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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."
Clearly, no abuse could come from this!
Kneel Before Christ!
Him, again?
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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.
"Simplify, simplify, simplify!" Thoreau
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.
Hello, PGP.
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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?
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
It's frustrating, in the U.S. and in Canada, that the same people suggesting intrusive nonsense like this are still in office.
...no I didn't mean our freedoms, or things that matter; I meant illogical tax cuts and questions of marriage....
Then again, it seems like all the important issues come up during election season...
<rant>
This is just like the Guilded Age of 19th century America, where politicians used the silver vs. gold debate to hide the real issues of economy, etc.... </rant>
Error 407 - No creative sig found
Almost everyone integrating GNUPG with their email solution so that all email is encrypted point to point. If the cops figured out a way around that, like, say, trying to make encryption illegal, then people will just switch to Steganography and send all their email using Goatse pictures.
Take THAT, Mr. Pig-man. It's GOATSE time!
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
With news like these, at first we all think of encrypting our mail with PGP/GPG but... how do we know that it will make a difference?
Maybe governments know how to decode it but it's kept in secret in order to create a false sense of security
Quick, the tinfoil hat!
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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.
Even I thought that was too incredible to believe.
A guy walks into a bar... well, I forgot the joke, but the punchline is that he's an alcoholic.
So, anyway, the telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Bob or Doug made, above the level of a very low blowing of wind across the mouth of an open beer bottle, would be picked up by it; moreover, so long as they remained within the field of vision which the map of Canada commanded, they could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the CRTC plugged in on any individual channel was guesswork. It was conceivable that they watched the CBC all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live--did live, from habit that became instinct--in the assumption that every beer you drank was overheard, and, except in darkness, every attempt to take off was, like, looked at real close-like, eh?"
- Some guy named George, Eh? He, like, wrote the functional spec for it. And he horked our beer.
Don't pretend this bill will give police and related investigatory services adaquete skills to prosecute more internet related crime! IT WON'T!! The only thing this bill will do, will be to allow police officers the right to violate our privacy without due cause!
The reason they (law enforcement) aren't able to prosecute child pornographers and other cyber-criminals better and faster has nothing to due with the fact that they can't get at data/communications quickly because they have to get warrants.
They aren't trained properly and not enough resources (manpower and money) is dedicated to finding and convicting cyber-criminals!!
STOP creating laws that have great acronyms, are "for the children", etc. Create laws will allow proper funding and manpower to be given to the agencies/groups that need it and will use it properly!
No hearing, no trial, no independent psychiatric evaluation, no appeal, nada.
I wonder how much one has to criticize the government(s) before the Provincial Psychiatrist serves your bank with an order to turn over your money.
You could've hired me.
The software lumber? Naw... that's all being outsourced to India anyways.
I think you mean softwood lumber. And that's not the only issue; what about Canadian beef? US Farmers are still fiercly rallying about how unsafe beef is in Canada. Let me tell you something. One mad cow was found in all of Canada, and the investigation showed that it got mad cow disease before it was shipped up here from the US .
People. I can't stand them.
Silicon & Charybdis McLuhan Kildall Papert Kay
... so let's get rid of it.
- scsg
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.
I suppose that is the American spelling... "Me fail English? That is unpossible!"
Oh well, what the hell...
1. Hard drive hardware encryption
2. Hard drive boot loader software encryption
3. OS software encryption
4. Container software encryption
5. File software encryption
6. Nym and Mixmaster remailing
7. Chained proxies
People have for years scoffed that these were only for terrorists, kiddie pr0n posters, and trolls. Then they said that you could just move to Canada. Well, what are you going to do when the draft dodger paradise forgets what civil rights like speech, privacy, and so on are all about?
Of course course, we should be less worried about a known dallier with socialism like Canada than the home of people who told the British crown where to stick it. I think one of our founders said something about not deserving either security or freedom if being willing to trade one for the other and something else about hanging together or hanging separately.
You know, criminals misuse guns, knives, and baseball bats. We don't stop owning or using them when and where necessary because of it. We shouldn't look askance at any and all methods of maintaining our privacy. What's next? We leave our doors unlocked and wide open because drug dealers close and lock theirs? Let's not be a bunch of yutzes.
If anything, the government is single-handedly ENCOURAGING criminals and terrorists to use advanced technologies for privacy by going on about them at length constantly and pushing therefore towards wider adoption by the civilian populace. Eventually these things will become normal and everyday and what frigging law can they pass then that will undo it without undoing the entirety of the pinnacle of Western civilization, freedom and primacy of the people over government?
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
Seriously. Can you name one place in the entire world where the freedom of the people is significantly improving? Iraq may be the only place where that's true, and I think most of us would agree that the "freedom" the people have there is more a matter of appearances than reality. I'm not here to debate about Iraq, though, so feel free to count it as an example of improving freedom in the world if you wish.
But I can name many more places where real freedom is heading into the gutter than where it's on the upswing.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
Canada's got a couple of things working against this proposed bill. First off, we're in a minority Government right now, and I can name two political parties which are used to hold the balance on a regular basis who would have nothing to do with such a horrid bill. Also, the bill wouldn't pass the House of Commons for a long while, considering how much stalling would happen in comittee. This is probably how all these horrid bills you see will be forgotten, we're on the verge of a federal election the moment the House of Commons returns from recess, and bills die on the floor if not passed before Parliament disolves.
