Slashdot Mirror
In Canada, No Expectation of Privacy On the Net
The_AV8R writes "In a recent interview, Peter Van Loan, the new Canadian Public Safety minister, says ISPs should be able to provide private user information without a warrant. (The only example he gave was cases of child pornography; the interviewer pointed out that in these cases ISPs are already at liberty to divulge customer information without a warrant, but that the proposed rules would make that mandatory whenever the police ask.) He was adamant that in regard to IP addresses, names, cell phone numbers, and email addresses: '...that is not the kind of information about which Canadians have a legitimate expectation of privacy.' The minister denied — even when presented with an audio clip proving otherwise — that his predecessor had promised never to allow the police to wiretap the Internet without a warrant."
i dont expect anything on a computer or the internet to protect my privacy, so i take matters in to my own hands, i dont ever post my real name anywhere, i never upload a photo of myself, people need to protect their own privacy if they want their identiy off the internet/websites, --without-facebook --without-myspace even this user account on this PC is named anyuser which is an anonymous brand websites give to unidentified computers/people.
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
This Harper government becomes more fascist every week it seems. Thank GOD they don't form a majority of seat in parliament.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
Anywhere, anytime, it seems.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I wonder how long it will be before all of this bozo's personal information will be scraped from the web and posted for all and sundry? I give it about 3 days, tops.
Sometimes, real fast is almost as good as real-time.
Don't you supposed to know you are supposed to do warrantless wiretaps BEFORE government healthcare?
I wonder how many die hard right wing nuts are going to point at this and blather about socialist governments and loss of freedom while completely ignoring that it was their very own Donald Kerr that said that Americans should understand that privacy shouldn't mean keeping information away from businesses and government...
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
True, all they're going to find is Maple Syrup porn. Which is the sweetest kind.
As a Canadian I expect that ALL of my communications are untapped without a warrant, whether or not they are in the clear, except those to public sites, like this one. I expect ALL corporations to withhold account information unless provided with a warrant.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Keep in mind that this craziness is coming from a minority government. Can you imagine what these Nazis will do to us if they were to ever get a majority? DMCA - check. Searches without warrant - check No watchdog for the RCMP - check Unaudited evoting -check Unaudited spending - check New prisons for all the new crimes - check Internet censorship - check Canada finally gets to declare war on someone - check All of this would be to keep us and our children safe. This is a government that is sure that they know what is best for us. Also this is a government who have very fragile egos and the internet is not a place for people with fragile egos. If you think I am raving then think of what Harper would have done if he had been in power with a majority after 9/11. Would have Canada gone to Iraq? Yes or no? The technological implications of all this will be an environment that tech companies flee from instead of one that encourages technology.
I'm seriously getting to the point of configuring my router to run all traffic through an anonymous proxy somewhere, but I'm concerned what kind of performance hit that would mean in day-to-day use.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
the courts will very likely find the Minister to be incorrect in his interpretation of the constitution, and that everything he is proposing violates Section 8 of the Charter, "Everyone has the right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure."
I would point out the Supreme Court has ruled that that whether information is subject to protection by Section 8 is not at the whim of the government, but whether a person has a "reasonable expectation of privacy" of information which could "reveal intimate, personal information", in that particular situation.
It is not particularly difficult to envision a situation where linking an IP address to a name would potentially reveal personal information to the state. Imagine a woman posting on a support forum for victims of sexual assault which tracks posters by IP...
Since IP addresses and so on are identifying information, and this being information people would reasonably expect their ISPs to keep private, I suspect that this entire thing is just begging for a Charter challenge and to have the courts clearly specify that a warrant is required.
CanLII has a very interesting brief on section 8 of the Charter here.
Supposedly Canada is a liberal democracy... clearly the powers that be think differently... Sieg Heil Harper and the Queen! The brand of fascism that is sweeping Canada is spooky for sure.
My parents and grand parents didn't fight off the Nazi's to have the likes of the new Canadian fascism take hold.
I'm sorry to tell the government boobs but yes we Canadians don't like them interfering with our private lives or spying on us.
Take your delusion of government power and shove it up your where the sun don't shine.
Peter Van Loan, the new Canadian Public Safety minister can suck on my big fat ___.
It's assholes like Peter Van Loan that give government a bad name and make the entire notion of government an idea whose time has past into the dust bin of history.
I guess I'll be having a knock on the door in the middle of the night tonight and be taken away because I expressed the view that governments are simply groups of power grubbing nobs who don't have anything better to do with their time than attempt to control the minutia of people's lives. Come through my door without permission and I have a surprise waiting government brown shirts.
