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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!"
Well, there go my plans to move to Canada.
Underloved Movies and Pub Quiz: donotquestionme.org
Where is our Privacy Commission during this?
Trolling is a art,
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.
Hmm, hopefully our privacy commissioner will step up to the plate on this issue. A few weeks ago, Slashdot was trumpeting the privacy commissioner as a good thing for Canada - now I see a few other posters desparaging Canada. This is good, but hopefully if people raise enough awareness (the Star article will help), and word gets out things can change.
Our government bowed to public pressure with respects to the American ballistic missile defence programme, and they'd bow to any sort of pressure towards the ISPs with regards to this. Of course, it can't hurt to let the privacy commissioner know that people care about this issue.
Privacy Commissioner: http://www.privcom.gc.ca/
"There's no success like failure, and failure's no success at all."
- Bob Dylan
In Russia, ISPs have to aborb the cost of providing monitoring to the FSB.
In the US, it's called CALEA (among other things).
Where's the proposed bills that would bring this into law? The journalist makes no mention of it.
Seems to be more along the lines of bitching about VoIP services. The Canadian privacy commission would never allow this to go through.
Canada is not the Utopia that Slashbots love to make it out as!!! What's next? Are we going to find out that Europe is the same? My word, what will we ever do? Is this the end of Milhouse?
Time to make a tinfoil tuke.
if its anything like my older brother is like we have nothing to worry about. ah yes the memories of total lack of caring.
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.
I lived in Vancouver, BC for a couple of months a few years ago. I follow politics in the U.S actively and when I was in Canada I read the Globe and Mail everyday. From what I could tell, the government in Canada gets what it wants and the Canadian public rarely engages in succesfull political activism. Quebec is an exception, but as far as I could tell, the whole sucession thing was about language and cultural issues. I can't understand why but the general public in Canada is absolutely docile about all things political. Perhaps it's that the newspapers and the CBC seems to generally ignore, obfuscate and smooth over any internal political controversies.
Speaking as a student living in Canada and using Canadian broadband, I highly approve of this move by our most excellent and intelligent government! They truly are a wonderful bunch of beautiful and caring people!
psst... End-Say Elp-Hay Ow-Nay!
Somewhere in the West, ca. 1806. The Lone Ranger and Tonto are hiding together behind a rock to escape a withering field of arrows fired by a hostile tribe of Native Americans.
Lone Ranger: "Wow, we're sure facin' a lotta them Injuns!"
Tonto: "What you mean 'we', paleface?"
~wavylines as we fast-forward two centuries~
Somewhere in Cyberspace, ca. 2006. A techie and a legislator are hiding together behind a firewall. Beyond the firewall are piles of blogs, spam, pr0n, and lobbyist- and law-enforcement sponsored counterproposals of varying degrees of stupidity.
Techie: Is this really what we want our Internet to be?
Legislator: What you mean 'our', taxpayer?
I guess there's always Australia.
I have gas, but my car uses petrol.
By the way, here in the U.S., schools (and everybody else) can freely surf my website. I guess you canuck educators will have to send me a check. Just remember, it was your idea.
See what I've been reading.
That the U.S. isn't as bad as the slashdotters say, and Canada isn't so great?
You're only half right. Canada isn't so great.
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.
Thank you Micheal Geist, for blowing something this routine out of proportion.
Thankfully, Canada has one of the most online governments on the planet. Here's exactly what they, and the public that responded to the governement, had to say about the Lawful Access updates. Of particular note is the Privacy Commissioner's comments:
The law isn't going to pass if it doesn't meet those criteria, among others. I honestly don't see a problem. The only reason that this update is going through is to ensure that law enforcement have the same abilities, irregardless of the technology. They can already intercept telephone and fax communications lawfully, this just ensures tehy can do the same with TCP/IP traffic.
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! --
I'm outraged by this as a Canadian Citizen! Why, if this passes I'll have to move to Can... where does a Canadian move when his govenment starts going crazy for power?
Frylock: "We should have cloned twenties, Jackson wouldn't have given a fuck."
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.
Don't believe everything the U.S. private health insurance industry tells you. Expensive or complex procedures are commonly done on a waiting list basis, "first come, first serve" basis, not randomly as you imply. 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.
Canadian health care is not nearly as bad as you've been led to believe. So, please stop misleading others.
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.
You're right, that's Germany where it actually is illegal to deny the Holocaust. In Canada it is perfectly legal to deny the Holocaust, you just can't spread that belief as part of a campaign to incite hatred towards a group (such as Jews) or propagate a movement based on this effort (such as neo-Naziism). Incidently, the person in question here was a German national, exported to Germany, and imprisioned by Germany under German law. He was also deported from the U.S. back to Canada while trying to obtain U.S. citizenship. So neither the U.S. nor Canada wanted him.
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.
You should do some more research before you call someone ignorant. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is quite different from the US Constitution (and its Bill of Rights), especially in that the the former is easily circumvented when deemed justifiable. Perhaps you should have read section 1 of it:
"The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society."
This specific clause has been used repeatedly in court to nullify the rights and freedoms supposedly guaranteeed by the charter.
Whatever stuff you and Ann Coulter are smoking... you should really share.
Your "points", where not incomplete are completly incorrect.
Read the application forms carefully: you have to agree to live in Ontario permanently.
Do you mean this form?
Um, no shit you have to live in Ontario permanently. As opposed to say, living in Quebec and renting an apartment in Ottawa for the weekend, then claiming both OHIP and Quebec Health Benefits? That form seems simple enough to me if you keep your idology in check. Permanent as in primary residence, not forever. There's a huge section of "returning to Ontario". Duh.
Canada does not prevent emigration, but, in many cases it makes it illegal.
In light of your misreading of the simple OHIP form, I think you need to elaborate on this statement.
