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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."
Of course Canada needs these invasions of our freedom. After those terrorists crashed those planes into the CN Tower in Toronto, how can we possibly go back to that pre-9/11 thinking? If only the RCMP had intercepted their emails, we would have nabbed them on their commute from Pickering. Then there would have been no more terrorists, and we could get our freedom back from the nice Progressive Conservatives tirelessly toiling to protect us.
After all, it's not like military lawyers stopped intelligence agencies from intercepting Mohammed Atta and his fellow planebombers a year before they did any damage. You're thinking of that third-world failed regime to the South.
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make install -not war
Hello, RIP
Simply demand passphrases - under penalty of law - from anybody whose packetstream, when decoded, contains the string "BEGIN PGP KEY BLOCK".
And RIP, privacy.
Back when the telephone tapping legislation was first created, some wise law maker decided a judge should look at the evidence and allow or deny the police the ability to monitor people.
Now what would happen if that same legislation (on phone tapping) was created today? Would the police and 'security services' be able to listen to anyone they wanted without any kind of oversight?
Where did our legal right to privacy go? And why do governments have no respect for people's right to communicate over the internet? Like it is some second class method of communication.
You miss my point -- once upon a time, there was no RIP in the UK, either.
This law is useless without a Canadian equivalent to the RIP. Therefore, the Canadian government will be forced to implement an RIP-equivalent law within a year or two of implementing the "all your connections are subject to permanent sniffing" law.
The reason you implement these laws piecewise is so that Citizen Canuck can look at the law and say "That won't affect me, because I'll just use encryption", (or so Ernest Englishman can say "It's a fair cop, but they 'ave to get a court order to gather the evidence they'll use before demanding my password under RIP").
And because, under a parliamentary system such as that used in the UK (and Canada), by the time the second half of the law is drafted, it's already too late.
I remember as a child in the late 60s and a teen in the mid to late 70s that life was good: the Canadian dollar was at or above par with the U.S. dollar, people who worked had health care coverage through their employer, and Canadians had a reputation for being friendly -- at least that's what Americans seamed to say.
Then, Trudeau's brand of sweeping socialism set in. Medicare became universal for everything. Taxes soared and the government went into serious debt. The dollar fell. It was harder and harder to make ends meet -- not so much because of inflation, but rather because of the tax burden (Canadian couples can't file jointly, so traditional families with one income earner really got taxed badly -- my mother had to return to work in 1975 to help pay our family's income taxes!).
But, many thought this was a worthwhile price to pay for our nanny state.
Over the years, taxes rose, and all those government services declined in quality. Waiting lists for medical care grew and grew and grew. These days, what qualifies as a middle class lifestyle in the U.S. is but a dream of wealth for many Canadians: being able to pay a kid to mow one's lawn is a big luxery.
Last time I was in Canada, people were downright mean, espescially when they found out I had worked in the U.S. for several years -- how dare I not pay my share of taxes "at home" (Er, because I wasn't using any of the services, and had paid far more than the share I consumed when I had lived there?). My daughter was berated by her teacher in school for bringing in her previous year's (U.S.) public elementary school yearbook for show and tell: how dare she "show off the rich school yearbook" from a school that no other child present could ever hope to attend.
It appeared that those "nice to Americans" people had degenerated to the level of rats, scrambling to survive, amid a society in decay -- a dog eat dog world, envyious of anyone who might live better by working harder, never seeing the socialist system as the root of their malaise.
Particularly after Canada decided not to join the U.S. in it's "Adventure of the Willing", many Canadians I met appeared to have been emboldened beyond an indifferance toward the U.S. (always masking thinly some degree of envy) to downright hatred -- some to the point of praising known terrorists for their attacks against the U.S.
It is very true that "you can't go home again."
You could've hired me.
The Americans use the NSA to monitor mon american communications because under their laws, foreigners have no rights. The Canadians use CISIS to monitor american communications for the same reasons. Then they trade data.
I once sent and email to Australia when the net was young and in it I used some words that could be interpreted in isolation as suspicious. Then I put a note in the email to the effect I knew it was going to be read by the NSA and I made a comment that if they were worried about what I was "really up to" they should check out www.blah.com.
Within 12 hours the server picked up hits from the NSA. Then they were dumb enough to be using windows machines. For anyone wanting to penetrate their security - its pretty trivia. A simple honeypot is a good start.
There seems to be just no limit to the depths of depravity that paranoia will drive these people. Then they think they are being righteous. Meanwhile as they go off chasing ghosts they are perfectly willing to ignore huge white collar crimes in the way of frauds that are being perpetrated via stock market and other swindles on an almost daily basis. Enron is just one example.