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Canadian Government Going Big Brother?
Eh-Wire writes "If this article by Canadian privacy expert Michael Geist is any indication of what the Canadian Government has in mind for the Canadian Internet surfing public, then it looks like the Canadian public should be concerned. This does not look good!"
Michael Geist comes out every once in a while with a "The Sky is Falling!" piece about how government is trying to super-regulate the Internet in Canada or some other country.
It's sensationalist crap for the purpose of selling impressions on the websites he writes for.
The hairbrained proposals that some lobbyists are putting forth in Canada are real, but there's little danger of any of them being taken seriously and he knows that.
I'm a big tall mofo.
Move along. Nothing to see here.
Hi there
Even if this ever made it to parliament, it definitely would never pass. Something as controversial as this would be suicide for a minority government, and we've already seen that Martin is being extra-careful.
If you like high taxes, low healthcare quality, and knowing that your country selectively applies its laws to groups of folks that it doesn't like, then you'll love Canada!
Canadian taxes are high because so many services are supplied by the government, healthcare being the most notable. The average quality of healthcare in Canada is actually quite high, but past a certain point (measured in cost), healthcare services aren't available, or they're available randomly (in order to be fair to everyone, because everyone paid for the healthcare system). If think you may have cracked your wrist, or are worried about your cholesterol, then go in for an X-ray or blood test. The doctors are required to see you. Same thing goes if you think you're coming down with a head cold. If you're having heart troubles or need serious surgery to replace an organ, forget about it: you're probably going to die as a victim of the Canadian Healthcare Low Pass Filter. Common, easily treatable illnesses are cheaply treated, and so they are quickly treated. More expensive procedures simply are not done. The system couldn't support them all, it isn't fair to support just some, so you or your child will die knowing that the doctors didn't even try doing all they could. You can't even buy top quality healthcare in Canada--it's illegal. Your best chance is to be rich and move to America or Europe, because Canada has smoothed you out.
Note that some people don't mind this system. It's equivalent to having crappy insurance in the USA. You're betting against anything serious happening, and wouldn't really have the means available to get yourself fixed anyway. The difference is that if you work hard in the USA to provide for yourself, you can buy better healthcare. In Canada, this option is denied to you. In Canada, Patrick might've been dead by now (then again, he might not've. The treatment he needed was pretty cheap, although the testing involved was not (Hey Pat, I've heard on the news at least twice about how ``some doctors believe the mist from electric toothbrushes could get into people's lungs,'' but I didn't hear any attribution).). He certainly didn't travel to Canada for treatment.
Canadian healthcare is like a front-line MASH hospital in a war. If they can fix you, they will. If it's too hard or too expensive, they'll fix two other guys with less expensive ailments. Your life depends on government-spun fate. You'd have been just as well off being a wine-o as a teacher for all the good it does you in Canada's eyes.
The internet does not easily recognize national boundaries. If someone wants something that they can't legally get in their country, they'll just go to a domain hosted in a country where they can get it.
To some degree, this is bad. It means that things like kiddie porn get made available. It also means that there are loopholes around copyrights and so on.
But, on another level, the internet is the bastion of freedom! It allows people in places where opinions are regulated to see that there are people in other places who can actually think and express themselves. Totalitarianisim can't really last for long because of this. Although many of us, myself included, think that kiddie porn is an inimaginable crime, I think that the benefits of a free internet outweigh the drawbacks.
The internet is today a sort of wild-West environment. Not much regulation and lots of hiding places for bad guys. I'm sure that will change with time, just like the wild-West did.
It will probably take some sort of I-Gov to bring the 'net into line with laws and regulations. I don't know if I am ready for that yet (or should I say the net is ready for that). This will be the result of a maturing process that will take time.
Oh, give me a break. Considering the kind of stuff that gets glossed over in the American media (Jeff Gannon, anyone? You may not even know who he is because the media has so thoroughly ignored the issue), I don't think that the CBC should be called out as an agency that ignores, obfuscates or smooths over any political controversies. They've reported openly on the Sponsorship scandal, the Gun Registry fiasco, and every other scandal in recent memory. They lean a little left, but they'll take whatever government to task that happens to be available for criticism.