For example, RRSP HBPs become repayable in full within 60 days of becoming non-resident, or subject to being included in income
You're correct, I would consider this "fair". You can't possibly suggest that it isn't because you feel overtaxed. Again, you fail to support your argument. RRSP have that second "R" in them for a reason. The gov't is trying to get you to save for retirement, not issuing a tax break. How you interpret the plan is not their fault.
there is no joint tax filing as there is in the U.S
I'm not familiar with US tax law, but if your spouse was a stay-at-home type, then he/she would pay no tax at all in Canada, and you could claim the spousal amount. If you put all your savings into both RRSP's and RESP's for your kids, you'd be paying some pretty low taxes I'm sure. If you were smarter and opened of a small business, you could write off your spouse as an employee if she did your books, then write off the car you leased, etc etc.
When you get down to it,US citizens pay less tax than Canadian however you look at it, so it's kind of silly to compare individual structures.
How many hundreds of thousands of dollars do I have to repay to make up for a CA$10k government scholarship I foolishly accepted in the 1980s
I have no idea what the heck you're on about here...Are you suggesting the only benefit you received from the gov't was a scholarship? Are you suggesting you shouldn't repay a student loan?
I'm not sure what you're talking about really.
If the government services were on a par with the taxes paid, it would not be so bad,
I suppose it's a matter of perspective... clearly, certain events in my family's history would have left us broke had we been without publicly provided health care. (Which in the US, a the son of a single mother of 3 we would have, certainly.)
As someone who made use of that helping hand and now sits quite confortably on the other side of the fence I have no problems contributing to our services. Did you factor in lower crime and higher quality of life into your "pragmatic" calculations?
Living in Canada in a rural area (even by Canadian terms) I rarely see a police car much less anyone who IDs for liquor, or strangers. I doubt a system of constantly watching rural areas for those terrorists that are terrorizing farms, would be financially feasible. I mean our government's party is called "Liberal" but that does not mean they are liberal enough to let a system, especially an independantly controlled one be set up for the government or private company usage.
Ever since the installment of the Patriot Act, Canadians had a sort of hushed wait for their version which came and never was really implemented. Due to the recent tragedy involving 4 shot mounties it appears to be the "Reichstag" in the unravelling of these "Big Brother" type surveillance and systems of control.
But in reality, atleast in Canada this system will not work because most Canadians on their own will spot any kind of thing going on, and with the lack of manpower they better start to invest trust in the common citizen rather than turn them against each other with idiotic ways of monitoring us all.
Since when was the citizen corrupt enough to warrant monitoring from the government?
Kind of like a group of criminals to watch over a public school.
We should be the ones with a Little Brother system monitoring the government, tattletailing every time they do something wrong..now if only we could convince someone to hand out punishment.
[cx]
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.
Oh wait...Patriot Act.
Nevermind.
well, in response to you and the other who claims that I stretch the truth, let me qualify my post a bit for you.. it was late when I did it, so;
Yes, what I am trying to show in these posts is several ideas:
1. that after the operation paperclip which the US assimilated Nazi scientist (usually SS) into the intelligence body, we can see how some of the philosophies of the SS and Nazi's in general thrived in the super secret, well funded CIA when there was little actual oversight to the "How" of their work.
and that now the US is seeing how this choice has affected the US on all spectrums as the mindset brought into the US at the highest levels has seeped through to our political and judicial systems. Placing us a subtle coup of character, marching us towards a repeat of old and terrible mistakes.
2. That the bush body (and yes I am aware of clintons list as well) is rife with mysterious deaths, usually people close to the family who would have been in a position to know something come to suspicious deaths. The plane crash theme is significant in its commonality, and therfore lshould be observed more closely to see why. If we beleive all the FAA statistical data about how planes are orders of magnitude safer than other forms of transport - I think we would find that the statistical risk here is quite incongruent with national averages.
3. anyone who hands down just ignores the fact that the majority of the political whos who of the US can be found in this family tree is just fooling themselves into comfort as the reality of the ruling class upon them is too much for them to admit that we are, in fact, still fealty.
Yes, you are right I didnt cite how far removed these people are - I actually do cite this in my full length write up on the presidential cousins, but the only copy of which I had was on a board that is currently offline - so I posted the straight list.
The people we see here in this list is interesting in the fact that I hold that it would be damn hard to find any other (except one) family tree which has the density of political figureheads (significant political figureheads) in it. Most people I have discussed this with have started out with the same argument "You dont show how removed these people are" or "you can trace the relationship from anyone to anyone if you trace back far enough" - while these two comments, simple enough, seem to throw the "conspiracy theorist" label at me - and will quite effectively re-close the minds of other readers who would be on the verge of not wanting to look too deep, it does not hold up when looked at statisticaly. The density of political names within this tree IS significant. It is also significant the fact that this is one family tree that goes directly back to european royalty.
When you look at the statistics of those who have been in charge of this country in the light of the TYPE of government that has been put in place (a representative democracy - do not confuse our country with a democracy) you can see that this actually a little odd. Through putting in place a representative democracy, the actual vote of the "people" is abstracted from final decision making process. The representative group in effect in only given the consultation of the people on the overall trend of the political conscious landscape. Which if looked in the context of the Stern Father vs Nurturing WorldView, we can see that the overall conscioussness of the country, can be skewed through several tactics.
Finally, I can prove that I have been writing about this subject since before Moore came into the limelight as a tool of the propaganda machine. So try to actually look at the fact that there has been a hell of a lot more thought put into the ruling of people through the ages than you will ever put into these observations in your lifetime, and you will realize that the veils of delusion and the "conspiracy" defense mechanisms are in reality not your own, but effectively placed social triggers. Layer the notion of mass conspi