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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.
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.
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! --
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.
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.
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.
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