Bill Would Let Police Monitor Email

Duuk2k2 writes "The Canadian federal cabinet will review new legislation this fall that would give police and security agencies vast powers to begin surveillance of the Internet without court authority. The new measures would allow law-enforcement agents to intercept personal e-mails, text messages and possibly even password-secure websites used for purchasing and financial transactions."

Comments

Officers need to be accountable

[bigwavejas]

Sometimes cops better judgment gets clouded because of the situation (relationship to the victim, gravity of the crime, etc), so the whole point of making it mandatory for a court order is you get an unbiased approval or denial for this type of surveillance. Turning this authority over to the police department would be a great disservice to sanctity of an individual's privacy.

Re:Officers need to be accountable

[Anonymous Cowpat]

[posts under real name]
I'm not implying that the court IS corrupt, but that it's by no means a foolproof method of removing abuse - only recently, here in the UK, have we had a bunch of cases overturned because the judge presiding over them wasn't unbiased (he had a tendancy to believe that people had done it, were coming up with pathetic excuses and so took to laughing their arguments off or cutting them off mid sentence) Now, what's to say that it won't go before a judge who really hates peadophiles and so hands a warrant over to any officer who happens to include 'possible peadophile' in the reasons for their request?
Never trust that anyone in authority will always do the right thing, that goes for the judicary too.

Re:Officers need to be accountable

[Forge]

The whole point of judicial aproval is that..

1. Judges understand the rules and are thus less likely to grant requests without justification.

2. They can't claim "I didn't know 'screwing my wife' isn't a valid reason for a wiretap". (See #1)

3. They add an extra person to the process. I.e. Detective wants wiretap. -> Gets his supervisor -> Supervisor goes to Judge.

The Judge dosn't have to be any more unbiased or less curropt. He just dosn't have the same personal motivs.

I.e. Your wife sleaping around dosn't afect him so you need to justify the tap.

Note that I use wiretap throghout this post. That's because eavsdroping on email is EXACTLY the same as a wiretap.

Not a chance.

[Pig Hogger]

Not a chance of this happenning. The minority government would not dare to this, especially that there is an election looming within the next 9 months.

Re:Not a chance.

[Eightyford]

I think it depends more on if the press makes a big deal out of this or not. Most Canadians don't follow these things too closely.

That'll work

[barc0001]

Because the bad guys would NEVER use encryption or even just offhand references to something in their planning that they transmit over an open, public medium, right?

Private communications are critical to a democracy

[Anonymous Coward]

At the postal museum in Washington, D.C. there is a sign that reads:

At the beginning of the new America, nearly all the news came by mail. When the Constitution was signed, it was rushed by post riders to every town that had a printing press. And that's how the newspapers were able to bring the resounding news of how we were to govern ourselves. The newspapers knew of it first by mail.

In England, for centuries, the mail was frequently scrutinized by agents of the Crown or of the Parliament. It could be worth your life to write a letter that might be seen as having the seeds of treason. This did not happen here. From the beginning, by and large, the U.S. mails have been free of eyes other than our own and those of the sender.

To the framers of the Constitution, the mail made the engine of democracy run--along with the newspapers. And newspapers then printed a good deal of correspondence. Rufus Putnam, a key military figure in the Revolutionary War, said, "The knowledge diffused among the people by newspapers, by correspondence between friends" was crucial to the future of the nation. "Nothing can be more fatal to a republican government than ignorance among its citizens."

As a journalist, I have sometimes been asked where my leads for stores come from. Much of the time, they come from opening the mail. Readers from all over the country send personal stories, newspaper clippings, local court decisions, and student newspaper editorials arguing for the First Amendment rights of students. There is no other way I would have known about these stories except through the mail. It is through letters that I often receive highly confidential stories about unfairness in the justice system from people who would not trust any other form of communication.

The framers of the Constitution knew how vital the mail would be when Article I was written to protect privacy of communication through the mail.

Nat Hentoff is a columnist for the Washington Post and the Village Voice, and the author of Free Speech for Me, but Not for Thee. How the Left and Right Relentlessly Censor Each Other.

They hate us for our freedom

[second class skygod]

... so let's get rid of it.

- scsg

Re:Easy...

