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Canadian Govt To Introduce Massive Internet Surveillance Law
An anonymous reader writes "The Canadian government will introduce
new Internet surveillance legislation tomorrow that will mandate a
massive new surveillance infrastructure at all Canadian ISPs and remove
the need for court oversight of the disclosure of customer information.
Michael Geist has a detailed FAQ
on the history of the bill, the likely contents, the lack of government
evidence supporting the need for the invasive legislation, and what
Canadians can do about it."
Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said the law will give the tools to police to adequately deal with 21st-century technology, and said anyone opposing the laws favours "the rights of child pornographers and organized crime ahead of the rights of lawabiding citizens."
If that's true, why do you need to avoid court oversight? If you're going after real criminals, what exactly is stopping you from getting a *warrant* to track them and get their information? Are Canadian judges uniquely reluctant to sign warrants when actual criminal activity is involved, so much so that you need to bypass them?
Or are you REALLY looking to go after someone else, someone that a judge is NOT going to sign a warrant for?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
What they want:
Step 1: assume all citizens are involved in organized crime
Step 2: observe until you can find a case
Step 3: issue fines
Step 4: revel in revenue increases due to above fines
It gets a lot harder when someone is asking "what probable cause do you have to watch this one?"
But then they'll only see what you see. They also want to hear what you hear, touch what you touch, taste what you taste and above all else, know what you think. They're still on the fence about smelling what you smell, because that would be taking it too far.
...for a change? I have another proposition: Lets pass a bill for a full massive surveillance infrastructure at all politicians, and here comes the important part, WITHOUT court order. Who is with me?
Won't somebody think of the children?
Typical slimeball politician - he'll probably come out with "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" next.
Don't forget - Canada doesn't have freedom of speech, so the police will be able to use this to harass thought criminals and other doubleplusungood types.
That is an extremely thin veil. The politicans really want to ultimately be able to control dissent. I grow weary of this crap but human ingenuity finds a way around little problems like these. I am waiting for the time when communities come together to build community-owned, decentralized networks nullifying the point of creating such laws as these. If the internet were really owned by the people, a surveillance law would be practically impossible to enforce. It just shows that government is afraid of the people and it should be. People should not fear their government.
I guess all Canadians are presumed Guilty, until you can afford to provide your innocence.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said the law will give the tools to police to adequately deal with 21st-century technology, and said anyone opposing the laws favours "the rights of child pornographers and organized crime ahead of the rights of lawabiding citizens."
That's quite right, actually, I do "favor" their rights. They have a right to due process of law. Any government official who says they do not favor the rights of any individual under the law is not fit for office, and should probably be impeached. One of those rights is to privacy from government surveillance without a warrant.
Not that that quote even makes sense, anyways: anyone who opposes the bill favors the rights of everyone.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Back in the 1030s Hitler is reported to have said something along these lines. "If you want to pass a draconian piece of legislation wrap it in 'protecting our most precious resource, our children' such legislation will never be defeated." He went on to use this tactic in regards to several pieces of anti-Jewish anti-Polish legislation.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
We have a myriad of technical solutions to this problem.
Tor and the .onion domains effectually neutralise the ability of a third party (The state or any other organisation) to perform survailance on internet traffic.
Freenet enables the disemenation of whatever material anybody cares to share, to anybody.
Bitcoin allows unregulated trade.
It should be our goal to spread these existing tools and develop new methods of ensuring information can be transferred between people without fear, censorship, or interferance of any other person.
We did this to ourselves, you know. Canada had three chances to toss the Harper government out, and the third time, we handed them a majority despite their myriad offences that would have toppled prior governments (butchering Statistics Canada, running endless attack ads, blowing a billion dollars turning Toronto into a police state for the G20, proroguing parliament to avoid answering difficult questions, complicity in torture of Afghan detainees, being found in contempt of parliament... And these are just the ones I can remember off the top of my head). As a nation, we deserve exactly what we're getting for not turfing that clown Harper at the first opportunity.
I don't understand what it is with this recent(?) obsession with wanting to bypass warrants?
How can you build a police state if you need a warrant to spy on everyone?
Guarantee of Rights and Freedoms 1. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.
2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:
(a) freedom of conscience and religion;
(b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
(c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
(d) freedom of association.
In other words, you only have as much fundamental freedom of expression as the law allows.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
And then in the 20th century one of his family did the same thing.