Also, it would never survive a Charter challenge, especially since aspects of the bill allow police to intercept and read open email without a warrant. Mail in Canada, like in the US, is probably one of the most protected forms of communication. One would argue (I can't wait until Michael Geist (http://michaelgeist.ca/) gets his hands on this), that it clearly is in direct opposition to Canada's Charter of rights and Freedoms. Section 8 of the charter clearly states that "Everyone has the right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure."
In short, boo to the Liberals for proposing such a piece of work, yay for the polical system of Canada working against it.
Dan Brown's book addresses this very issue. The one line that echoes in my head when reading this story is a line from the novel.
"Who will guard the guards?"
That line may have appeared in Dan Brown's book, but he didn't write it. He quoted the famous phrase ("quis custodiet ipsos custodes") from Juvenal's sixth satire.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
To use codes and cyphers.
"Could you pick up some steaks on the way home? I was thinking about cooking steak and veges with gravy." becomes "Cows in the paddock, soylent green grocer tap-dances on water."
Then you GPG encrypt it at anything above 4096 bit. :)
Fun for the whole police department.
His name is Robert Paulsen...
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.
So many times I've used the metaphor...
A frog, some people swear, is incapable of noticing subtle rises in the temperature of the water it occupies. These same folk say that if you put a frog in a pot of cold water, and slowly let the water come to a boil, the frog will happily do froggy things in the water until it boils to death.
The frog is now dead. The US and its clients have boiled away all the water in the pot.
Go back to your reality TV shows, citizens, nothing to fear unless you are doing something criminal or unpatriotic or that which undermines the President's authority in wartime (which by defining the war's purpose as eliminating a common noun, will be eternal)...
You aren't a criminal, are you? Or anti-party-in-power, which will be equivalent?
Are you sure?
They'll be watching.
Forever.
6 of the 9-11 terrorists came through canada, on the catferry from NS to bar harbor to get to boston
You have a source for this? I realize that it became a meme that terrorists came from Canada, and it is true that Rassam came from Canada on an attempt to bomb LAX, however it was my impression, and this was reiterated many times, that not one of the 9-11 terrorists came through Canada. Not that it matters anyways, as ferry or not they're still going through US Customs, and thus it's still up to the US to maintain its security (just as it does, or rather didn't do, when all of the others flew right in and should have raised every red flag).
6 of the 9-11 terrorists came through canada, on the catferry from NS to bar harbor to get to boston.
While I'll happily concede if you can name a credible source, I did search and found that this is an urban myth that the slackjawed right-wingers use to imagine that the rest of the world is to blame, rather than themselves. There is, according to what I can find (in actual credible news) zero proof that any of the 9/11 terrorists ever touched foot in Canada. Instead they were busy spending their time taking advantage of all the US had to offer.
The message didn't last too long, though, because a couple of people took it too seriously.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Hi!
When you start lying on slashdot, you should exclude details, because you kinda got mixed up.
First of all, you claim that life was good as a teen in the middle to late 70's. In the same paragraph, a few lines later, you claim that the situation got so bad in 1975 that your mother had to go back to working. Now now, correct me if I'm wrong, but 1975 is quite in the middle 70's, no?
Second, how come your american daughter goes to school in Canada? It's pretty clear you have not moved back 'home' yet, because people were downright mean 'last time you were in Canada' and not 'last time I moved back to Canada'. As a sidenote, every province spends a lot of money on public education each year and we don't consider american schools as 'rich schools', really.
Based on these two statements you just pulled out of your ass, I assume that the rest of your article is also based on totally fictious facts. This text has absolutely no value at all. Now resume reading www.invadecanada.us as your post gets modded all the way back to -1, troll. Thanks for your disinformation.
Your attacks on Islam are simply false. Your labelling of people as 'Jihadis' is a horrible deception. Jihad means 'inner struggle'. It's a term that refers to one's battle of good vs evil. There are no such thing as 'Jihadis' except for in the right-wing media. And who claimed that the attacks were targetting places that gave loans to women? The right-wing media. Who won't let women drive? Who puts them in tents? You are so full of shit it's not funny. Are you a republican senator or something?
... particularly a 30 year-old one that hasn't been fit to fly for the past 20 years.
... I do plently. I'm a member of a local peace group as well as the International Socialist Organisation. I educate people about the real reasons why terrorism exists. I argue for a more just world.
As for putting women in charge of Space Shuttles ( no idea why you capitalised those 2 words ), so fucking what? In Islamic countries, the percentage of women that get a university degree is higher than in the US. What's so good about being 'in charge' of a space shuttle anyway
As for not doing a thing
There's no point in beating your chest and claiming "I Am American, and I will Save the World!", at any cost. To save the world fron the next atrocity, you have to understand why atrocities happen. To do that, have to go beyond the neo-conservative, anti-Islamic propoganda and look at what your country has done to create the current situation.
We're an Outlook shop.
Bill already lets anyone monitor our email.
(Thank you! I'll be here all week!)
it was my impression, and this was reiterated many times, that not one of the 9-11 terrorists came through Canada
Your impression is correct. Hearing this myth repeated ad nauseum by Fox pundits is one thing, but when a politician spouts it as well, that's another. When Newt Gingrich used this "fact" earlier this year, our Ambassador to the U.S. called him out pretty quickly, and forced an apology. Here is one article on the story.
Look at the tomato! Isn't it sad? He can't dance! Poor tomato!