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Bill Would Let Police Monitor Email

Posted by samzenpus on from the careful-what-you-write dept.

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."

13 of 439 comments (clear)

  1. Insert sarcasm tags: by Rei · · Score: 5, Funny

    Clearly, no abuse could come from this!

    --
    Kneel Before Christ!
  2. Officers need to be accountable by bigwavejas · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

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    "Simplify, simplify, simplify!" Thoreau
    1. Re:Officers need to be accountable by Anonymous+Cowpat · · Score: 5, Insightful

      [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.

      --
      FGD 135
  3. Aw, Canada by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    --

    --
    make install -not war

  4. Re:Easy... by Tackhead · · Score: 5, Interesting
    > Hello, PGP.

    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.

  5. Re:Not a chance. by Eightyford · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
  6. Misread that... by chriswaclawik · · Score: 5, Funny
    Did anyone else think that the headline said that Bill Gates would personally allow the police to read his email?

    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.
  7. Private communications are critical to a democracy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.

  8. Re:Is really PGP the solution? by crazyphilman · · Score: 5, Funny

    The answer is simple: encrypt your email, then embed it via Steganography in a Goatse photo.

    Na, na na na... na na... na na
    Can't touch this!
    Na, na na na... na na... na na
    Can't TOUCH this!

    Looking online! It's a cop! Reading my email cuz he just can't stop from STICKING! His nose in, where it don't belong so he GOES in

    But HELLO! What the hell is this? The cop's found a picture, something's amiss and blammo! Thanks to Goatse, "Oh my EYES!" he yells and the piglet can't see!

    Na, na na na... Na na... na na
    Can't touch this!
    Na, na na na... Na na... Na na
    Can't touch this!

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    Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
  9. They hate us for our freedom by second+class+skygod · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    - scsg

  10. Re:Easy... by Tackhead · · Score: 5, Interesting
    > Yes, it would really suck if we had both laws on the books, but there is nothing even on the horizon that would similarly compel people to give up their passphrases like that here in Canada.

    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.

  11. Judges are biased by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  12. Re:ok, but... by ergo98 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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).