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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 ----
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.
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 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