Don't malign Canadian media. Canadians are apathetic about politics because:
1) We don't care
2) Most of this stuff is niggly shit that isn't WORTH caring about
3) We have better things to do than worry about every conspiracy theorist out there that says the government is going to curtail our rights.
Now screw off and criticise your own media for the shoddy job it does of damn near everything. The Briar is on.
First, Canadians have the Electronic Privacy Act, as well as constitutional protections against a lot of the ideas in the article.
...
Second, there's no link to the bill, and anyone can say anything they want in a newspaper or opinion piece, because Canadians have something so sorely missing in the USA, aka Freedom of the Press [caveat - unless it's an article disparaging a certain person who owns most of their newspapers].
Third, while Canucks may tend not to fuss once something becomes law, they DEFINITELY do not just roll over when a government tries to impose things on them. The first use of the railways and machine guns was to put down the Riel rebellion. And they have had way more protests - and successful ones - than we have here in the USA.
But, hey, what do I know, I only lived there from the age of 13 to 29
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
If the government is going to keep track of my goings on, I should be able to keep track of what the government is doing. Let us not be one sided. Level the playing field. Fair is fair.
Secondly, the US Constitution has far more protections against the sort of things occuring in Canada than the Canadian constitution.
That's because we have other laws as well, like PEPIDA, which our justices, if not the Gov't respect.
the Canadian public rarely engages in succesfull political activism. Quebec is an exception, but as far as I could tell, the whole sucession[sic] thing was about language and cultural issues.
A tradition of successfull political activism is part of the culture.
There's a student strike right now. The education minister said he didn't understand why the students would do that over a 103 million cut in scolarships, "they're the best-treated students in the country!" he excliamed. Yeah, that's 'cause they don't lie down when you start cutting, you dumbass.
You can't take the sky from me...
Maybe Google is just getting dumber as the semi-literate become computer literate. "Garbage in, garbage out."
US isn't the country that imprisons people for denying the holocaust.
our government may discuss shit like this, but that's far different from actually enacting it.
It may be flamebait, but he is basically right. The more government tends to its citizens' various needs, the more power it will exercise over them.
IMHO....
I agree that it *might* be reasonable to tap the VoIP phone call with a court order, however it is not technically reasonable due to the way that VoIP technology works. Implementing such a system inherently changes the technology introducing increased latency as the phone calls now need to go through a central system to allow for the wiretapping, as opposed to a direct point-to-point connection. This exponentially increases the hardware costs for VoIP providers and increases latency, which has always been a struggle to keep the system usable.
For instance, your land line providers strive to keep latency to 50ms or less, while VoIP is considered "acceptable" at 400ms or less. As you approach 400ms and go beyond, a conversation becomes nearly impossible due to echo and talker overlap. Haphazardly placing this "land line paradigm" on VoIP could stall or prevent adaptation of the technology. Just like the moratorium on Internet Taxes to allow the technology to evolve, a moratorium on this requirement is necessary until the technology is perfected.
Also, it's fairly obvious you're being tapped if you were to watch where your packets are going and they were to reroute just certain users' VoIP calls unless EVERY call is routed through a central system, in which case all the calls would come to a grinding halt.
I just wanted to add to this comment... I don't know if I'm interpreting the mood of the post properly, but it seems to be disparaging the Liberals for bowing under pressure so easily. As far as I'm concerned, however, a government should not be criticized for doing what the people want! The fact that the Liberals give into public pressure is a sign that democracy is working. That's why I like being Canadian.
Of course not. We both have problems with ultra-conservative nutbars. The biggest difference is that in Canada we delegate them to the radio or proposing legislation that will never pass. In the U.S., they're elected to run the country.
Policitcally active is one thing, being a public coward is something else.
The military was over twice as big in the 80s and there wasn't a draft. A draft is not an option in today's political climate, unless China invades Japan or some such. Read up and learn and stop listening to your profs, which are mostly just rejects from the 60s and 70s.
If you are scared of the draft, then you've also got global warming, acid rain, ozone holes, asteroid strikes, killer viruses -- you're gonna have a very nervous existence. Might be better just to join up now and get it over with.
You imply:
- that I am wrong,
- that you are right, and
- that I am intentionally misleading others.
