Slashdot Mirror
Canadian Bill C-416 to Require Wiretapping
Matthew Skala writes "Bill C-416, recently introduced in the Canadian Parliament, would if passed require Internet providers to provide wiretapping facilities to law enforcement — without a warrant, and with 'confidentiality' requirements reminiscent of the secret-spying cases we've seen recently in the States. This new Act is a reprise of last Parliament's C-74, which failed when the Government's term ended. Coming back as a Liberal "private member's Bill" in a minority government, it will have little chance of success without cross-party support; but with the Conservatives in charge, all bets are off if they can find a way to claim it's about terrorism or child pornography."
If this keeps up where am I going to go when the USA is a police state? Canada? No good, Britain same over there. How about France?
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
It's like Canada, the UK, Australia, and the USA are in a race to reach full Orwellian Status before anyone else does. I don't get it either; these are all supposed to be FREE countries.
Please, can we stop editorial comments like this: "but with the Conservatives in charge, all bets are off if they can find a way to claim it's about terrorism or child pornography."
Okay, I know Conserviative-bashing has been "the cool thing to do" in Canada for a while, but at least look who introduced the bill: "Marlene Jennings (Notre-Dame-de-Grâce--Lachine)." Click on her name, and you'll see she's part of the LIBERAL party. Believe it or not, the liberals have been responsible for a lot of crap too- stop blaming the Conservatives for every little thing that goes wrong up here.
Canadian speaking.
but with the Conservatives in charge, all bets are off if they can find a way to claim it's about terrorism or child pornography
It's comments like this that I find really anti-productive -- why do you assume that just because the current government is conservative that it's *not* about terrorism or national security?? Believe it or not, we conservatives are not interested in invading your private space, go live your life and have fun -- but we DO care if you die in a terrorist bombing or if your kids get raped and photographed by some perv.
Believe me, I don't want to live in Nazi Germany, but I don't want to die in a subway bombing either. Let's stop the partisan stuff and find a balanced solution.
I can see it now... giant portraits of a mustachioed man, their captions all reading "Big Brother is watching you, eh?"
When are people going to start using basic encryption (or better yet onion routing and strong anonymity)? There are technical solutions that make all this surveillance useless. We must implement steganographic techniques too so that there's no way to block the crypto.
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
Please separate ASAP.
-Taxpayer
Ok, I was born-and-raised in the good old USA. However, from reading many net sites, I seem to have gotten the impression that "liberal" in the USA is _very_ different than other parts of the world. Is this true? Would a liberal government in Canada be similar to one in the USA? How about a liberal government in Sweden? Or a liberal government in ...?
:-)
Please, my non-American blokes, enlighten us Americans.
General, you are listening to a machine! Do the world a favor and don't act like one.
The government is not allowed to read my mail without a warrant.
The government is not allowed to listen in on my phone without a warrant.
Why the hell should they be allowed to read my internet packets without a warrant?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
This is a Liberal bill and the author wishes to peg it on the Conservatives?
Well, duh...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
That sounds very convenient and practical. What could possibly be the downside to handing government such awesome power?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Totalitian states might uses wiretapping but wiretapping does not transform a nation into a Totalitian state.
It wont pass for two reasons. One, the three other (very liberal) parties wont let it happen and two, it's a private members bill.
p x?Language=E&Mode=1&Parl=39&Ses=1/
You can tell it's a private members' bill because of its high number, in a majority parliament situation a double digit numbered bill (c-16 c-42 etc) will pass, PMB's rarely pass.
Here is a list of the current PMB's:
http://www2.parl.gc.ca/HouseBills/BillsPrivate.as
As you can see there are hundreds of them to be considered with this one being at the end of the line.
I highly doubt this will ever be voted on in legislative session in this session of parliament.
Privacy is a privilege, not a right. What they say in politics about privacy as a right, they are simply selling a sales pitch to the citizens. You are not entitled to privacy, freedom, or any other government given item.