The SearchEngine podcast has a nice summary of the issue and interview with the Minister in charge.
You can listen to it Here
Very shortly you're going to be disallowed to post pictures of yourself on Facebook and Myspace if you're under 18, and parents wont be permitted to upload pictures of their kids for family members to see. And all internet chat will be monitored, starting with minors - to ensure they arent being taken advantage of. Then adult-to-adult aswell, because you never know if 1 out of several million people might mention being turned on by a 17 year old. Is there ANY country left that supports net neutrality, privacy, civil rights and their own justice system anymore?
I guarantee you the Liberals and NDP will back this up. No political party has a monopoly on the never ending quest for power.
Don't be so sure.
here is some information from Canadian providers -- none of them specifically state what information they will or will not provide when requested or what is specifically logged. Most pages include contact information for a privacy rep. I suggest you contact that person(s) and see what information you can opt out of having tracked.
I have excluded TELUS because they are wh0r3ish and don't listen anyway.
From http://www.shaw.ca/en-ca/AboutShaw/PrivacyPolicy/Index
3.3 How does Shaw obtain your consent? Consent is required for the collection of Personal Information and the subsequent use or disclosure of the Personal Information. Consent can be either expressed or implied. The form of consent sought by Shaw may vary, depending upon the circumstances and the type of Personal Information. In determining the form of consent to use, Shaw takes into account the sensitivity of the information and the reasonable expectations of the Customer, Employee or Web Site User. Shaw generally seeks express consent when the Personal Information is likely to be considered sensitive. Implied consent is typically appropriate when the Personal Information is less sensitive. In exceptional circumstances, as permitted by law, Shaw may collect, use or disclose Personal Information without a Customer, Employee or Web Site Userâ(TM)s knowledge or consent.
In general, the use of products and services by a Customer, or a Web Site User, or the acceptance of employment or benefits by an Employee, will constitute implied consent required by Shaw to collect, use and/or disclose Personal Information for the purposes identified in this Privacy Policy.
Consent may be withdrawn by Customers and Web Site Users at any time, subject to legal or contractual restrictions and upon providing Shaw reasonable notice. If you wish to withdraw your consent to certain collection, use or disclosure of Personal Information, please contact Shaw at privacy@shaw.ca.
and of course Rogers http://your.rogers.com/privacy1.asp
"i lost my dignity on a slippery wiener"
Van Loan is one of the neo-cons currently blighting the Canadian political stage. They've been wandering around like lost sheep ever since Obama was elected in the US, and this kind of wholesale destruction of personal privacy is just their version of pigging out on comfort food when things go wrong.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
The purpose of the new legislation is to clearly define what information is and is not covered by the need for a warrant. Done right, this is a Good Thing.
As the Minister pointed out, the police already have access to lots of information about you without the need for a warrant. This includes things like your phone number and address. Because this information is considered to be publicly available, the police can do reverse phone number lookups without a warrant. This does not allow them to tape your conversations, however.
The proposed law is identical in nature, allowing the police to find your name from the IP address. AND NOTHING ELSE. They cannot read your mail, they cannot look at your search patterns, they cannot sniff your traffic. Those require a warrant.
The situation seems perfectly analogous to the phone system, with the exception that we don't normally make big lists of IP addresses.
You don't own your phone number, the phone company does. They are free to sell it to anyone they want - including the people you don't want them to, like telemarketers. So if Bell owns your phone number and is free to do what they want with it, how is it that someone connecting using Bell Internet expects them not to do the same with the IP they gave you? They own it too.
And that's what the courts have decided, that the IP address you happen to be using is a routing code internal to the company that provides access, you have no control over it, and they can change it or give it away at any time. That being the case, they see no difference between IP's and telephone numbers, and applied the same expectation of privacy to both.
Maury
It is extremely difficult to not break the law.
In BC if you are driving along the highway at 80kph and the speed limit is 80kph, but if everyone else is going 90kph, you are actually breaking the law because you are driving at an unsafe speed in relation to the cars around you. If you speed up to 90kph you will now be breaking the speed limit, but are no longer breaking the unsafe speed law.
There are quite a few of these catch 22s. Even the most law abiding people they've found are breaking laws inadvertently. Sometimes there is no way not to break a law.
Now in the right hands the powers of this proposed bill would not be a problem, but our Police time and time again have shown themselves to be less than honest and upright. Even if they were now, what's to say the people replacing them would be?
Requiring the warrent provides that extra check to try to make sure that the Police are not fishing for information, because if you look in anyone closet, you'll find things no matter how clean it is.
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.
