Slashdot Mirror
Canada Unveils Internet Surveillance Legislation
An anonymous reader writes "Michael Geist is reporting on his blog that the Canadian government today introduced new legislation that would require ISPs to establish new surveillance controls to monitor Internet activity. The bill will also require ISPs to disclose subscriber information without a warrant. The bill may not survive given the state of the government, but this is a sad indicator of things to come."
Do not underestimate the power of old people in large numbers legislating against the internet. Their grandparents did it for TV, and their great grandparents did it for Radio.
As there will most likely be a non-confidence vote passed this week, anything introduced now is quite futile, and the government knows it. They will throw this out there and then show it as an example of the "wonderful" legislation that will be lost if they are defeated.
Life is the sport of champions. Those who lose, die.
Encryption technology is advancing more quickly than technology to crack it. This is just going to force people with something to hide underground.
Like gun laws, this is just feel-good rights-restricting bullshit put out by politicians to pander to the idiot masses. Nobody will benefit in the long run.
>No victim == no crime == no problem, right?
Define "victim".
I serve you a perfectly good hamburger in my restaurant, you come back later and sue me for making you fat. In your eyes, you're a victim due compensation.
These days, there is no such thing as "victimless"....
There will never be a perfect society where no one has any issues with it, then it wouldnt be a society ... you fight the good fight and society is always in a state of change.
We all know that freedom/privacy are at odds with security. It doesnt matter what individuals think, its the collective mass that is pushing for an increase in security.
Does it suck? Yes. Will it get worse in the near future? Yes. Will I give up on voicing out against it? No. The pendulum will swing back the other way in time.
Just because we (Canadians) have a minority government that is troubled with a scandal doesn't mean that we should let our guard down. If it fails now (which it most likely will), doesn't mean that they won't try to create a similar or possibly worse bill later one.
... every bit you lose, the oppressor gains." Sivaram Velauthapillai
"One should not allow even a drop of civil rights or human rights to be sacrificed
Question: If the surveillance is happening on the ISP's end as they route all of your traffic, how will you ever know, even with a packet sniffer?
Anyway, I doubt this will come into existance. If it does, well...
a) I'll be truly disappointed in our government, and
b) I'll start using a hell of a lot more encryption.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
require the citizens to be personally responsible for their lives. Drugs would be legal. There would be no speed limits.
When people drive, they are also responsible for other people's lives, wether they realise it or not. Hence the speed limits.
Especially if you're gonna have people driving high on coke.
Anyway, go play nationstates, it's free, and fun for a while.
You can't take the sky from me...
"Oh, all the communist states were NEVER really communist! All they did was being totalitarian but they never reached Marx's ideals".
Yeah right. Maybe you guys mean that Communism can never reach Marxism because Marxism is impossible to be enforced without a totalitarian government?
The thing is that we (Canadians) feel a lot safer than the average American because the World has a better opinion of our country, our foreign policy and we have a system of government that's less prone to corruption (RIAA-/MPAA-/3-letter agencies/etc. bought politicians). Unlike the average American we prefer our privacy, annonymity, and the highly unlikely risk of a "terrorist attack", rather than have the ILLUSION of safety.
"You have nothing to fear but fear itself."
Those of you unfamiliar with the current state of Canadian politics may find it interesting to learn that the current Gvt is in a minority position and since Monday has completely lost control of the Parliament. They have no intention of regaining it - i.e. we will have elections as soon as the opposition decides to put its trousers on and defeat the Gvt on a confidence motion (i.e. financial)
Therefore in an attempt to stall said oposition and force them into election the Gvt has presented many incomplete bills today knowing that none of them will have a chance to pass.
Sorry but nothing to see here, maybe next year.
If pure libertarianism really works, why isn't there countries like this?
Because it doesn't work in reality. A pure libertarian system in reality would be just as flawed as a pure communist system, even though both in theory sound great.
Marx dreamed. Jefferson dreamed. Things don't always go the way you think they will, even if you're as smart as those guys. I for one would hate to live in a country where the streets aren't safe to drive on all because some guy who bought the island had some crazy ideology about law. That kinda defies the entire primary purpose of government (to keep other people from killing me or taking my stuff). Not to mention some of your laws are contradictory. How are you perserving privacy if you punish murderers publicly? (and you're practically guaranteed not all "murderers" found guilty in your society acutally committed a crime) And the guilty would be very hard to punish with everyone fending for themselves. No one's going to work for an unpaid police force, and you won't be able to investigate crimes anyway because that will invade someone's privacy. Hell, without taxes, no one's going to enforce your "one law", and people somewhere on your island might set up an "invasive" government just to protect themselves from the chaos around them. I'm not trying to discourage you or your dream, I'm just saying many brilliant people have spent lifetimes trying to figure out "a better way", and there's a reason there's no utopian countries out there. Also, on an "I learned something today" note: Government is about compromise. We give up some of our freedoms in order to make the world an overall safe place for us, our loved ones, and our stuff. It's a unending game of give and take, and before it started, you would have lived in constant fear of a larger guy coming and killing you just because he felt like it. Maybe being able to feel secure about the world around me is a kind of "freedom."
Sendou Wave Kick!!
As long as it's only the old dinosaurs with pre-Internet business models that are spending lobbying money in Brussels/Washington/Ottawa/Canberra, we will continue to see bad pieces of legislation getting passed everywhere
It's a combination of incumbant large businesses and fiscally liberal politicians from both parties, e.g. recording industry, which has much more to do with this than law enforcement, but law enforcement is buying on because they're being promised new ultra-powerful surveillance and interception tools that they think will assist them in their jobs and fail to recognize that the real criminals will just up the ante in the arms race,
It's interesting in Canada and the US that the only opponents are the independent "extremes" of both political environments. One could argue that the libertarians and socialists in the US Congress don't have the same lobbying influence and also have more to lose by the status quo becoming more powerful, so they've both become opponents of this new oppression. When you have Senators like Reid (D) and Hatch (R) on the same side of an issue, look for the political "contributions" to explain motivation.
Unfortunately, the whole rationale of helping law enforcement (while pols take campaign donations from the RIAA) makes it too easy to get this kind of nonsense passed. Expecting ISPs to lobby against it is unrealistic - it is hard to allocate millions in lobbying funds in opposition to something (and take a loss on it, vs. just adding the estimated $5 to $8 dollars in new costs to the subscriber's bill). Plus, this just may make dialup expensive enough again to kill it off which many broadband providers are eager to see.
The reality is that as long as people re-elect powerful politicians who serve their patrons first, their rights will continue to evaporate. A good litmus test for how corrupt your US Congressional representatives is would be the recent highway bill. If there's even a dollar of pork, there's a congressperson who sold out and can't be trusted to do the people's business.
It is remarkable the extent to which this...
...gets excluded from the debate about rights. One of the dangers of the Bill of Rights that was debated at the time it was written is that it would become an enumeration of rights. It is absoutely clear the Founders did not intend that to be the outcome.
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
That leads to several uncomfortable conclusions, especially for those bent on expanding the powers of government. But there it is, spelled out plain as day.
I wrote parts of this stuff
"I guess New Zealand really is the only place left that can be considered the land of the free."
You don't live here do you?
I don't know then. I guess it's just more fun to bash America because they tout their freedom and patriotism so much?
You create your own reality - Leave mine to me.