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CND Government Demands Widespread Tap Access
north_of_49 wrote to mention a Globe and Mail article stating that the Canadian government is seeking the ability to conduct surveillance on the communications of its citizenry. From the article: "The major boost in interception capacity is in proposals the government has put forward in confidential negotiations with the telecom industry as it prepares new legislation on high-tech wiretapping scheduled to be introduced next month. Government officials insist their proposals will bring Canada's laws on wiretaps -- drafted when people still attached alligator clips to telephone lines to listen in -- up to speed with new technologies. But privacy advocates fear an erosion of safeguards, and telecom companies worry the government wants them to build in a costly interception system."
is CDN - Thanks!
Fortunately laws like this are only good for 5 years until a new government has to pass another exception to the charter (charter exceptions are only good for 5 years, no more, and must be passed repeatedly by all new successive governments for the law to stay on the books).
Specifically, this violates section 8 of the charter:
Look, the ability is currently NOT THERE. This is a request to put the ability to listen properly into place. That doesn't mean that every conversation is going to be tracked; they want the ability to there in the event that it's needed. Funding a listening program is going to likely be a separate concern. Northern Paranoids can relax for now; Big Maple Leaf Brother isn't going to be listening into your pseudo-French/English conversations about hockey, you hoser.
Well, at least it's better than the fascist police state emerging the U.S.b
Governments always seem to load up their shotgun and miss the wrong target. They stumble on a solution to a problem, and don't ever question whether that's a problem they really should be solving or if the solution will actually work.
For the anti-terror ops, knowing who talks to whom is important, and can lead to fairly detailed knowledge of the workings of an organization. The contents of the conversations are in many ways less important, since it takes a real idiot to spill details over the phone. They are also labor-intensive, since you have to wait a long time between calls and then work hard to decipher exactly what's said.
A wiretap could reveal that two guys are "ready to go for the big trip this weekend", leading jackbooted thugs to sweep in and prevent the crime. Later the perps claim those rifles, hip waders and fishing rods in the trunk are there because they were going camping.
Wiretaps are for old people.
There are some bigger holes in the protection of the Canadian people:
Canada has gillions of miles of uncontrolled coastline.
Canada has thousands of miles of open border with the US. And we're armed!
There is this little fad called the Internet (and encrypted communications) that reached Canada a few years back. Like in 1975.
sigs, as if you care.
Canada is currently the only remaining target on Al Quada's list that hasn't been hit. This doesn't justify our governments actions, but there is still a threat. Safety is an illusion.
Canada's legal system is a little more tolerante to such laws though. In the U.S. its a huge deal when a law (specifically a constitutional ammendment) is added than in canada. Our govn't is basically a dictatorship while in, but their laws can quite rapidly be undone with a election (for those paying attention still, yes I know, this rarely happens... but its still possible).
It was the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police.
Very few others have been allowed to speak before the committee.
Well, isn't socialism all about the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few? In other words, the needs of society as a whole being more important than the rights of individuals?
That's not socialism, it's Utilitarianism. That which creates the most happiness.
Socialism (from Wiki):
Socialism is an ideology with the core belief that a society should exist in which popular collectives control the means of power, and therefore the means of production.
There is more defining both, but it is essentially Utilitarianism that has "needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few" A nice example from wiki:
A surgeon has six patients: one needs a liver, one needs a pancreas, one needs a gall bladder, and two need kidneys. The sixth just came in to have his appendix removed. Should the surgeon kill the sixth man and pass his organs around to the others? Or, indeed, what would stop him from simply hunting down and slaughtering the first healthy man (the seventh) he comes across on the street, patient or non-patient? This would obviously violate the rights of the sixth/seventh man, but act utilitarianism seems to imply that, given a purely binary choice between (1) killing the man and distributing his organs or (2) not doing so and the other five dying, violating his rights is exactly what we ought to do.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
What good is a piece of paper (ie. the constitution) if your politicians routinely stomp all over it, ignore it, or otherwise interpret it to be compatible with the desires of the day? I would rather have no piece of paper and a government with some semblance of sanity, rather than a piece of paper and a government that does not give a shit what it says.