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Canada's Online Surveillance Bill: Section 34 "Opens Door To Big Brother"
Saint Aardvark writes "Canada's proposed online surveillance bill looked bad enough when it was introduced, but it gets worse: Section 34 allows access to any telco place or equipment, and to any information contained there — with no restrictions, no warrants, and no review. From the article: 'Note that such all-encompassing searches require no warrant, and don't even have to be in the context of a criminal investigation. Ostensibly, the purpose is to ensure that the ISP is complying with the requirements of the act — but nothing in the section restricts the inspector to examining or seizing only information bearing upon that issue. It's still "any" information whatsoever.'"
Slashdot on Google: "They're just a friendly, do-no-evil web search company! I willingly hand them them all my personal data and believe every one of their apologies when there's another privacy intrusion!"
Slashdot on governments: "Down with Big Brother and his constant surveillance!"
.... earthling .... since this isn't new, nor the end of it. Eventually all of us will be under this sort draconian rule.
Freedom. It was fun while it lasted.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I swear lobbyists put stuff like "section 34" in as a lighting rod for activists.
Later on they can drop this provision as a "compromise" to appease the opponents.
When I first heard of this, I setup an SSH tunnel to a fast VPS in Europe.
There must be Big Brother porn somewhere...
Section 34 was introduced merely as negotiation fodder. It will be thrown out so that opponents will be more willing to accept the other terms of the bill, which are the ones actually desired.
Of course, over time this practice is repeated, and the net effect is the same. Frog in the kettle and all that. Eventually it gets too hot and people revolt and murder their leaders. But we probably have a while to go yet before that happens.
As an American, I honestly thought we lost our title of "Land of the Free" to you. Now we are watching you turn down the same dark road we fell down. Hopefully your people have more balls than the majority of the American people so they actually fight for it since you at least have us as an example to point to where that road leads.
If not, I guess the next Civil War just might end up turning into something beyond just civil. I honestly foresee an American civil war within my lifetime with how things are going. If our neighbors to the north are going the same route we do, they might actually use that opportunity to take back theirs as well if they fall like we have.
Now, time to mod me as troll or flamebait. Have at it.
Thanks for cutting and posting this turd yet again, I have just posted a similar large log to you in return to show my feelings on the worth of your public information broadcast
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
The list of countries I can go to that are neither 3rd world shit holes, police states, or both is becoming vanishingly small.
That's the CBC headline after interviewing Toews about his own bill: Toews surprised by content of online surveillance.
It's worth listening to the interview that was aired on The House yesterday.
One of the main concern with this is that it will give a backdoor to hackers all over the planet. Building a backdoor and building a database of information of Canadians is a recipe for disaster. While the fight against C30 is still on, if this were to come to life in its current state, it would probably be only a matter of time before all members of parliament see their own information exposed to the world, which might teach them a lesson the hard way. Either way, they will be going down with the rest of us.
The warrant system works pretty well. It is not perfect but it was never meant to be. There are abuses and innocent people get affected but the justice system was designed like this. Only the naive think you can have a legal system that can at least be somewhat effective without ever inconveniencing anyone. You might get your entire house torn up because of a wrongly issued warrant and that bloody sucks and compensation may be way to low but it is the price for the legal system we got. Better hope that like most, you never notice how it is to be subject of a police investigation.
BUT why chance this? The warrant system WORKS. It is effective enough and has proven checks and balances. The only reason to change this is if you want to chance the way the legal system works. Now there are two reasons to do it. To make it better or to make it worse. Somehow I can't see how removing warrants and oversight and review from searches is going to make the legal system any better. More effective?
The legal system works because most of us have no real reason not to make it work. In holland a recent news story was that of a man in a car trying to abuct several kids and succeeding with one. The police investigate and during their investigation they encountered two men, one who refused to let the police into his house (had a hennep farm inside) and one who refused to show ID... this wasted police time if nothing else. Cops had to check out why these two men were refusing to cooperate rather then simply going on to the next house/person to search for the abductor.
It is safe to assume to police didn't just question these two men. The rest of the people investigated were innocent and had nothing to fear from the law, so could be easily eliminated.
If anything can be searched any time by anyone, encryption will become the norm, so even if the police get a warrant, they can't eliminate the innocent in a search and will have to spend a lot more time investigating. Make everyone a criminal and finding the serious criminal will become a lot harder.
I am not a privacy nutter, I think that the justice system having special powers is the correct way to go about them, but there must be check and balances and the process open to outside review to make sure abuses do not happen. This is not new, this is the current situation. I am VERY suspicious of anyone who claims this has to change. Extra ordinary powers require extra ordinary reasons. So far I have not heard any.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Sure, I will be there when the time comes, but there is no sense being a martyr at this point as the act will just go unnoticed.
