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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!
CAN or CDN are accepted shortforms for Canada. I know anyone could miss Canada. All tucked away down there
Three cheers for big government and reduced citizens' rights! Hip-hip HUZZAH...
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:
A comment made by someone at the bottom of the article:
The real purpose is to give the Recording Industry access to people who trade music files.
Correct.
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.
Now where am I supposed to flee to when things go south in the US.
I'm packing my bags and moving to -- oh sh*t!
Okay, it's a joke, and I know that a large part of the Canadian population lives in urban areas - BUT, having said that: why would a country like Canada resort to such drastic measures? To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, 'Who would give up liberty to gain security deserves neither liberty nor security.' I live here in the U.S. and am disgusted by all the increasing trickle of loss in civil liberties. One of these days we're going to wake up and it's Big Brother - we're really getting dangerously close. If Bin Laden wanted to destroy our 'way of living' - well, I hate to say that he already succeeded. Michael
Awww, how cute, America Junior is trying to be like it's big brother...
The second comment on the article says it all:
"Criminals and terrorists can easily bypass these measures using
encryption, stegonography, etc. The real purpose is to give the
Recording Industry access to people who trade music files. Anne
McLellan has been working with them on this for a couple of years. For
the sake of the greed of a few huge music corporations they're taking
up the tools of the Police State. Political surveillance is a heartbeat
away from this.You are the target. "
Nice.
Perhaps it has something to do with the recent finding that China has more spies in Canada than in any other nation? The government can't be too happy about that - they may be feeling they've been too lax.
Come on!!! CANADA???
Exactly what kind of crime do they have to deal with in Canada?
Maple Syrup Trafficing?
Have they actually thought about asking the neighbours where they have gathering if they've noticed anything "strange" lately? That will save telecom companies a lot of money and certain the 24/5/365.25 survalence costs.
By and large I agree with what you're saying. However, this example is somewhat lacking. You can ask neighbours all you want. They will tell you "those guys are part of a gang for sure...." but the cops already know that. Generally it's easy for the cops to figure out that guys are "up to something" but finding hard evidence to prove that this is the case is much more elusive. Lots of kids walk around wearing clothes that make them look like gangsters, but we should only put into jail those that have actually committed serious crimes!
Now, wiretaps and other surveillance give police the ability to find out about illegal activities, and thereby get the evidence they need. This of course doesn't mean that any and all surveillance is justified. I agree with you that such invasions must be kept to an absolute minimum. Yet it would be naive of us to think that putting criminals in jail would be possible without some measure of information gathering (i.e.: surveillance). What remains is to (democratically) decide how much surveillance is acceptable.
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.
Lets make a law saying that all our elected officials are required to have a live webcam feed 24/7/365 from their offices, cars and houses.
In this most democratic form of the 'Big Brother show', we would be able to hold our elected officials directly accountable. We would see what lobbyists are met, how long a lunch break they take, how ethically they shop, if they are really recycling and so on.
My little Linux and tech blog
You may think that the Netherlands is a free country, but we have had laws like that for years here.
Every company providing public communication has to be able to tap all traffic on demand. This not only includes fixed telephone lines, but also mobile (including location of the mobile set), Internet, etc.
The number of active taps per capita here is amongst the highest in the world. And the consumer is paying for all this, as the cost compensation given to the companies is not nearly covering the real cost of making these taps.
Furthermore, tapping is addictive. Now that the secret service has so many taps running, they start to see that it would be even better when everything is tapped and kept, so that after-the-crime analysis of data can be done as well.
Current law proposals are moving in this direction. Call records, mobile position data, Internet logs etc have to be kept longer and be made available on request.
This is of course only an intermediate step. Once this is implemented, it is found that even more information could be gained from the actual traffic, and the next requirement is to record all phone conversations and keep them for half a year. And to capture all Internet data sent to and from customers.
