It appears to us that the simple fact of releasing the name of the requester, the actual identity of the individual, would be a violation, if not of the laws themselves, at least of the spirit of the Access to Information Act or the Privacy Act. It seems to me that you have just established that. We may even find this kind of prohibition in other pieces of legislation.
The practice of drafting a sort of list to be distributed to Ministers’ offices -- or more specifically, to political staff -- is a rather unusual one. That list contains the name of people who have made access to information requests during the month, the quarter or the week.
Of course, you have just noted that releasing the name of a requester is prohibited by the legislation. Now you answered Mr. Owen’s question, but as regards the list of requests themselves -- in other words the subject matter of the requests -- should that practice not simply be prohibited?