The third item is certainly untrue. I seek to enlighten. As for the first and second items, these are the purpose of debate, not mudslinging like you did.Don't believe everything the U.S. private health insurance industry tells you.
You have no idea where my facts come from. You make assumptions based off of your prejudices.
Expensive or complex procedures are commonly done on a waiting list basis, "first come, first serve" basis, not randomly as you imply.
Whether or not you can get the procedure you need is entirely random. It's not based on how hard you've worked to provide for yourself, it's not (truly) based on how badly you need the procedure, and it's not based on the resources available to this world to provide you with the procedure. It's based on whether the government is willing to pay for it and whether the resources would be better used curing anyone else. It's effectively random.
As for organ replacement, it has the same limitations as the U.S., namely the organs go to whomever was on the waiting list the longest, and many people, wealthy or not, do die on the waiting list in both our countries because it's also illegal to buy organs in the U.S., and I see little done to change that.
Firstly, it's a very good thing organs are illegal to sell. I can't imagine how much sorrow that market would cause. Secondly, organs are bought and sold on the black market all the time. Money buys anything, unfortunately.
Spare organ supply is much, much lower than the demand, and there'll always be people who die waiting on an organ; however, here in the US, there are innovations on this front. A functional liver can be regrown from a part of a donor's liver, leaving both with working livers. Artificial hearts have been implanted, extending lives for hours. The signs are that they'll be used to extend lives for years, eventually.
In Canada, these operations (and others like them) are available to you based on how many resources the government has to spend. How much of a syphilis outbreak would it take to to keep you from getting an operation you needed? The point is that in the USA you can work hard, take care of yourself, and purchase healthcare to help protect yourself. In Canada, you're not allowed to.
Oh, the irony. Yes, although there are Canadian content laws and a government funded national TV and radio station(s), it's ironic that it's the U.S. in which the media is the governments "bitch" as a compliant outlet for government propaganda. The rules and regulations in place to keep the Canadian government from using its own funded media for that purpose seem to do a better job at keeping the media "free" than the so-called independant media in the U.S. I wonder what Marshall McLuhan would have to say about that.
If Canadians ever engaged in a peaceful protest in numbers comparable to an American protest, they'd be arrested for "inciting to riot".
If ever?
Quebec City? UBC? Sure, some people were pepper sprayed, and a few were arrested and released, but that's pretty much how these semi-violent protests go, whereever they are.
You see, Canada is a democracy with no real restraining constititution: the notwithstanding clause makes it possible for the government to pass a law overriding any judgement against it.
For five years. During which time an election will take place, and the government can be turfed. The clause has never even been used by the federal government.
All you need is a majority to enslave the minority, so safest is to "shut up, blend in, and go along".
Right. Ask an African American about enslaving the minority. Or, for that matter, ask a gay American about shutting up, blending in, and going along ("don't ask, don't tell", I believe they call it).
Acutally, only those of us who are ignorant of the consitution do. POGG has nothing to do with the Notwithstanding Clause (in fact, it precedes it by 114 years!) or anything else involving the relationship between government and the people. It only involves the relationship between levels of government: it's the catch-all phrase by which residual powers (i.e. those not explicitly enumerated) are assigned to the federal government.
That's funny, because the Security Certificate is actually a frequent topic of concern on that evil, commie government propaganda machine that is the CBC.
I'm sorry, did you say "big government"? Here on planet Earth, we might use that term to describe a government whose spending plans would add 1.6 TRILLION dollars to its debt over the next ten years...and that's before you count additional military spending or social security reform (which just happen to be its two primary policy concerns).
The US is a great country, but it's currently on a course towards disaster. Unfortunately, too many of its less sophisticated citizens (i.e. hicks) are too distracted by the scary brown "evildoers" to notice how badly Bush is screwing things up.
"Canada has signed an agreement with the US to halt what has been called asylum shopping - refugees who have been denied or think they will be denied asylum in one country, then crossing the border to apply in the other."
That has absolutely nothing to do with draft dodgers. What it does is stop overseas refugees from entering the United States and then crossing the border into Canada to claim refugee status, or vice versa. In that case the refugee claimant would be sent back to the first country, where they are still eligible to make a claim. The goal is to streamline the refugee process, not send back draft dodgers.