[MerlinTheWizard]

That easy, are you sure? If the police can intercept your e-mail, then most likely it will become forbidden to encrypt it - or the allowed encryption level will be far too weak to be usable. Or... if they happen to intercept your e-mail and they can't figure out the encryption, they may hold it against you and send you to court. And so on. The possibilities (of awful stuff happening) are endless. And once again, the whole mass of citizens will suffer in order to get protected. Meanwhile, crime and terrorism will have no problems finding ways to circumvent all this protection crap. So basically, you haven't got any more protection, you have no privacy left and what's more, you voted for all that. Yay.

Judges are biased

[Sycraft-fu]

And sometimes had out warrants when they shouldn't. The lack of bias isn't important, the fact that there's a record is. If an officer has to come and present a reason for a warrant (the reason gets recorded) then there's a record. The warrant and related information is kept in the court record, and can be later reviewed to determine if the search was improper.

With something like this the police could just keep it all hush-hush and then make shit up at a later date to justif it. Since there's no record to compare it to see if it's the truth. Far too easy for someone to say "Well we had all this evidence so we started monitoring him and look! We were right" when the actuality was they had no evidence at all.

Re:Yes a court order is necessary

[Kwikymart]

Good point, but one flaw: You're quoting the media. I've read some articles today from a different source that conflicts with your position, that says they are indeed asking for the elimination of court orders.

So who's right? Don't trust the media. Go right to the source. So who where do we find the text of the bill?

Re:This is a surprise?

[demachina]

"U.S. remains the best place on earth"

Well at least in the eyes of Americans who are completely stuck on themselves and their country.

"best place on earth" is a totally subjective statement. I think you should probably qualify with "I think the U.S. remains the best place on earth". That would a be a true statement apparently. Without the "I think" part a few billion people would probably be willing to argue your point and would have a valid case. Different people value different things, apparently you value America as it today, many others would not.

Since 9/11, DMCA and the disappearance of the certainty of due process in the U.S. many people are simply refusing to even visit the U.S. for conferences and the like. If its so great why would that be?

I might have agreed with you before 2000 that the U.S. was one of the best places in the world. The Constitution our founders created was a remarkable document that laid a foundation for a remarkable and unique nation. They hoped it would last, they did everything they could to protect it, but they thoroughly expected it to be torn asunder by despots. The one thing they couldn't prevent was complete indifference on the part of the American people to the precious nature of that document.

Now it is in tatters and the U.S. is heading towards the same gutters where all the world's police states live, not very remarkable at all anymore. In the U.S. you can now be arrested and detained indefinitely without charge, without access to a lawyer or family, without trial. You can be tortured or killed while detained and no one will ever know unless a brave whistleblower steps forward. The government is detaining people in complete secrecy, people are being disappeared just like they were in Pinochet's Chile. Worse people are being snatched by the U.S. around the globe, in violation of international law and being whisked away for indefinite torture and interrogation by Rendition. You can be spied upon, the government can monitor your reading habits at the library or bookstore, they can do sneak and peak searches where they basically the break in to your home, and rummage through your belonging without you ever knowing. The government has fabricated "terrorism" cases against innocent people, in particular in Detroit two Arab men were convicted of terrorism charges based on a home video of their trip to Disneyland and the word of a conman who testified against them in return for reduced charges from the government. The conmen admitted he'd lied in a jailhouse confession which is the only reason these two innocent men aren't in jail today and we know the extent of the governments sham trials. Sham trials are another characteristic of a police state.

It seems the executive in the U.S. has in fact taken unto itself every dictatorial power you would need for a police state. They are using some restraint in applying them, especially focusing their malevolence on Muslims, so the U.S. doesn't look or feel like a police state, especially if you aren't Muslim, but if the executive branch felt like it nothing is really stopping them. If there is another 9/11 class incident to justify it I am confident the U.S. could descend in to martial law in a heart beat. The executive has drawn up all the plans for it.

About the only thing left that is not a dictatorship is we still have elections and could throw the people in power out, assuming the elections aren't rigged. But, police states have elections too, they just rig them so they aren't really elections, they are just a con to make people think they still have some power. After major irregularities in 2000, 2002 and 2004 it is quite open to debate if we do in fact still have free, democratic elections.

"And, most of all, no one goes around robbing you blind (tax-wise) to pay for those undelivered guarantees"

Damn ... did the U.S. government repeal Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes while I wasn't looking. Last I heard you were still paying heft

Re:Easy...

[lgw]

Steganography is an arms race. The technique you describe is easily detectable today (low-order color bits have differect statstical patterns than compressed or encrypred data). The techniques that aren't detectable today are probably going to be easy to detect in five to ten years. A disturbing thought given how easily the police could archive your email for later review.