Commissioner
The long and short of it is that Canadian medical schools rely on the MCAT admissions test administered by an American firm: the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). This firm, in order to maintain its value proposition, uses a pretty rigorous identity management regime that includes the use of a fingerprint biometric so that it is very difficult to take the test for someone else.
Now anyone who is on the demand side rather than the supply side of of the medical industry (or who isn't a Privacy Commissioner) is likely quite comfortable with the status quo. After all, if you really want to enter into a profession that allows you to prescribe medication, make people unconscious, cut people open, hold life in your very hands while being highly regarded by society and well compensated for your efforts, is identifying yourself with a high degree of certainty too much to ask?
The Privacy Commissioner of Canada, however, has a useful bogey man: The Patriot Act. The official name of the law is the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001 and its 131 pages can be read here.
The Privacy Commissioner is concerned that Canadian citizens that take the MCAT and only apply to Canadian medical schools could one day have their fingerprint record accessed by the U.S. government, because those records are stored in the United States, and has found that this state of affairs violates Canada's Personal Information and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) (I don't get the acronym either).
I'm neither a lawyer nor an expert on the Patriot Act so I will withhold judgment on the likelihood that a non-terrorist, Canadian MCAT taker who never applied to an American medical school will have their civil rights violated by the U.S. government using a subpoena of the AAMC under the Patriot Act. Curiously, the Privacy Commissioner, who hopefully is a lawyer and an expert on the Patriot Act, makes no such judgment, either. I searched in vain for the legal documents relevant to the case and perhaps she addresses the likelihood there. Nevertheless, the concerns of the Privacy Commissioner aren't so well founded that she can produce any medical school applicant that has suffered at the hands of the AAMC and Patriot Act, but one wouldn't be doing one's job as Privacy Commissioner if one waited for actual things to happen before launching legal action.
There are some simple things that the AAMC could change that would seem to ease the Commissioner's stated concerns, such as storing those records in Canada or gaining informed, expressed consent from the test takers, but
Stoddart is asking the court to order AAMC to develop an alternative procedure for verifying the identity of people registering for the MCAT in Canada that does not involving collecting fingerprints.
I have an idea. A private detective will follow all Canadian medical school applicants from the time they take the MCAT to the time they enroll in a medical school.
Total cost: $25,000 per test.
All Canadian MCAT test takers will have to take this form of the test; we can't have impoverished aspiring Canadian physicians ruthlessly separated from their privacy by foreigners for mere "financial" considerations.
Happy now, Privacy Commissioner?
Canadian medical school applicant?