During the Vietnam war, Canada essentially decided that disagreements between a state and its citizens over compulsory military service was not Canada's problem. Since no Canadian law was broken, deportation was not an option. In the end, over 40,000 Americans sought sanctuary in Canada. A pardon was eventually granted by Carter for everyone except deserters. A good video collection on draft dodgers is hosted by the CBC.
When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire
I would submit that anyone who knows anything about our army would tell you that the quality of our troops and their training are among the best in the world.
Regular Canadian troops are on par individually with high level US ones. Even American commanders will tell you that.
Nevertheless, if the objective was to secure the bridge they were blockin
Once again you're slightly off. Oka was the main issue, and it had nothing to do with a bridge. Your "bridge" was the Mercier Bridge near montreal, which was blockaded by others as a show of support.
Finally, this isn't some fucking invasion of germany! The Mohawk were fucking fellow Canadian citizens (legality and treaty status aside)!
The army was called out in support of the public institution, the same way they were called out to help with flodds in Manitoba, or to perform Search and Rescue. Their mission was not to attack and destroy the Blockade. Their mission was to effect a solution with a minimum loss of life on both sides.
They accomplished their mission in textbook fashion. To suggest that the outcome could have been "better" with bloodshed speaks a great deal to your (lack of) character.
"Lawful Access", "Clear Skies", "No Child Left Behind", etc. Governments everywhere are getting better and better at Orwellian double-speak, but the main lesson we're learning is that when you get people in power, all they want is to stay in power. Pretty pathetic. It would be nice to see a government that had the best interests of the governed at heart, but that's not going to happen as long as human beings are involved.
(Damn, I overdosed on my cynicism pills this morning!)
-- The reason it's called the right wing? Irony.
You post sounds so extreme that people will either look this over and think "crack-pot" or they will be so numbed by the knowledge that this is actually true that they will skim right over it as the people have been desensitized for decades to the loss of rights and the abstraction of suffering that this post will not want to be acknowledged by their conscious.
The truth is - that this is just the surface of the problems we have. But lets you and I look at the root cause of this problem, as I am sure that most otehrs on this happy little site will mod us into oblivion.
The current manifestation that we see of the fascist state is long in the making. It is the karmic consequence of the actions of the US after WWII. We can trace the infiltration back to the beginnings of Opertaion Paperclip.
If you arent aware of this widely known and well documented effort by the US here are some primary highlights;
After WWII the cold war quickly took hold. (in fact it had begun even before WWII ended) The Nazi's and the Japanese held some pretty horrific experiments. These experiments were done on human subjects and yeilded an incredible amount of data on human psychology, biology, behavior and many other areas. In fact the modern 'Good Clinical Practice' (for documenting drug trials and testing) was fundamentally started by the Nazi research arms.
The research done by the Axis was horrific yes, but it was research that was highly valuable - just a disgusting way to go about getting it. This research was desperately sought after by the Russians and the US. (the research was across the spectrum from tech r&d to biopharma and human psych and behavioral studies)
The US and Russis began competing heavily to get ad keep Nazi researchers. Typically the US would grant asylum to researchers to come over with all their research. The US was rumored to give the Nazi assimilants new identities - many times they were brought over as Jewish refugees. These people came to the US and were absorbed into the SOS - which evolved into the CIA.
The CIA has spent decades being built up around the data and framework derived from the Nazi and US intelligence research during the war. CIA intelligence activities not only continued, but intensified after WWII.
As time went on the lines between political, civil and clandestine organizations and roles and influence blurred. A perfect example of this blurring and blending of archetypes of thought is in the long and varied carreer of George Herbert Walker Bush. A political child, he had a military service record in WWII, had his father use family connections to set him up with oil business in texas and used the companies as CIA raid points into Cuba. (when he was elected to Vice President he had a SEC filings for the CIA tool companies destroyed). He served as Ambassador to the UN Head of CIA and VP and President.
His policy when in the CIA was one of disinformation and secrecy. The point here is that we have seen since project paperclip, an ongoing growth of Nazi intelligence practices in their influence ofall areas in the government of the US - thie should be a whole book, rather than just a posting here so Ill leave it to the reader to do more looking into this, while I will attach some links at the end to get one on their way.