Private members' bills almost never come up for a first vote, let alone a second or final one. They almost never pass. I can count on one hand the number of these bills that passed in the last parliamentary session, and they were mostly ceremonial.
This has no chance.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
The other thing is this: a Private Member's Bill is not allowed to spend money. You can't have a PMB to increase funding for so-and-so, but you can declare April 4th "Slashdot Day". See the difference? PMBs are rarely significant, but they can occasionally be important, such as this one, or the one which forced the government to live up to its legally binding Kyoto targets.
Please separate ASAP.
-The rest of Canada
For those Americans who think Canada is just the benign happy friendly country to the north, look at what happened during Canada's October Crisis (in which only about 6 people were killed in terrorist attacks).
P gNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0005880
Pierre Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act, sent in military troops to occupy Canadian territory, rounded up and detained hundreds of people without pressing charges, banned a political party, and the RCMP carried out hundreds of illegal searches and wiretaps.
http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Crisis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Measures_Act
Americans look at Canada's more lax drug laws, or them allowing U.S. draftees to escape to Canada during the Vietnam war, and think that must be how the Canadian government must be about everything... but the Canadian government can be pretty damn ruthless. There was full-on military style domestic counter-insurgency operations being conducted on a huge scale in Canada in most people's lifetime. George Bush could only dream about getting away with some of that stuff in the United States.
I will not be shocked at all if this legislation passes. Far crazier stuff has gone down in Canada's recent past!
Since when has this kind of cowardice enveloped Slashdot? Most of us live in a democracy. Hell, if you are living in China, run away, but if you are in a democracy, you vote to change your circumstances. Hell, if it got this way, and it ain't changing, maybe that's what people want (or at least, can tolerate). What makes you think that anywhere else won't go the same way?
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
1. Libs introduce bill that is bad for privacy.
2. Libs lose an election and the Cons take over.
3. A liberal reintroduces said bad bill as a private members bill.
4. We should fear the backwards conservatives?
One thing we've seen a lot of in american politics lately is unreasoning partisanship. If it's bad, stupid, evil, etc. it's something the "other party" would do, never yours. I really hope this sort of thinking doesn't become too prevalent in Canada. We certainly watch our Southern neighbors enough to learn from their mistakes rather than repeating them.
Perhaps a better question to ask is why the mod's didn't immediately flag the original post as flamebait? If you replace liberals and conservatives with Democrats and Republicans it would have been a no-brainer for them.
Click on her name, and you'll see she's part of the LIBERAL party. Believe it or not, the liberals have been responsible for a lot of crap too- stop blaming the Conservatives for every little thing that goes wrong up here.
There's very little difference between the Liberals and Conservatives. It's much akin to the situation in the US, where the Democrats and Republicans are essentially identical on virtually all issues. It's not surprising, really. Politicians from both major parties, both in Canada and the US, get much of their funding from the same corporations and industries, so they're beholden to essentially the same interests.
If the Conservatives come up with shitty legislation, the Liberals would have come up with something just as bad. If the Liberals come up with shitty legislation, the Conservatives would have come up with something just as bad. Again, that's because they're essentially the same party. They take virtually the same stance on all major issues. It's too bad most Canadians (and Americans) are too stupid to see this.
So it's not a matter of defending the Conservatives or the Liberals. It's a matter of realizing that both are complete rubbish, and neither party is to be trusted to do good.
Conservatives^W Alliance Party
Is there such a thing as a neo neo con?
We are going to have federal elections within the next six to eight weeks. So this bill will die, and will not be ressucitated before a fair number of months.
In the U.S. the difference in republicans and democrats is subtle but palpable...
They're both going to anally rape you, but at least the democrats are going to put it in slower, maybe try to get you to relax first... If they are a so called "progressive" democrat, they might even apply some astroglide.
No, no, no.
