Slashdot Mirror
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."
Its *always* the consumer. Be it from direct taxes and fees, or just passing the cost down from the companies, we, the consumer, always pay the cost.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Do it. That will make it a whole lot easier to drum up some outrage at the next election.
Have gnu, will travel.
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].
So, they want to invade privacy in what should be an illegal manner and they want me to pay them to do it?
http://stopspying.ca/ petition against Bill C-30 http://www.realprivacy.ca/write-my-mp Ontario Information & Privacy Commissioner’s letter writing tool. Please make your voice heard.
I'll just leave this here: The Whitest Kids U' Know
I am John Hurt.
...into an anti-Tory bitchfest. It's insulting to those tho actually ARE oppressed in places from China and Cuba to Sudan and Syria and all in between. C-30 erodes our privacy rights but to say we are on the path to self destrucion at the hands of an insane tyrant is a really big stretch.
Also to clarify, for those who started foaming a the mouth when they saw "C-30" and stopped reading the rest of the article, this "internet security tax" has not been proposed by anyone in government nor by those in the telecoms industry. This was an idea presented by Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police and them alone. Indeed it is not a brand-new idea for them--they've advocated extraction of funds from taxpayers for this purpose in some form or another a time or two before. The Conservatice covernment, as with previous Liberal governments and the NDP opposition have all rejected the CACP's proposals, including this one.
The fact that the Conservatives are preoccupied with "law and order" issues seems to have brought on the assumption that they must be unabashed supporters of the CACP and thus whatever brainwave the CACP has is going to be well received. Those who are Canadian and follow Canadian politics know that the Tories and the CACP do not see eye to eye an quite a number of issues. Most notably the CACP steadfastly advocated the creation and expansion of the federal long gun registry but the Tory government dismantled it. On that issue, the idea of creating a database of long guns (hunting and target shoting rifles, etc) and their owners with unfettered access by police came about through consultations the Liberal government had with the CACP, who presented it as the solution to prevent massacres like the one at Ecole Polytecnique (the incident that called on government to come up with expanded gun control measures in the first place).
But there are a few things that make a "Security tax" on internet use a non-starter:
1. the Tories have made a big effort to present themselves as "anti-tax"--whether you think they are serious or not they advocate public spending restraint over unfettered "stimulous spending" and higher taxation. It would be pretty bad optics to start imposing a tax on internet use
2. Canadians complain about the relatively high cost of telecom services (with good reason), and the government has been making chages in the industry to increase competition and lower costs (spectrum auctions that limit incumbants ability to steamroll over new competition, relaxation of foreign ownership regulations to permit upstarts like Wind Mobile from being blocked or facing bigger hurdles, etc). Imposing taxes on internet use, for any purpose, runs counter to this commitment and would be taken very poorly by the public at large. Not only that, incumbants and new players in the telecom industry alike are already aggravated at the prospect of being responsible to monitor internet traffic for police--having to aggravate their customers with another fee/tax just furthers that.
3. It runs counter to the "small c" conservative philosophy that many of the Tories core supporters have concerning taxation--that is that the people using somehting should be the ones paying for it. That is why they always talk about replacing some broad tax with "user fees". ISP's customers already pay to access the internet, and if the police want to access ISP customers' internet too, well the police should be the ones covering that cost.
4. Many western supporters of the NEW tories--the "old Reform Party" ones most passionate about getting rid of things like the gun registry and the Wheat Board monopoly, are offended by what C-30 represents--just like gun control it treats innocent people like criminals--the gun registry assumed that all people who would own a gun must be intent on using it to commit crimes and so they all must register with the government at great expense to that police can check up on them whenever they feel like it. Bill C-30 assumes all internet users co
I'll be surprised if your charter isn't as worthless to your government as the constitution is to the US government.
Rights are so inconvenient when you want to 'save' the children!