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Canadian Government Going Big Brother?

Posted by timothy on from the is-it-mooses-or-meese dept.

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!"

19 of 479 comments (clear)

  1. There go my plans by cft_128 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Well, there go my plans to move to Canada.

    --

    Underloved Movies and Pub Quiz: donotquestionme.org

    1. Re:There go my plans by _ph1ux_ · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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

  2. Where is the Privacy Commissioner? by Staplerh · · Score: 5, Informative

    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
  3. nice... but no meat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  4. OH NO!!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    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?

  5. Get out the aluminium foil by DanielMarkham · · Score: 5, Funny

    Time to make a tinfoil tuke.

  6. Meh.... by greypilgrim · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  7. Hmmm by dcclark · · Score: 5, Funny

    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!

  8. "Our" Internet? by Tackhead · · Score: 5, Funny
    > Is this really what we want our Internet to be?

    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?

  9. Re:But, but, but... by analog_line · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  10. Re:From what I've learned from living in Canada. by Dixie_Flatline · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  11. Re:From what I've learned from living in Canada. by Frostalicious · · Score: 5, Informative

    I lived in Vancouver, BC for a couple of months a few years ago.

    I've lived in Vancouver for 32 years, and I think you did not get an accurate picture in your couple of months. There is great outrage whenever scandal shows up. The provincial NDP party was recently voted into oblivion due to scandal. No premiere has survived re-election for as long as I can remember. The federal Liberals went from massively dominant to a minority government due to scandal.

    There was the
    bingogate scandal
    fast ferries scandal
    sponsorship scandal
    casinogate scandal
    tainted blood scandal
    strippergate

    The list goes on. If I was to complain about something, it would be about too much scandal.

  12. Re:I don't think so. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    If only that were true. The government's plans on lawful access as described in the article, as well as the recommendations on copyright, come from politicians and policy makers, not lobbyists. Geist's website now includes a link to a version of the article with background links on these issues.

  13. Proportion... BLOWN!!! by Goose42 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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:

    "# It must be demonstrably necessary in order to meet some specific need.
    # It must be demonstrably likely to be effective in achieving its intended purpose.
    # The intrusion on privacy must be proportional to the security benefit derived.
    # It must be demonstrable that no other, less privacy-intrusive, measure would suffice to achieve the same purpose."

    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.

  14. In reality, this will never pass or be held as law by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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! --
  15. Where can I go? by StratoChief66 · · Score: 5, Funny

    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."
    1. Re:Where can I go? by Lord+Haha · · Score: 5, Funny

      Quebec?

      just kidding...

  16. Re:Cradle to the grave socialism by bhirsch · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  17. Re:But, but, but... by Dashing+Leech · · Score: 5, Insightful
    "That the U.S. isn't as bad as the slashdotters say, and Canada isn't so great?"

    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.