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Canadian Minister Lies On Net Surveillance Claims
An anonymous reader writes "As we discussed last month, the Canadian government has introduced Internet surveillance legislation that requires ISPs to disclose customer information without a warrant. Peter Van Loan, the Minister in charge, claims that a Vancouver kidnapping earlier this year shows the need for these powers. Michael Geist did some digging and revealed this as a lie — the Vancouver police acknowledge that the case did not involve an ISP request and the suspect is now in custody."
An old but all too often true observation:
How do you tell if a politician is lying?
His lips are moving.
Tyranny-loving politicians always try to scare the shit out of you to make it seem like they have no choice but to take your freedoms away. And it is always something horrible, like kidnapping or child rape. That way, if you don't give them what they want, then *you* must be responsible for their kidnapping/rape/death since you stood by and didn't let them do anything.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Oh, come on. It's his JOB to know. The guy either lied or he's incompetent. Either way, fire the bum!
Yep, we should completely ignore it and let the lie stand unchallenged, so that a bad piece of legislation can become a law for the wrong reason.
Or perhaps he was simply misinformed or mistaken.
So you mean that rather than being a liar, he might just be ignorant and incompetent? It's the job of politicians to get their facts straight when formulating the laws of the land. Our politicians are always complaining that people don't trust them any more, and that young people are disillusioned with politics. Well perhaps if we could trust what they fecking said, then that wouldn't be the case. It doesn't matter one jot whether this guy flat out lied, or whether he somehow conveniently got his facts wrong, it's just yet another event to knock the credibility of politicians back into the gutter.
Oh no... it's the future.
The problem with politicians is that they are people in a position where they can largely ignore the law.
I think anyone, no matter how honest he THINKS he is, will sooner or later succumb to tempation and abuse his power.
He got asked about it and instead of giving the honest answer (i.e. "I dunno, but I'll ask my experts and come back to you") he made up some answer. Why? Because for some odd reason people expect politicians to have an answer for everything.
I gotta call bullshit on this one. As stated earlier, it's specifically his job to know this. He is writing a law that he knows will erode personal rights of privacy, and also knows the backlash that is possible. If he is not fully aware that he has "enhanced" the story, then he has no business writing the law in the first place.