Canadian Police Recommend Online Spying Tax For Internet Bills

An anonymous reader writes "One of the major unanswered questions about Bill C-30, Canada's lawful access/online surveillance bill, is who will pay for the costs associated with responding to law enforcement demands for subscriber information ('look ups') and installation of surveillance equipment ('hook ups'). Michael Geist recently obtained documents (PDF) from Public Safety under the Access to Information Act that indicates the government doesn't really have its own answer. But he reports that the police do — a new 'public safety' tax to be added to Internet and wireless bills."

Comments

Police Services are a scam

[HeavyDDuty]

The police are an economical scam. With normal goods and services, supply and demand dictates spending. Well we here in Canada are experiencing the lowest crime rates since forever. Police know this and steadfastly refuse or make it nigh impossible to report or prosecute thieves and burglars (think break-ins) to skew crime statistics as best as possible It happened to me, a neighbour, and a grandmother. All separate incidents. So when have we EVER seen any significant cut to police services when demand (crime is at an all-time low)? Never. Frankly, what the police fail to realize is, if everything really went to plan, their reward for doing a excellent/perfect job would be a pink slip. Instead, we have them entrenching. And asking for more monies in new and trend setting ways. They have a budget. Now they want an ISP tax. Smells like MPAA and RIAA. This whole thing stinks. [sorry for ranting].

Re: who will pay?

[hairyfeet]

Riiight, because all those CEOs are gonna give up their coke and hooker bonuses so they don't have to stick it to the consumer...oh wait, that's not what they do, they simply jack up the price! I hate to break the news to ya sparky but even in areas where there is supposedly competition we have seen what happens is companies simply collude to raise prices together. Every time the government tries to stick it to a corp thanks to globalism if they don't raise prices they simply move but there is no way in hell they are gonna just eat the cost as that would cut into profits and with Wall Street being Vegas with nicer clothes if you do that then your stock takes a nosedive.

Whether you like it or not any gouging of the corps just ends up being dumped on the back of the poor consumer. Hell in my own area the working poor simply can't even have Internet as the cableco and teleco have been matching each others price raises one for one so now the cheapest usable Internet (I don't consider a WISP that offers 512Kb down with towers that go down for days at a time really usable and even that is $60 a month and a $125 hookup fee) is $75 a month and that is if you can even get it as even though its a college town and the city has grown by over a third neither the cableco nor the teleco have moved a single inch as far as coverage in over a decade.

This is why we need to nationalize the lines and open them up to REAL competition as what we have here in the states now is a bad joke unless you live in one of the megacities. We already paid 200 billion to have the nation wired for high speed and all we got in return is a Goatse from the corps so we should demand they pay the money back with interest in 90 days or we take the lines. if they want a monopoly? We'll give them a decade on every house they run FTTH, 25 if those homes previously had no service. Because the whole "greed is good" mantra that has infected this country like a cancer has killed any chance of getting anything vital like nationwide broadband done by private corps, hell they don't even upgrade their own systems and instead simply slap caps and other crap on instead of increasing capacity.