Worst of all is that we are part of the EU. Politicians abuse the EU for a kind of ping-pong game where they first draft up some idiotic idea, then discuss it (behind closed doors) with fellow politicians in other EU countries, a few countries implement the same idea, and then they report back in their own country that the new laws have to be passed for harmonisation within the EU.
In the first phase, any protest is waved away with "it is too early to discuss it, too early to protest, we are still drafting it and negotiating with EU partners" and then after some time (and a behind-closed-doors decision in the EU), the stance is changed to "we cannot turn this back, we are mandated by the EU to implement these laws, no need to protest because we are not making the decision".
This nearly went wrong with software patents, and now the same risk occurs with extended tapping of all telephone and internet traffic.
What amazes me most is that todays politicians are so easily being abused by terrorists.
Terrorism is achieving its goals using threat, and politicians easily play their game of threat amplification. Without having to actually perform any attacks, they move the entire free world to break down their free societies and destroy all the values they were so proud of a decade ago.
That seems like a bigger victory than blowing up some building.
"Nice thing about that, is the feds can declare such, and only a very small percentage of ppl (with access to the right equipment) can confirm or deny it."
Bullshit. Anyone with the right information (which is freely available) and access to a university Biology lab can verify it. THOUSANDS of people.
Stop lying, you're embarassing yourself.
It was the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police.
Very few others have been allowed to speak before the committee.
The question you have to ask, is:
Why are our governments (Canadian, US, others) so terribly afraid of their citizens?
The question is what constitutes a 'reasonable' search? That alone begs the question, "If i'm not an identified suspect as a party to a criminal act, does the government have reasonable grounds to observe me in ANY fashion?" I believe that the US courts have held that with respect to law enforcement, there must be a legitimate reason for any government entity to entangle itself within activities of a citizen's day-to-day life. Legitimate reason arises when one is a suspect of a criminal act that has been committed, or one's actions are a very clear indication that a crime is about to be committed. Downloading a file, talking on a telephone, walking in a public park, or onto a public transit system do not qualify in any sense. Therefore, any effort to observe the citizenry at large to determine if they *might* be doing something illegal, is completely unreasonable.
Its George Bush and Karl Rove's fault i tell you! Its all about the extreme right wing Republicans and their lust for power with George Bush! They're all bought off by the record executives - its a plot!
oh wait - did you say Canada?
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
If you lived here, you'd know that: A. If this is passed, our taxes will increase. Probably shown as "Access Fee". A(1). This said tax will be taxed again 7% GST. B. The Canadian Government (defined); is capable of "passing" law, but in-capable of "enforcing" laws. Same with everything from election platform promises to general public funding. C. Oh, and... Hoser Defined I agree. It's a plot to monitor us Canadians downloading our copious amounts of Rush and Tragically Hip music.
The beatings will continue until Morale Improves!
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
Perhaps the question we should ask is: why aren't modern governments afraid enough of their own citizens to tread very, very carefully when it comes to peeking into our private affairs?
I shouldn't, but sometimes I think wistfully of the time when a political leader who treated the people with disdain ran the risk not just of early retirement, but of being hanged to the nearest tree. I wonder whether the personal risks associated with being too arrogant in an earlier era might have wonderfully cleared the politician's mind of foolish delusions of grandeur and encouraged a salutary humbleness.
they still have to go see a judge first
Oh goody. A judge, eh? Like how, in the old days, the bailiff would have to go see the the lord of the manor first, before he could confiscate my crop and sell my barefoot children into slavery.
No. Not at all.
Socialism says that society should try its best not to simply abandon people and let them fend for themselves. You know
You're both badly misquoting Spock, and mischaracterizing all forms of socialism as inherently individual-destroying, impersonal machines.
If you donate to a charity, that is doing something socially minded. You're not inherently deciding that all of your money should be appropriated to help everyone else out.
As in all things, there are varying degrees -- in Canada, we still try to preserve individual rights, but also try to make sure as many people as possible get a leg up. Or, at least that's what we try to do.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
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.