The US population has been under a lot of propaganda in the past 50 years - all of which has been to provide a population who is abstracted from real emotional issues and is slowly turned into a militaristic populous who acquiesce to the actions of a more fascist governement as the individual is taught to believe that they have no personal power. This is reinforced through showing that in the face of protest, the actions of our Rulers is unquestionable and absolute. You are given the appearance of freedom to speak, but your voice no longer has any meaning. You opinion is debased to the point of pollution.
Barring any further diving into even deeper shitholes of despair and slavery where we see that t
Maybe next time you can try to be more creative. The tinfoil thing is a worn out Slashdot standard. Sometimes its used legitimately when someone goes off the deep end about an unprovable conspiracy theory. In the case of Rendition you are just using it so you can stick your head in the sand and enter a state of denial about something that is increasingly well documented, and that you don't want to admit your beloved country does. As you are using it here:
tinfoil == denial
Maybe you object to the use of the term Fascist police state to the U.S. but that isn't conspiracy theory, its more a matter of opinion on how you describe the bizarre political path the U.S. is taking. To me this term is a case of if the shoe fits..... Fascism became a dirty word in World War II so it became politically incorrect to use it, so we have terms for left wing police states, Communist or Socialist, but we have no "allowed" politically correct term for right wing police states though the world has them, they are now a form of government with no name. At the moment the U.S., the U.K., Italy and Columbia certainly qualify as shades of Fascist state though they haven't yet achieved the extremes of World War II era German, Italy and Japan. Spain was pretty close to one before its government was pushed out of power at the ballot box last year. They are kinder, gentler fascist states to be sure, maybe compassionate fascism. Today's fascist states maintain a greater pretense of Democracy, they rely on a majority at the ballot box from a fascist leaning populace to keep them in power. It appears in the U.S. that we are now very close to being a one party state. As soon as the Republicans change the Senate rules on the filibuster so that they can vote closure with a simple majority the Democratic party will be essentially powerless at the Federal level and they can pretty much just stop bothering to show up. The Republicans are teetering on the verge of doing this, they call it the "nuclear option". If they exercise it they will eliminate the only remaining obstacle to their political agenda, the Senate fillibuster. Then they just need to bombard the American people with propaganda so that American's vote away their freedom, and vote Fascist, every 2 years.
As for the CIA's Rendition there isn't much that is conspiracy theory about it now. The government admits its happening, just not the details, there are numerous witnesses to the snatches in various countries around the world, the tail numbers of the two planes that are used are well known, one is a Gulfstream, the other a 737, owned by a front company for the CIA. The planes are crewed by men who were black masks to conceal their identity though the tail numbers on the planes tell everyone they are American.
Their flight plans aren't secret so they've left a trail of the places they've been including Gitmo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, etc.
An ex CIA agent admits he worked on it.
Congress is investigating it, its being referred to by them as "outsourced torture".
A number of people have been caught up in it and often released, usually by intervention of countries who still value basic civil liberties like Sweden and Canada. The program isn't disappearing all of its victims quite as perfectly as it would like.
About the only thing that is not provable, by design, is exactly how much torture is being used on the people snatched by rendition, and how many have died in the process.
About the only thing the Bush administration is denying is that they are technically endorsing the use of torture. Again by design they are sending people to countries who use torture in interrogation, and claiming their hands are clean because they have no control over what happens once the victims land in Egyptian or Saudi hands, though they gleefully take the intelligence that comes back from the process. The worst problem being, and most interrogators will tell you, is the intelligence is usually worth
@de_machina
You see anyone who speaks out against homosexuality as a criminal. In order for speech to be free, even things that seem bigoted must be free.
http://fromthemorning.blogspot.com
Don't tell me what I see.
You didn't read the law. Therefore a) you haven't even bothered to think even the tiniest bit about you're reason, and b) you're a troll.
Did you miss the part where sexual orientation is not even included in the current law, and you just forgot to mention that? And considering your link, did you miss the part where attempting, in good faith, to argue a religious subject is a valid defence?
It's obvious that you did. Therefore, you are a troll. Come back when you've actually thought about it. Unless, of course, you believe "Kill the dirty niggers" is just "speaking out against" them in a way which just "seems bigoted."