It has to be ironic. Otherwise, we'll just annoy the Anti-Soviet-Russia-Meme mods (and there are a LOT of them, trust me!) I wanted to mod you up, just to promote the Soviet Russia Meme. Really I did. But first of all, you're an AC, so what's the use? Also, (more importantly), where's the irony, comrade?
In Soviet Russia, Beowulf clusters of Anonymous Cowards imagine *you*!
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
where, the reality of a person being either of the "threats" used to endorse this law is so rare, that, either they'll never be found out, OR, they fucking will be. no amount of technology is going to nip anything in the bud, one person is random and 99.9 percent of the time, containable. That which can't be contained is planned. My point is even if the bill is passed the snoops will misinterpret and misconstrue virtually all the information they acquire if this law is passed. Anyone remember Kurt Russell in Used Cars, where he basically has to make enough money to get a seat in Congress in the United States. I mean, anyone can be a politician and if there is anyone who shouldn't be around powerful technology, it is politicians. This law is another case of losers losing hard, I almost want this stuff to happen just to prove how stupid it is, and not to mention usefuckingless for anything other than the shits and giggles of future civil servants, the karma being created from spying is going to be awesome for those initiating it. I would imagine no one here will find any of what i've typed useful...tough and more importantly, your welcome.
Wait a tic....
Liberal means bigger government, more taxes and plenty of corruption.
/cough politics)the only real difference is when it comes to social issues. For instance conservatives generally want to ban gay marriage put a stop to abortions and generally control peoples lives. Liberals want to make smoking illegal, ban guns and plenty of other things to generally control peoples lives. I guess theyre not that different on the social issues either... Education hasn't proven to be an issue with either party so I guess were out of luck there. AFAIK the only real difference between the two in america is conservatives call themselves republicans and liberals call themselves democrats. The terms have been murdered completly, so in america, at least, just call people by what they are, republibiggergovernmentocrats (and not try to put an ideology to any politican because more money for themselves and getting re-elected are the only real ones)[/facetious][/troll][/uninformed citizen][/incredibly fallacious]
Conservative means bigger government, more debt and plenty of corruption.
There really is little difference between the two. The sides have become so polar that theyve met eachother through some distortion in the space time continuum. Both sides fail at accomplishing tasks miserably. Both sides care more about politics (and their own checkbooks)than the good of the nation.
If you really want to get into it though (past the
Privacy, yeah, he respects privacy by wishing he could tell us who we can marry. The bedroom, that's a good public place for conservatives to govern, isn't it? We already know that he's happy to tell me what substances I can put in MY body, that's mighty libertarian of him. Next thing you know they'll be messing around with people's wombs. Oh, opposed to big government (but not a big military), sure, so long as that works for big business, and when big business calls the policy, that's a good substitute for democracy and government, is it? Oh, and censorship; we don't really know about that yet, do we? It's a minority government.
Unless, of course, you'd rather listen to what a politician says, rather than watch what they do. Then you'd be perfectly right.
Damn those pesky terrorists
You do realize that Chretien's campaign finance bill prevents corporations from donating more than $1,000/year to political parties? (the amount is adjusted for inflation each year) That might buy 30 seconds of TV ad time in a small market. And any company that receives more than 50% of its revenue from the government can't make any contributions at all. The Conservatives raised all their funds in the last quarter of 2006 from individuals, with over 90% of the contributions $200 or less.
Somehow, I don't think my $200 is going to influence Harper a whole helluva lot. However, I do think you're a moron.
What was once true, is no longer so
They will get it passed simply by claiming it will help them catch tax fraudsters. You can get anything passed on that basis and there's not even a public protest.
You should be careful, anyway, in legislative matters.... the devil is in the details....
In Non Socialist World, you spy on ISPs ?
...
...
...
huh
I missed something
Don't you know it is now both immoral and criminal to think beyond the next quarterly report?
Try South Africa. The right to private communication is enshired in their constitution.
May the Maths Be with you!
Parent and Grandparent poster: You do grasp that this is a private member's bill from Marlene Jennings, a member of the Liberal party?