Pick winnable battles, in their proper time and place.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
amusing. intentional?
There goes my vote for Canada for US President!
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
The net effect isn't the same.
A corporation has to ask you for your data, and you can say no -- at which point the corporation is SOL, regardless of your perceived goodness or badness of that corporate use. In addition, the corporation has at least some stake in your continued good will, and so they are likely to give you something back in return if in fact you choose to opt in. But if what they do makes people opt out... without customers, the corporation will cease to exist.
A government can -- and in the case of the US government, already will, the Canadians are well behind us -- take your data. Once it has it, it can, and will, jail you, take your life, and so on. They don't have to give you anything back, and typically, they won't. They have no significant investment in your good will. You can bitch all you want, but you can't opt out and they won't stop existing because they're annoying some of the citizens. Nor is there any hope of them annoying enough of the citizens for such a thing to happen.
You're been taught that corporations that do not know right from wrong are bad, thoughtless entities, and they certainly are, but they are nothing compared to a government that does not know right from wrong.
Also, in the final analysis, it is the government that enables or prevents any particular corporate behavior. If you get control of the government (good luck, too late in the USA.. but Canada... perhaps not) then you get control of the corporations.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Freedom can only be taken away from you if you allow it. In fact you can take freedom _back_ if you so choose. The question is, do you care about your freedom enough to actually bring about some change, or are you so consigned to failure and apathetic that you're just not going to bother and let things go even further down the toilet?
I would love to take back my freedom. Unfortunately, the ignorant masses feel free and they are under the impression that if you do nothing wrong then you have nothing to worry about. After all, these laws are for our protection from the terrorists and a government would never do anything to harm its lawful citizens.
Right?
And if I decide to take back my freedom, this is what you will see on the TV:
Bulletin:
Home grown terrorist tries to overthrow government. After prolonged negotiation, the terrorists fired upon police and police, in self defense, fired back and ended up killing the terrorist.
Before that, he wrote anti government tirades. Now, we'll speak to our resident psychologist about how people become so delusional - such as the Uni Bomber. Doctor?
and it'll go on ....
I have come to the conclusion that as long as people feel safe, have enough creature comforts, and their big screen tv to watch the game and Jersey shore, they are perfectly happy being slaves to the system: work your ass off, buy shit, sit around with some recreation, in order to back to work to buy more shit.
The sad part, is everyone is a slave - even the billionaires.....stopping now before I go on with my secular preaching about existing vs. living.
Got any ready examples of "winnable" fights? Elections don't count, not under the current system anyway.
I am BONCH!
No, I'm Bonch! And so is my wife!
The real question, the one the CBC didn't hammer on, was:
"Then who wrote the bill, Minister? Who put that in there?"
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
They are lobbyist porn. All they are looking for is a name to stick on it, the politicians are just puppets dancing in front of the crowd.
Deleted
If you deconstruct this whole thing, both in US and Canada and all over the world in fact, it comes down to one thing. There are people our there that just can't stand the fact that they don't know what your doing behind closed doors. That the don't know who your screwing or in what position for that matter. That they don't know who your talking to and why. That they don't know your personal secrets. They can't stand this. They automatically think that the desire for privacy = criminal. I mean you must be a criminal if you send private love letters to your girlfriend. Thees people will stop at nothing and use any excuse to rid personal privacy. They use lame excuses like "Think of the children" and the like. And the internet makes their head spin - millions of people are using it - and we need to know why what for and what their doing.
If your encrypt your traffic, your a criminal.
That's because a great country is what you make of it.
You want your freedoms? You can pay for them in the sweat of your brow or the passion in your heart or the cash in your pocket like your ancestors did or you can settle for what you've got.
Now, I'm not saying this in a 'USA love it leave it' sense - Some countries are more ripe for the fostering of democratic progress than others - but moving to a place and looking to live off the benefits of its preÃstablished press and lifestyle freedoms is closing off a lot of your options right off the bat.
As a Canadian who's a swing voter I think not only should such an absurd bill be killed but the sanity of whichever MP backs it seriously put into question. Any MP that backs such totalitarian surveillance bill is no longer qualified to hold office and should automatically have their re-election campaign targeted.
The real question, the one the CBC didn't hammer on, was:
"Then who wrote the bill, Minister? Who put that in there?"
Good point. I hope that the NDP will be raising that question in the House of Commons this week.
