Access to Information denied

I filed a request under the Access to Information Act, for “All Information Available” - mostly, I was curious to see if my fraternization with Open Content Hippies or Open Source Radicals had placed me on any lists. I’d followed a link on Facebook (which I can’t find now, yay for no searchability in FB-land) with the link to the Government of Canada web page with the request process and form, and a note suggesting that the form would be disappearing soon.

So, I filled in a web form, gave them my credit card info (to pay for the processing fee), and 6 weeks later I get a boilerplate non-response in my mailbox. It states that there is either nothing on file about me, or there might (or might not) be something on file, but declaration of that fact (or non fact) would possibly (or not) fall under a possible exclusion from the Act due to possible relation to efforts of Canada towards detecting, preventing or suppressing subversive or hostile activities. I would never want to thwart suppression of subversion¹.

Here’s the response in full (with my address and file number redacted):

So. Either they don’t have anything on me. Or I’m being monitored closely to prevent suppression of subversion. Or something in between. Which can neither be confirmed nor denied.