Canada’s CBC News reports:
A politician running to lead the B.C. New Democrats says he is refusing to comply with a requirement of leadership hopefuls to hand over the passwords to their social media accounts.
Nicholas Simons, an NDP MLA who’s hoping to run in the leadership race, says he’s left that information off his nomination package.
The party’s intent is to try to ensure there are no skeletons hidden in candidates’ private profiles.
As the report mentions, leaving aside the gauche politics of this, it’s also rather unwise to demand someone hands over passwords when it is a common feature of terms and conditions of services that you shouldn’t do so.
2 Comments
This is a bit of a niggly point for me, but as a Canadian, I am slightly bothered by your headline for this story. It isn’t really a Canadian political campaign rule, but rather one (probably) unique to the British Columbia New Democratic Party. I doubt even the federal NDP requires this of their leadership candidates, and I’ve certainly never heard of any other party at any level, federal or provincial requiring something like this. Maybe there are some – but this is the first time I’ve ever heard of anything like this. Calling it a “Canadian rule” makes it sound as if this is a common-place practice in the country. It’s not – it’s unique to one party in one province.
What an unfortunate political development glad it is not popular this side of the pond While the idea has merit in principle, checking out backgrounds and all, however the implementation is as you point out in you article clearly flawed. I hope the local party in question review their procedures, or they may continue to be the focus of international bemusement.