HolmwoodI met with these crazy bastards. They really do want to do what they are describing in the article, and what's more, they want the ISPs to pay for it all. Here's what they want:
Access to up to 10% of the ISP's membership at any time with their own GigE (or 10GigE) port which mirrors all data flow that crosses the ISP's network. Yeah, that sounds easy.
Up to seven enforcement agencies including Interpol would have access to that 10% of the membership at any time, all at once if necessary. The ISP would be required to provide that access from remote, possibly meaning that a separate Internet transit grouping faster than the primary ones customers utilize would be required just to ship the data.
Physical access to the ISP's server rooms and network gear at any time by any of the seven agencies.
Full 24/7/365 co-operation and possibly dedicated employees for these tasks, again at the ISP's expense.
And there's more. I asked about 30 questions and in fact was by far the most vocal of the group when it came to the discussion, much to my chagrin. The big players at the table (Bell Canada, Rogers) simply said "this is ridiculous and we'll oppose it to the end," whereas I asked them pointed questions about the whole deal and gave examples of how burdensome the bill could be, especially to a relatively small player. They don't care. Adapt or die.
The cops, as usual, were rubbing their hands in glee. More budget! More cops! Less liberties! Less privacy! Lower quality of life! It's all for the good!
...Steve
They're not even trying to, at least based on the links provided in the story summary.
From here, we read:
i.e., what they can do without a warrant is tell that you are the owner of an internet connection, but not what you have been sending down it. From the FAQ regarding the earlier version of this bill:
i.e., the ISP needs to be set up such that a warrant can be executed, and needs to provide basic data on a specified individual (name/address/IP address) without a warrant. Most of the concerns raised here are directly addressed by that FAQ:
i.e., the "wiretapping" part is simply if police have a warrant then the ISP must have the ability to allow that warrant to be carried out. This bill does NOT authorize warrantless wiretapping!
Which, of course, is pretty much the opposite of what the story summary implies. One wonders why the author - or editors - felt it necessary to mislead us about a fairly straight-forward privacy story.
Classic Slippery Slope fallacy:
You haven't provided a shred of independent justification for the claim that "requiring ISPs to provide the name of the owner of an IP address will inevitably lead to a police state akin to Nazi Germany", meaning that - according to the above definition, your argument is particularly confusing, fallacious, illogical and/or insincere.
Which is not helpful.
How do you claim to know what HE cares about better than he does? Is that not FAR more presumptive than him simply claiming to care whether you die?
Moreover, caring about the wellbeing of fellow people is so much an intrinsic part of human nature that its lack is termed a mental disorder, so I suspect that "I don't want people to care about each other" was not the message you intended to send.
A much more reasonable statement would have been "allow me the freedom to choose my own balance between security and liberty". Unfortunately, some aspects of that tradeoff are done at the government level, meaning that the extent to which individuals can make that tradeoff themselves is self-referentially itself a part of that tradeoff.
About 500 in the last three years (200 in Madrid, 200 in Mumbai, 40 in Moscow, and about 40 in London), so it's less far-fetched than you might think. Can you come up with 500 people whose lives have been ruined by false accusations, much less the additional 3,700 injured by those attacks?
It's a valid concern which needs to be addressed.
That being said, the odds of dying in a subway bombing are also vastly less than the odds of dying in all manner of more mundane ways, particularly car accidents (literally hundreds of times less). So it's a valid concern that needs to be addressed in a balanced way, as the grandparent poster said.
"Balanced", of course, will mean different things to different people, so - this being Canada - the end result will be a reasonable compromise.
People keep referring to conservatives as fascists. The only difference between communists and fascists is that fascists were nationalistic (they want/wanted their country to rule the world), communists were internationalists (they wanted to rule the world out right without any national base). Both groups implemented the same policies when they got control of a country. Communists and fascists believe that the government should make economic decisions "for the good of the people". Conservatives believe that people should make economic decisions for themselves, whether it is for their own good or not.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Plus, despite what /. seems to think, the Conservatives in Canada don't bring up "terrorism & child pornography" nearly as often as the US Republicans. I recall very few occurrences of terrorism talk at the House of Commons, and none about child porn (at least, since the Conservatives took power).
While Harper looks like a good friend of Bush, he isn't as radical, or can't afford to be.
After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
- The Tao of Programming
Wait a tic....
You know, suicide bombers do it for a reason. A lot of the times it's money - for their family. So follow the money, and go after the family. Make sure they don't get ANY of it. Eventually when people realize they're blowing themselves up for nothing, well, not everyone wants to be vaporised for Allah. A few, but not the majority I'm sure.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
What a breath of fresh air it is to read words that don't ooze bullshit.
Crypto is illegal in Britain and France?
Really?
Then I'm sure you'll be able to provide cites and references, 'cuz I can't find anything as extreme as what you're claiming. The most recent complaints I've found regarding the UK have been that the government is planning to allow police to compel suspects to decrypt data or divulge encryption keys.
That's (a) not "already existing" (as of today, the government's website regarding the legislation indicates that it has not yet become law), and (b) rather questionably the outlawing of crypto.
Not only flag it as flamebait, but flag it as incredibly misleading.
Almost everyone here has assumed the law allows warrantless wiretapping, which is not the case. All it does is (a) require ISPs to have a setup that allows for wiretaps with warrants to take place, and (b) provide (without warrant) a mapping between IP address and customer name.
This is made quite clear in the FAQ in one of the article's links:
Funny, reading her biography, I would have hoped for better from her:
...
"Ms. Jennings is the Liberal critic for Justice and a member of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights"
"Ms. Jennings has been Vice-Chair of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology,"
"She was a member of the Joint House of Commons-Senate Standing Committee on Scrutiny of Regulations, of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics"
She seems to have the makings of a good, upstanding netizen, who would be protecting our rights
I have sent her a note, and am still reading the bill. I would encourage all Canadians to do the same:
Parliamentary Office:
416 West Block
Ottawa ON K1A 0A6
(613) 995-2251
jennim@parl.gc.ca
Constituency Office:
6332 Sherbrooke St W
Suite 204
Montreal QC H4B 1M7
(514) 489-8703
Time to exercise your democratic muscles and express displeasure at such things, no matte which party this comes from.
And, while I am no fan of conservative politics in Canada, or anywhere else, editorial comments such as the one on this article are unnecessary. Keep comments like that to your myspace page.
We emerge from our mother's womb an unformatted diskette; our culture formats us. - Douglas Coupland
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Are you kidding? This is the same shit in a different pile.
The only good politician is an unemployed one.
If at first you don't feel good.... suffer like the rest of us.
The Bill would not permit wiretapping without a warrant. It would require TSPs to build an infrastructure that facilitates greater levels of wiretapping - but only with warrants/judicial authorization (as currently required).
The Bill would also require TSPs to provide subscriber name and address info to police upon request, without a warrant. TSPs are currently permitted to hand over this (and more) information to police without warrants, but they can refuse unless presented with a warrant. The Bill would remove that discretion in the case of certain basic subscriber information.
... is gonna see A LOT of gay porn.
:-)
Enjoy. I sure do!
You are mistaken:
Part 3 of RIPA has never been brought into force.
Evidence suggests that perhaps you should inform yourself better about these issues.
You have clearly not read either the bill or the links regarding the bill in the submission. From the FAQ from those links:
This would be an excellent opportunity for you to RTFA and STFU until you know what you're talking about. (Unless spreading disinformation is your goal, of course.)
"Liberal" = Centrist political party.
