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Canadians #TellVicEverything In Response To Bill C-30

Posted by timothy on from the like-a-sausage-but-with-cracks-on-the-surface dept.

First time accepted submitter beerdragoon writes "In order to protest the government's new Internet snooping legislation, some Canadians have started a somewhat unorthodox protest. Vic Toews, the minister responsible for tabling the legislation, has had his twitter account bombarded with tweets regarding the boring, banal aspects of regular Canadians' lives. The idea is that since Toews wants to know everything about your personal life, we should oblige him and #TellVicEverything."

21 of 84 comments (clear)

  1. It gets better ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The snippet is interesting but not the big news.

    He let the cat out of the bag as he is asking the speaker to investigate this protest. (which means RCMP or CSIS presumably) Does any sane populace want to put more surveillance power in the hands of a person that would abuse his office to simply satisfy his curiosity as to who is tweeting him?

    1. Re:It gets better ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      He isn't asking the speaker to investigate the protest. He is asking for an investigation into one particular account, Vikileaks30 or something, which is releasing *his* personal information (details of his divorce, etc) on twitter. Apparently the tweets on the account were made from an IP address from the House of Commons.

    2. Re:It gets better ... by green1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Heaven forbid a politician be subject to the same loss of privacy they wish on the rest of us!

    3. Re:It gets better ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Publicly accessible court documents being copied should not warrant a parliamentary inquiry.

    4. Re:It gets better ... by euxneks · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's not private information. Divorce records are public. All the things I have read on that twitter account are PUBLIC record.

      Who cares if the IP is from the house of commons? It's just highlighting his hypocrisy.

      --
      in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
    5. Re:It gets better ... by AdamWill · · Score: 4, Insightful

      well, you can look at it that way. the other way you can look at it is this:

      the police can already access all the records in question if they have just cause, by getting a court order. obviously, getting a court order isn't a terribly onerous thing in the context of a really serious crime - terrorism, child abuse, whatever. offences of that nature are rare enough and serious enough that there's no problem getting a court order where one is warranted.

      it follows that, whatever the justification publicly offered, it doesn't make any sense that a law which removes the requirement to obtain a court order is truly targeted at very serious crimes. no, it only makes sense in the context of much less serious offences. say you're looking at, oh, to take a COMPLETELY random example, file sharing. you've got hundreds of thousands of potential offences, and probably little in the way of decent investigative evidence in any of them.

      now THAT'S a case where it 'makes sense' to remove the requirement for a court order, because it really is going to cost of a lot of resources to go out and get a couple hundred thousand court orders, especially if your evidence is pretty weak.

      So, yeah, we can ignore the rhetoric, and instead ask the question 'in what circumstances does it really benefit the police not to have to go and get a court order to look at these records?' And the answer to that question is very different to the rhetoric you hear from the Cons surrounding the bill.

    6. Re:It gets better ... by Suddenly_Dead · · Score: 5, Informative

      Notice that, if this account was posting on a Canadian website post-C-30, the RCMP or CSIS would be able to compel the site to reveal the poster's private IP/email address, and the ISP then compelled to provide an address and name.

      There's a reason why this bill should not pass. A chilling effect on dissenting speech is not a good thing.

      (Yes, the Twitter account attacking Toews and his divorced wife is tacky, but Toews himself has been extremely tacky and hypocritical in general, and is outright threatening Canadian's privacy and freedom right now. Plus, all of this stuff is in the public record, so I fail to see any legal issues here.

      As it is right now, all we know is that a newspaper says they've tracked it to the House of Commons, and they did that on their own using the ol' "send them a link to your server, then watch the logs for an access" trick. If it is a criminal problem, a judge can issue a subpoena, as far as I can tell.)

  2. Goals by Nerdfest · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm still quite surprised that nobody is connecting the online surveillance to the media companies. People still seem to believe that it's just a misguided child predator act.

    1. Re:Goals by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No one believes it's about the children. There is no mention of "the children" anywhere in the bill. Heck, it was called "Lawful Access" before being hastily renamed at the last minute.

      That it's an attempt at the government to spy on us, or that there is some bigger agenda in the background, it doesn't really matter. The issue is about our privacy and that's why it's taking a lot of fire.

  3. Never have so few done so little to enrage so many by kawabago · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Every day the Conservative government drifts a little farther from true Canadian values and into some kind of dream world where Leave It To Beaver is a reality series.

  4. Vikileaks by Grieviant · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Vic has been part of some rather amusing drama as of late. Apparently, the "family values" man was divorced after knocking up his parliamentary assistant, as disclosed on a Twitter account with handle 'Vikileaks' who had access to the divorce proceedings. A local Ottawa newspaper then sent a twitter message with a honeypot link to Vikileaks in an attempt try to ascertain the IP address behind this account, and it led back to a Canadian parliament IP address. The Conservatives are now accusing the NDP of a smear campaign. I notice that Wikipedia has been sanitized since last night to remove any mention of Vikileaks.

    http://www.metronews.ca/ottawa/canada/article/1101662--toews-and-twitter-tit-for-tat-turns-tawdry

    http://blogs.canada.com/2012/02/15/vikileaks-attacks-vic-toews-on-twitter/

  5. Some background by Lev13than · · Score: 5, Informative

    Toews is Canada's version of Newt Gingrich with a bit of John Edwards thrown in for good measure. When he tabled an invasive citizens spying bill this week he declared that citizens were either with him or with the child pornographers.

