Data Privacy Commissioner George Radwanski tells Karlin Lillington about his views on a basic human right.

Don't be fooled by his friendly, avuncular appearance, soft voice or easy manner. Mr George Radwanski, Canada's Data Privacy Commissioner, takes no prisoners.

Last week, in his annual report to the Canadian government, which employs him, he wrote: "Regrettably, this government has lost its moral compass with regard to the fundamental human right of privacy.

"It is my duty, in this annual report, to present a solemn and urgent warning to every member of parliament and senator, and indeed to every Canadian.

"The fundamental human right of privacy in Canada is under assault as never before. Unless the government of Canada is quickly dissuaded from its present course by parliamentary action and public insistence, we are on a path that may well lead to the permanent loss not only of privacy rights that we take for granted but also of important elements of freedom as we now know it."

In this fierce defence of privacy as a fundamental right that underlies all other freedoms in a democracy, he argues that the Canadian government "is, quite simply, using September 11th as an excuse for new collections and uses of personal information about all of us Canadians that cannot be justified by the requirements of anti-terrorism and that, indeed, have no place in a free and democratic society."

Standing before a group of UCD students this week, on a visit to the Republic wedged in between the launch of his report last week and an address to the Canadian parliament yesterday, he said: "There can be no real freedom without privacy. Privacy is the right from which all other freedoms flow.

"That's why a lack of privacy distinguishes so many totalitarian societies."

And later, sitting in a worn armchair in the St Stephen's Green Club, he muses that privacy is so much taken for granted that people do not see the threat offered by the tracking and collating capabilities of technology.

"As long as information about us was scattered in paper records, someone would have to go to great measures to get information on us."

Now, with phones, e-mails and general internet usage leaving trails of information about where we are at a given point in the day, who we are communicating with, and what we are doing, generalised surveillance is easy unless ardently defended against.

In particular, he is strongly opposed to any attempt to keep and store data traffic about the phone, fax, e-mail and internet usage of all Canadians - a proposal similar to that being mooted by the Department of Justice for three years' retention of communications data.

"In democratic societies, governments cannot order the post office to photocopy every return address on the letters we receive," he says. "I see no reason why e-mails should be subjected to a lower standard of protection than letters."

He scoffs at the argument that if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to be worried about. That defence is arguing at "the intellectual level of a bumper sticker", he says.

"It's a completely fatuous argument. Because at the end of the day, we all have something to hide. Not because it's illegal or distasteful - just because it's private." We draw our curtains at night not to hide illegal activities but to ensure our privacy, he argues.

Additionally, a data retention programme "is going to amass incorrect data. It will put false interpretations on existing data. It intrudes on our dignity, and data can be wrong or misinterpreted." The result is that people will begin to think twice about their day-to-day activities, in case they are misconstrued.

He is also vehemently opposed to the use of biometrics - ways of storing information on our unique physical identifiers, like retinas or fingerprints - in national identification cards or passports.

Such technologies are acceptable if they are used in "closed systems", perhaps to verify identity at an airport, he says, where data is entered once but not retained. But the reality is that such data could be stored and matched to other information about you, creating new ways for citizens to be tracked.

He wonders why the US is requiring citizens from other countries to carry biometric passports to enter the US, when it has not chosen to require the same of its own citizens.

But what if all this data is vigilantly protected and used only to fight terrorism? "I don't buy the idea of controls because controls erode over time," he says. Once such useful databases are created, law enforcement inevitably will want to use them for other purposes beyond that for which they were created, he says.

In his report, he argues that such "initiatives are all cause for deep concern because of the intrusions on privacy that they directly entail. But they are even more disturbing because of the thresholds they cross and the doors they open. Each of these measures establishes a devastatingly dangerous new principle of acceptable privacy invasion".

Mr Radwanski, a veteran journalist and former editor of the Toronto Star newspaper, holds a position in Canada similar to that of the Data Protection Commissioner, Mr Joe Meade.

He stepped into the seven-year appointment exactly a year before September 11th. "Even before September 11th, I was saying that privacy will be the defining issue of the new decade."

Invited to the Republic by Mr Meade and the Canadian ambassador, Mr Mark Moher, he spent two days in meetings and giving talks.

He had a tête-a-tête with Mr Meade, he says, and also met the Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, but politely declined to reveal the subject of their conversation.

He also does not feel it is his role to comment publicly on other government's security initiatives. But he steers anyone interested in his opinions to his annual report, available at www.privcom.gc.ca/information/ar/02_04_10_e.asp#overview.

He also notes that he feels Canada and the Republic have many things in common, not least that "both of us have a very large neighbour beside us that exerts certain pressures".

Does he think privacy rights will win out in the end? "I'm always optimistic. You can't do what I do without the belief that values and good sense will prevail."