Quite correct, especially if you define "centrist" as a polite term for "unprincipled". The Liberal party in Canada historically has had no fixed "ideology" or shared values beyond what is dictated by popular opinion. This makes them nominally "populist" in ideology, though that seems to only be the case when they are in opposition or during elections. When Liberals are in government they generally end up standing for what benefits themselves the most. Most accurately, they are better termed the "un-Conservative party". Since they largely shape their policy and platform based on the opposite of what the Conservatives believe or do they naturally lean more leftward (that is, they lean left out of convenience rather than out of principle)
"liberal" = The standard definition of a political Liberal. Generally represented by the NDP [...]
The NDP most definitely do NOT represent "classical" or "small-l" liberal ideology. The NDP, most Greens, Canadian Communists and Marxists represent classical SOCIALISM, which occupies an opposite corner of the political arena from liberalism. They believe in the "common good" and are the strongest supporters of such things as government ownership of essential institutions, regulation, protectionist economic policies, the welfare state and so on. Government intervention in the name of society or community as a whole takes precedence over individual freedoms and rights.
The classical liberal viewpoint is in support of individual rights, limitation of the scope of government, "laissez-faire" economic policy, property rights and so on. In Canada, the now-defunct "Reform" party is the closest to a "classical liberal" stance that Canada has ever had in parliament (it had social conservatism aspects mixed in its policy though--Reform re-adjusted its organisation and policy to become the C"Canadian Alliance" and subsequently merged with the old "Progressive Conservatives" to create the current governing Conservative party).
Technically, the "big L Liberals" are supposed to be "social liberals" which is what most political wonks would mean when they say "small-l liberal I suppose--they are supposed to value the use of economic and social interventions by the state to protect individual rights and freedoms (versus the socialist emphasis on "the common good"). Pierre Trudeau's vision he called "just society" is the most purely "social liberal" stance that the Liberal party has ever taken, though Trudeau was, to put it politely, a "pragmatist" and as Prime Minister he took some actions that directly countered that vision (most notably by invoking the War Measures Act nation wide as a response to the FLQ crisis in Quebec).
Conservatism--the "small c" variety, is all about preservation of "traditional values". Small-c conservatism is hard to pin down because globally the "traditional values" they seek to preserve will vary. In North America GW Bush is probably truest to this ideology--preservation of old-line Christian values and so forth (not necessarily "defenders of individual rights", make note). There is no "small C conservative" party in Canada outside of fringe parties. The last true conservative party in Canada were the "Social Credit" (or in Quebec the "Creditistes"). Those parties essentially went extinct by the 1980s.
In any case, federal political nomenclature in Canada is quite backwards, especially in terms of how the US sees politics. The Conservative party is home to most of the "classical liberals". The Liberal party is a mixture of "social liberals" and moderate socialists, as are the Greens (with an emphasis on environmental issues). The NDP is a stridently socialist party (NDP supporters are called "New Democrats", suggesting to Americans that they are "classical liberals" with a bit of "social liberalism" thrown in such as was the case with Bill Clinton. Our current Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper is ideologically much closer to Clinton than GW Bush--if H
Go read the damn links before whining. From TFA:
"Bill C-416 appears to be identical to Bill C-74"
The part of the bill you quoted rather clearly refers to who can make these requests, not how or when they can make them. Moreover, the section you have quoted from is:
"Obligations Concerning Subscriber Information"
i.e., the "IP address from name" queries that I was talking about, and NOT any kind of wiretap.
Why are you so insistent on mischaracterizing what this bill is about? There are valid privacy concerns regarding the "IP address from name" provision without you pretending the bill is something it's not. Indeed, your kind of nonsense just makes people who are concerned about the bill look foolish, and undercuts their efforts.
You mean this definition, right at the top?
"2. (1) The following definitions apply in this Act.
"authorized"
autorisée
"authorized" in relation to a person, means having authority, under the Criminal Code or the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act, to intercept communications."
i.e., "authorized" means "authorized under existing laws" means has a warrant.
a) The website in question was linked to in the submission. RTFA.
b) I have "mangled" nothing, and show all my sources. RTFA.
c) The website chosen by the submitter notes that bill C-74 is not merely "related" but identical.
If you're going to rant and be abusive, at least try to be right.