On the CBC, I sometimes wonder if they are a little hesitant to go after the Conservatives too much for fear of appearing partisan in the eyes of the government. I can remember the supporters' shouts of "Shut down the CBC!" during the election when CBC reporters asked Harper tough questions. My guess is that the CBC knows it is treading a thin line under the current government.
Does anyone know if this would create legal conflicts with Canadian web sites, Internet businesses, or web hosts with EU customers?
I'm sick of these stupid bills being passed, blad-dee-daah that people think will violate their rights.
I don't know so much about Canada, but her in America we still have a trump card for our citizens that says you need a warrant to searching most any-fucking-thing. No matter what any, and I mean ANY FUCKING LAW passed therefore, says, it does NOT under ANY FUCKING CIRCUMSTANCES trump the rights already established.
In this country we have due process that also applies to the written law. And that means you would FIRST have to remove that right in the first place before anything else can apply.
We just have too many pussies not willing to fight for their fucking rights, and instead FUCKING SETTLE.
FUCK! STFU!
Harper is not right wing. Harper is a technocrat. Technocrats need to control information. This would be the ultimate control. Harper doesn't care about reading Joe Nobody's email. A good example of what this bill would be used for would be to find who leaked the information about the Minister who's career just ended.
Where Joe Nobody will get nailed is that their communications will be run through filters and false positives will be generated. Then when you do things like board airplanes or cross borders you will be interrogated about the sales chearleading you did when you said to your team, "Go knock'em dead. Totally destroy them. Our product will be like a bomb stuck up their asses." Poof you find your computer's seized, your accounts frozen, and any attempts to clarify and correct meeting a wall of "national security".
Can you imagine what would have happened though before the G20 in Toronto. I suspect an email with "The police suck" might have gotten you arrested.
The provision that really gets under my skin is that the bill will Force internet providers and other makers of technology to provide a "back door" to make communications accessible to police to to those who are conducting surveillance. That sounds to me like all computers sold in Canada, not just the ISP's equipment.
no, it's "confidant"
The list of countries I can go to that are neither 3rd world shit holes, police states, or both is becoming vanishingly small.
Do you think you would help us out with a list of the actual tyrannies you see in action - with a few stipulations?
Terrorism is involves actual violence, such as murder or mass murder, or assisting those who commit violence. It does not consist of voting for the political parties out of power, demonstrations and rallies, writing op-eds, books, plays or poems against government policy or actions.
Guantanamo Bay has never held even 1,000 people ever as prisoners.
Pretty much all of the fights about Habeas Corpus have to do with prisoners held as enemy combatants under the law of war. The US held hundreds of thousands of German prisoners in WW2 and they didn't have any right to Habeas Corpus either. The rules of war are different from the rules under criminal or civil law.
The US only water boarded a total of three people, the most recent of which was almost 9 years ago. To the best of my knowledge it still water boards US pilots as part of their Escape and Evasion training.
Al-Awlaki was killed by a drone for joining Al Qaeda, assisting in planning attacks, and recruiting for them - not for legal dissent. There is no general right for Americans to take up arms against the US government to overthrow it by force of arms, or to otherwise engage in mass murder, or assist those who do. As a matter of war, there was no charge, conviction, or sentence needed under criminal law. He was treated no differently that other American renegades in other wars. He was treated no differently than the large numbers of men shot down en masse, as represented here by the Federal government in a previous conflict.
There is no right to private communications between terrorists who are planning to commit actual violence and their headquarters.
Walking through a metal detector, or a pat down before boarding a plane is not the same thing as not being allowed to travel.
As you can see below the line (-----), there are a constant series of ongoing arrests and convictions for plotted terrorist attacks.
Or perhaps you are worried about the tax code not being progressive enough, but that doesn't hold up either.
So now, what are all these tyrannies that you speak of? Did President Bush round up the Clinton voters? Did President Obama round up the Bush voters? Do people still worship or not worship in the belief of their choice? Do people still pick the school they will attend, or the profession they wish to pursue? Does the government mandate where people will live? Does the press no longer publish what it wants? Does the United States have a President-For-Live yet?
I'm willing to concede that government regulation continues to grow more burdensom - but that is not tyranny.
If the budget problem isn't address, that could lead to a real long term problem though.
Geithner: Why, no, our new budget does nothing to address America’s long-term fiscal crisis
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FBI’s Top Ten News Stories for the Week Ending January 27, 2012
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
I think that what he was meant is that the fraction of people in the U.S. who give a shit about freedom and fighting for it (or who even understand what freedom means) has become so small that putting up a fight would be futile. Saying that "a great country is what you make of it" oversimplifies things; he can't change things single-handedly, and effecting real change depends on there being enough other people to work with him toward regaining and protecting those freedoms. If those people aren't there, it ain't gonna happen. There were a lot of people fighting for protecting their freedoms in 1930s Germany, but it just wasn't enough, and it wasn't because they didn't fight hard enough.
Moving to a country with a higher percentage of sensible people who value freedom might make for a better future for him and his loved ones.
"Then who wrote the bill, Minister? Who put that in there?"
This isn't the first time that the Conservatives haven't even read their own legislation. The most recent was their Omnibus hard-on crime legislation. It contained conflicting language in separate parts of the bill about mandatory minimums for growing marijuana.
They, with a straight face, blamed the NDP (the opposition) for "that being in there". It's pathetic.
Is (if the US is a model) going to do any damn thing they want, any time they damn want, regardless of any "law"!
Guess what, governments don't follow "laws", they make (almost) everybody else follow them!
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
Underrated -- even if it gets to +5
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
i live in Canada and i can tell you that nobody unless you are the government or the police or some company wants this to pass. their is no reason for my info to be accessible by anybody just for the hell of it. this is nothing but a major breach of my privacy piss of companies and government.
Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, who introduced the bill to Parliament, had absolutely no idea what was in it or why people would be so upset about it.
So, you see, everything is okay. You trust the Public Safety Minister, don't you?
It's not like he's lying through his teeth or anything. Or hopelessly incompentant.
Well, technically he would have to be one or the other, but you can still trust him, right?
Please provide some proof. Other than FBI sources of course.
3 people water-boarded, really? So they went through all the trouble of legalizing it, only to use it on 3 people?
Anyway, maybe if Guantanamo was more transparent we'd believe you. How convenient, you hide all the stuff you do but then we just have to believe you when you say nothing is going on.
1000 people in Guantanamo? For 30k insurgents killed? That's the tiniest POW-to-KIA ration I've ever seen. It's just not believable. Or if it is, then maybe Saddam Hussein really was elected with 100% of the votes.
How much are the feds paying you to feed us this propaganda?
The Liberals wrote the bill, back in 2002. They called it Lawful Access, and then Modernization of Investigative Techniques.
This will probably end up downmoded amongst the fearmongering, but this "analysis" is based on a gross misreading. Surveillance under section 34 can't be used for legalized spying because:
1. Section 34 doesn't authorize it. It authorizes the use of those inspection powers only to check for ISP conformance with the rest of the act, and
2. C-30 amends, but does not derogate the Criminal Code, and section 34 powers aren't given an exemption to Section 184 of the Criminal Code. An inspector operating under section 34 is not considered to be authorized to intercept telecommunications for the purposes of 184. Doing so would be a criminal offence.
Rule of thumb: If you read anything online about Canadian law, it's probably wrong.
You didn't use the word "effecting" incorrectly. I had to read that part three times to figure out what you were saying!
Rule 34b: For every type of information transmitted over the internet, there is a corresponding type of surveillance.
The Liberals may have started the ball rolling, but you can't tell me the Conservatives haven't made changes to it.
Otherwise, Vic Toews, the sponsoring Member of Parliament, has had TEN YEARS to read and understand this bill and still admits to not knowing what every single part of it contains.
"symbolset (646467) * Friend of a Friend on 03:29 PM February 19th, 2012 (#39094617) Homepage
SOPA sponsor Lamar Smith, under the guise of protecting childred from online pornographers, has proposed a new bill that requires every Internet Service Provider to spy on every customer, logging every thing that they do online and keeping records for an entire year. Just in case. So... yeah. It's getting pretty bad.
And of course these records would be discoverable by his Big Media sponsors."
THANK YOU!
Here it is, SOPA-II. Only this time he/they turned it up to 11! They switched the underpinning from Copyright back to the Kiddies again. So now all the toys and maybe more that were in SOPA will show up in this one, and the ready made comeback is all set - "So, you're in favor of Kiddie Abuse? Huh? Huh? You're with us or with them."
Did we use up our only cannonball on the SOPA version?
And I know I recall seeing my /. colleagues predicting this, so here we are. Is that how fast it is? Invoking xkcd:
Congress: "We want SOPA."
Internet: "No."
Congress: "Sudo if you don't let us have SOPA-II you're promoting Kiddie Abuse."
Internet: "Sure, we're tired from the last round, go ahead."
(Tagged 2-20-2012 for my own notes.)
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
It's the same here in the UK with the BBC. The BBC has taken quite some hits this last few years in terms of reduced funding and artificial limitations placed on it's ability to compete.
The reason is that the Tories want the favour of Murdoch and Sky, who were all set to take 100% of Sky over until the phone hacking scandal upended the deal. By weakening the BBC, strengthening Sky, and strengthening Murdoch's grasp of Sky they were trying to ensure that TV became their own personal propaganda channel.
Take a look at the astounding usefulness of social media over the past year in assisting overthrowing governments. Plain and simple: knowledge has always been the enemy of the ruling class, and an unregulated and uncontrolled internet that focuses on decentralized dissemination of knowledge is their chief threat. Do you think the Western powers are going to just roll over after such a powerful demonstration of what the internet can do? Fortunately, they have cannon fodder like Wikileaks and extremist web sites as well as the fear-mongering pretext of terrorism to justify their seizure of basic rights. I was reading the book On Private Property, which talked about how once in the USA the closure of land and detainment of a person was a grave issue because you were depriving those individuals locked out or detained of their liberty and freedom. Now we have reverse that, where we view someone who builds on a previous idea as a thief who violated the liberty and freedom of the original owner of the idea - even if they have been dead for nearly 70 years! Talk about a dramatic shift in viewpoint. The same is now happening with the internet, where once it was viewed at a liberty to partake in the free exchange of information, governments now want us to think that freedom is actually a violation of another's rights and close down the exchange.
Where is the parallel to Star Trek's Section 31? A secret organization with a charter to do whatever the hell they want?
Section 34: if it exists, there's a warrantless search for it.
Exactly. This bill is way worse than SOPA. When this new bill started I emailed a bunch of people, but got no response. I guess the theory by these congressmen is to push one draconian bill after another so that a) people get tired of hearing about congress b) people opposed to them sound like "cry wolfers" and c) they can probably sneak at least one through. If you look at most of the bills passed since NDAA on New Year's Eve, they have all been uber-draconian, limiting our freedom type bills. NDAA was treason against the United States citizen with hardly any congressmen opposing it.
You have to understand that to the PCs, every bad thing was the Liberals' fault. I know it's been ten years since they were in power, but everything bad in the country was because of the Liberal Party.
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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
There are no more Progressive Conservatives, of course. I actually could have voted for them against the Liberals. But the PCs sold their souls for short-sighted political gain and got assimilated by the Reform/Canadian Alliance party. Otherwise I agree with your post.
Where previous governments were able to pass laws and do stuff with actual consequences, the current government and their supporters at least has some justification for claiming "we're cleaning up the mess" even if I don't agree with what they're doing.
But in this case that's a retarded stance for them to take. This was legislation started under Liberals, never enacted, and died a few times due to minority governments falling. If the Conservatives truly thought it was bad, they would have scrapped it. Instead they're resurrecting it yet again. They are therefore fully to blame for this legislation.
You want your freedoms? You can pay for them in the sweat of your brow or the passion in your heart or the cash in your pocket like your ancestors did or you can settle for what you've got.
I sweat all I could sweat at work.
My passion ... has long since left me.
And I have no cash in my pocket.
But I do have two perfectly good fists...
Yes, and I am upset.
We power-slammed the weaker version, so they dial up to 11 but we're "bored of that game". I posted a story here, it got voted to red hot, and didn't even make the front page. Instead the slot went to the silly Idle "Yay Copyright Forever" joke post.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I wish I had mod points right now. I'd up you as far as I could A very truthful and insightful post. My olny major disagreement is your glossing over the utter idiocy the TSA puts every traveler on an airlines in the United States. It's one thing to walk through a metal detector, it's another to not be able to take my swiss knife in my carry on. Knives can only hurt 1 or 2, not a terrorist target. Thank god Amtrak police barred TSA from all Amtrak stations until they complied with Amtrak regulations. Sadly the airports do not have a nationwide governing body.
What is left then? I see none. The only way out of this mess is off Earth like Mars. :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
What Canada and the US both need is popular veto, whereby if there are enough signatures on a petition to veto a law, it's put to a vote, and if it's vetoed, then every politician who voted in favour of that law is subject to a recall.
Then we could stop them from introducing it again and again.
Of course, it'd be better if, if they're recalled, they owe all of their salary that they earned since last being voted in, not dischargable by bankruptcy, and they're prohibited for ten years from working for any company with which their lawmaking activites may have caused a conflict of interest.
Or better still, they could be executed, but I imagine fewer people would go for that. I would be delighted to see them hang at the end of a rope, though.
Disclaimer: IANAL. This post is, however, legal advice, and creates an attorney-client relationship.
I like the idea of a popular veto, especially where our congress is so far out of step with what the public wants.
I've heard that Switzerland actually has such a thing, so it's not a totally impossible idea.
Disclaimer: IANAL. This post is, however, legal advice, and creates an attorney-client relationship.