Getting someone's name, address, cell phone number, and email addresses is not the Internet equivalent of wiretapping. The Internet equivalent of wiretapping would be getting the content of your emails and other data that you send and receive.
I'm not a fan of this bill to give these powers to police over ISPs, but it isn't as bad as too many of it critiques make it out to be. It isn't allowing police to warrantlessly get the contents of your email or other data that you send and receive - they can already get that information with a warrent and this bill does not seek to change that requirement.
Atheism is a religion to the same extent that not collecting stamps is a hobby.
You are using the English definition of "expectation" (i.e. something that one believes/predicts will happen) rather than seeing it as technical legal jargon.
In technical legal jargon, an "expectation of privacy" basically means a desire for privacy, to such an extent that some (though not all) governments go to the trouble of creating an unnatural right that broadcasts of information, which passes through countless intermediate systems (literally countless, since most users simply have no idea what all is involved), where no efforts are made by the users to keep the information private (not even a 30-year-old 56-bit cipher), will be treated as though it were private. You labeled the information with the recipient's name, so everyone who reads your "private" information knows who to forward it too, and we all know that gentlemen do not read one another's mail.
Many misunderstandings and flamewars have been caused by the stupid lawyers who coined the term "expectation of privacy" in such a way that created that vast chasm between their jargon and plain speech.
Anyway, yes, nobody really believes that information that is recklessly spread without regard for who might see it, will remain private. But that's now what anti-crytography privacy advocates are talking about. They're saying that we have created a social convention where we have all agreed to pretend that recklessly transmitted information is private, and in the .0000000000001% of the instances of pseudo-privacy "violations" where someone finds out that it was violated, then the convention will be enforced.
The message to spies is this: don't get caught. As long as you don't get caught, nobody has a problem with what you're doing, and everyone knows that you're doing it. We've agreed to look the other way, because acknowledging the ridiculousness of our policies would be too embarrassing. But if you get caught, that's even more embarrassing because it just points out how stupid we've been. We get trapped into gritting our teeth and saying things like "I didn't know anyone could read my email," while everyone else points and laughs at us, seemingly ignorant that their own reputation for having common sense might be sacrificed next. ("When they came for the reckless fools, I didn't say anything...")
The Canadian government has decided to take the position that this convention is so unrealistic and counter to every single person's experiences with networks, and that the awkward situations described in the previous paragraph are so awkward, that they're no longer on board with the convention anymore. It was a fantastic convention while it lasted, maybe too fantastic.
But that's Canada. Back in the US..
Well, you should. How can we violate your privacy, if you don't help? Please, start expecting the unexpected. It's for your own good. It's Your Rights Online -- the right to be reckless with your own safety without facing the consequences. We're all here to stick up for your rights.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I'm not stupid enough to argue that cynicism towards politicians is unjustified... I would be disproven pretty fast:
The NDP have never been in power federally, but Layton has found many excuses to change his position. He spent the last year savaging the Liberals for propping up Harper, then at the start of the latest little multi-party showdown said "Canadians don't want an election now" because he's scared of losing too many seats to the resurgent Liberals.
Pure cynicism is great because you will rarely, probably never, be proven wrong. Plus, you get this correctness without having to do anything hard, like do research on party positions.
The problem with cynicism is simply unproductive.
If you're think all politicians are untrustworthy lying scoundrels, you won't actually distinguish the biggest liars from the lesser. To quote Rick Mercer on his response to the cynic's argument against voting:
If you're asking me for which party I support on issues of net neutrality and net wiretapping, I could just fling up my hands and say "well, none of them, because no matter what they say they might change their mind".
That's just the kind of cynicism I'm talking about. Because the NDP, at least, have consistently opposed these sorts of paternalistic controls, and Michael Geist's article indicates that the Liberals might be joining them.
I wouldn't be shocked to see one of these parties roll over—probably the Liberals—but it's not a certainty. And as long as it's not, I'm going to support them on this issue and not the party that is publicly calling for these controls.
Maybe I'm just Lucy calling for Charlie Brown to try kicking the football again... but unlike Lucy, as least as she appears to us, there is at least a chance that politicians will keep their promises. As as long as that chance exists we should measure it, do our research, and go with the politician that is likeliest to do what we want them to. That's hard and painful work, and means reading a lot of newspapers and reading a lot of media, but it's ultimately more profitable than simple cynicism.
I'm not sure I understand what's with the current fad amongst governments to act like big brother and disallow privacy on the internet. Maybe Orwell was right... if that's the case there is no country I can disappear to that I'll ever really appreciate the luxury of my own privacy!