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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.'"
.... 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 ----
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.
No the difference is - i don't have to use Google. And I don't even have to leave for another country to opt-out, unlike in the case of the goverment.
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.
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.
Double standard? That's one of the dumbest things I've heard here (and that's saying something). Obviously there are many conflicting opinions here, some believe the former statement and some the latter. That's not double standard. Also, /. is an aggregate news site with many different article and comment posters; there's such a diverse group that there isn't a whole lot of consensus to be expected.
I bloody swear, there are as many blokes complaining about whatever groupthink [x] is going on as the actual supporters for [x]
[/rant]
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
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 ----
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.
The real question, the one the CBC didn't hammer on, was:
"Then who wrote the bill, Minister? Who put that in there?"
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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
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.
The counterargument to that would be that you can vote out politicians, but corporate monopolies last for generations.
You can't vote out politicians. You can only vote in another politician, and if they're not as corrupt as the one you threw out they probably will be after a few years.
We're STILL dealing with a Windows monopoly.
Thanks to copyright, patents and other monopolies granted to them by governments.
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.
Stop making this about you. What about less technically inclide people? And how do you know you are not using Google? Google knows you home SSID, and correlates it to your iPhone's MAC address. And unless you use pretty agressive blockers they have a pretty good list of all websites yhou have visited, even if you never visit youtube/gmail/google.com
There's nothing preventing the Google AND the goverment from fucking you over, except the fact that you have never done anything important ever.
But... the future refused to change.
Take a good look at what the majority operating system in use in desktop computers is. It ain't OSX, not by a longshot. Unless your computer has that lil Apple logo on it, or you decided to penguinise, it's running some version of Windows. All non-Apple computers ship with it preloaded. How is this not a monopoly? And don't give me the 'Apple Exists!' excuse, Apple is still interested in total vertical control of their product as to not 'dilute the Apple brand', which is why they freak out over the 'Hackintoshes'.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
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.
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
Got any ready examples of "winnable" fights?
The Nazis thought they could just waltz into Stalingrad once they bombed the crap out of it. All that bombing did was provide cover for the defender's snipers.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, haaaa! Unintended consequences; gotta love 'em! :-|
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
The government can charge you with something disgusting like raping babies, then drop the charges. What will that do to your reputation?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
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.
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.