    Toews campaigns on family values and "worships the ground that his wife walks on" (more on that below). He is a devout Mennonite and runs on his faith. He is on record for being anti-same sex marriage, anti-abortion and pro-gun. So, what does a fine, upstanding anti-pedophile Christian like him do on his days off? Why, he knocks up his family's teenage babysitter, of course. In Canada the age of consent is 16, but goes up to 18 when the younger party is in a position of trust - such as between a babysitter and employer. The girl in questions is believed to have been 17 when the affair started, so it's just plain sleazy on any level.

    The Vickileaks site (rumoured to be from a Parliament Hill staffer) has been publishing the (public) records of his ugly divorce. What Toews is missing here is that information, once collected, takes on a life of its own. The parallel between his public divorce file and the impact of his proposed snooping legislation is a delicious irony, especially considering that the remarkably fertile prick is himself basically a child molester with better PR.

    --
    When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire
    1. Re:Some background by davecb · · Score: 4, Informative

      The Progressive Conservatives were the equivalent of centrist Republicans, but they joined with Reform to become the just-plain Conservatives, who are roughly the Tea Party Republicans. Reform in Canada was pretty much the same as Ross Perot's Reform in the 'States.

      --dave
      [Full disclosure: I partnered with Perot Systems in my Siemens days: Ross' company was cool]

      --
      davecb@spamcop.net
    2. Re:Some background by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      That used to be true. The old Progressive-Conservatives (Tories)aligned roughly with the right wing of the Democratic Party, while the Liberals aligned with its left wing. However, that alignment went haywire during the Mulroney-Reagan era, when Mulroney espoused the sellout of Canada under the FTA and (most of) the Liberals opposed it-- in other words, swapping the positions they would have held if they really believed in their principles. Then the Liberals won and went hell-bent-for-leather into globalization, restrained (ironically enough) by both the old-style Tories and the NDP (social democrats). Then the Liberals imploded due to a corruption scandal while the Tories were still weak. The new upstart right-wing Reform Party had gained quite a few seats in the West and the Conservatives were down to a minority except in Ontario (most seats) so they figured their chances would be better if they merged. The resulting party was supposed to retain the old Tory principles (national sovereignty included) but that promise was immediately broken and most of the PCs quit in disgust. What was left was what I call the Reform-A-Tories--named Conservatives but actually the same narrow-minded, mostly undereducated bunch who hate easterners on general pinciples, Quebecers in particular, and also feminists, environmentalists, artists, First Peoples, and practically anyone not in the oil business. Most are eager to implement Dubya's policies here and/or sell of the 20% of our economy we still own. Politically I'd put them somewhere between Gingrich and Ron Paul. Consider Toews the Canadian Gingrich and you won't be far off.

    3. Re:Some background by vladilinsky · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Acording to Political compass the NDP are almost exactly in the centre the Liberals are to the right and the Conservitives are far right, According to that site everyone has moved substantial to the right, to the point that the NDP are nearly where the Libs were 10 years ago and the Libs are where the Cons were 10 years ago. Intrestingly, it actually puts the Liberals right of Barak Obama.

      http://politicalcompass.org/canada2011

    4. Re:Some background by tlhIngan · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The Vickileaks site (rumoured to be from a Parliament Hill staffer) has been publishing the (public) records of his ugly divorce. What Toews is missing here is that information, once collected, takes on a life of its own. The parallel between his public divorce file and the impact of his proposed snooping legislation is a delicious irony, especially considering that the remarkably fertile prick is himself basically a child molester with better PR.

      The whole reason Vickileaks was created was in response to the legislation. It wasn't a well-timed thing, it was a response. Basically saying that since the government wants the information, perhaps their information should be made public as well.

      In another twist, a Liberal MP has asked for the surfing histories of all politicians and staffers, saying if it's good on the Canadian public, it's good on Government as well.

  6. Re:Never have so few done so little to enrage so m by dittbub · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Gun Owners = Law abiding citizens. leave them alone! don't pre-judge them! innocent until proven guilty! Internet Users = Potential pedophile. More than potential. If you're reading this right now you probably are a pedophile. The RCMP have been contacted and will be there shortly to arrest you.

  7. Re:A rather interesting approach by DeeEff · · Score: 5, Interesting

    In Canada this is how we remind parliament who's in charge.

  8. Re:A rather interesting approach by TheStonepedo · · Score: 4, Funny

    Those Canadians (and for that matter Mexicans and Bolivians) can be so un-American at times.

    --
    I'll be your candy shop of infinite deliciousity if you'll be my discotheque of endless rump-shaking.
  9. I would be surprised if it is really this simple.. by mykepredko · · Score: 5, Interesting

    First off, the "Ottawa Citizen" claims that the IP address of the VicToews30 comes from a block used by Parliament. The newspaper alleges that it sent a web link to the twitter account and monitored the IP of who looked at it.

    I wouldn't be surprised if somebody didn't do a Google search on "spoof ip address" and thought it would be funny/in their best interests to put in a Government of Canada IP address - again, another Google search on "parliament of canada ip address" yielded 192.197.82.0 – 192.197.82.255

    So, it could be interesting to see our various political parties, the RCMP, CSIS, Ottawa police chase their tails looking for somebody that actually lives in Bumfuque Saskatchewan and is laughing his ass off.

    Regardless, Mr. Toews is an absolute hypocrite (just in case you forgot, he's the guy who said that anybody who was against our version of SOPA is in league with pedaphiles), all while dealing with the fallout of a divorce because he got his babysitter knocked up (who may have been underage when the affair started). So, there's a good chance that we will see his resignation come Monday morning as part of the Harper Government's damage control.

    myke

    --
    Mimetics Inc. Twitter
  10. Email as well by arthurpaliden · · Score: 4, Interesting

    In addition people were emailing him about what they were doing, cc'ing him on all their emails and emailing him their web browsing histories. In fact so much data was coming into the parliaments servers they were taken or knocked off line.

    --
    Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo