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Canadian Police Recommend Online Spying Tax For Internet Bills

Posted by Soulskill on from the complicit-in-your-own-surveillance dept.

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."

17 of 110 comments (clear)

  1. who will pay? by nurb432 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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 ----
    1. Re: who will pay? by hairyfeet · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    2. Re: who will pay? by ILongForDarkness · · Score: 3, Insightful

      While true I hate the continual addition of different types of taxes. It is horribly in efficient. Lets say the bill passes. Rather than add some revenue from existing taxes to pay for it (or the opposite: remove some unnecessary tax credits) they dream up another tax that than has to be collected, another dozen people get jobs doing nothing but making sure people pay this particular 0.1% of the governments revenue etc. Same thing with arguments for gambling as an alternative revenue source, horribly in efficient but sadly hidden tax everywhere distracts people from the total amount of their money that does to government.

    3. Re: who will pay? by hairyfeet · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I truly believe that even though I am atheist that there are a handful of companies that are truly evil. That they are run by those that take sick delight in causing real suffering and misery upon their fellow human beings, your Goldman Sachs, your Halliburton, your Monsanto, companies that if they could increase their profits 15% by throwing live babies in a meat grinder they would. I don't see how anyone can not believe in real evil when seeing these pigs living like kings off of the misery and suffering they have caused with zero remorse. Hell if I walked into any of those companies and saw actual demons in three piece suits going to meetings like Wolfram & hart frankly I wouldn't even be surprised, these companies do nothing but profit from suffering.

      But you seem to forget we had the draft for ages and the rich simply either went to college or some reserve unit in some cushy location like Dubya in Alabama. The 1% may cause the misery but they aren't about to let their delicate selves get dirty like the peasants. look how many chickenhawks are pushing for a war with Iran, notice how none of their kids are in harm's way?

      Sadly it WILL change, but only after you see the rich fleeing the country like the fall of Saigon after the whole thing falls apart. Even an 8th grader with 2 economics classes can see the situation is simply unsustainable, you have nearly half a billion people and all the factories were sent overseas. As Huckabee pointed out even our military can't function anymore without CCC (Cheapo Chinese Crap) and we make less tech now than we did in 1975! if you have a strong stomach you might want to look at these numbers and realize that they are over 2 years old and the downward trends they are listing have accelerated since that time. How anyone can believe that there is any other path in our future but an Arab Spring is beyond me, because the poor simply aren't gonna go crawl off into a corner and slowly starve like they did in the depression. Things are gonna get ugly, I believe after the student loan bubble bursts followed by the stock market bubble you'll see US money become practically worthless and at that time their little red VS blue distractions simply won't placate the masses anymore. If the conspiracy theorists are right they are building "FEMA camps" for just this eventuality, some nice out of the way concentration camps to put the teeming masses. But nobody is gonna put up with camps thanks to the Germans so when that happens will be when the shooting starts.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    4. Re: who will pay? by lexsird · · Score: 3, Interesting

      We are on our own too. Just think about it. We are the ones that ride to the rescue of people from evil stuff like this. Who's going to rescue us? Nobody, that's for sure.

      I'm too old and out of shape for this shit. But my younger self would have loved it, and kicked the Revolutionary War 2.0 off already. (at least in my addled memory/imagination, it's fun to talk shit when your old) But yeah, it's coming. You can smell it in the wind almost, like before a big rumble, the calm before the storm.

      Enjoy the calm, everyday little things, because if we snap and go postal on this system, the world as we know it will change, and not for the best or a long time. I think we should embrace the violence of the vote before we go to the sword. We need to redeem the system on it's merits, or else we need to throw it as well on the failed ash heap of history's failed governments. The damn thing will work because we all made it work, or not.

      I'm afraid you are right though. Here's how I see it playing out as well. This coming election is a lightning rod for crazy amounts of trouble. I've never seen this country so divided. in my life and I was born in the mid 60s. I have seen some shit, but nothing like this. Neither side will be happy with the results. I am afraid that voter fraud will be rampant, then discovered, then outrage will spiral out of control fast. There is so much anger and hate, we have fed it with hate filled radio and "news". You have to go back to Nazi Germany or the Soviets to find the intensity of hateful propaganda going on. It's a simmering pot, about to boil over.

      Another thing to take careful note of is women's rights. Women's civil rights are under attack in ways I couldn't believe. It's like we now have a Christian Taliban, hell bent on dragging us back to the dark ages. I know this sounds crazy, but darkness is falling on us. The shadows are growing long.

      The darkest day we have had was when the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are people, and their bribing was free speech. I say behold, something evil was born of this country on that day. Until we take that ground back from them, we have fallen.

      As far as faith is concerned, seeing is believing. I'm afraid you might become a believer, sadly not because of the light you seen radiating from a real Christian in your life, but instead from seeing the faces of evil and recognizing the shocking reality of it all. Not today of course, but in that fearsome future that we both strive to avoid. May we both be barking lunatics and wrong, wrong wrong.

      --
      Take the Red Pill.
  2. Good, do it... by Fishead · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Do it. That will make it a whole lot easier to drum up some outrage at the next election.

    1. Re:Good, do it... by lexsird · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Let's say for sake of argument that this all true.

      He's by far the better candidate, still.

      Yes, it's all kinds of wrong, but what are the options? Republicans? Seriously? They have lost their minds. I used to be one. I didn't vote this last time for President because I was Republican and I couldn't vote for the shitbags they put up. The Bush Republicans all needed FIRED. It wasn't about voting for someone, it was about firing Republicans. How else do you think that a black man, with a name like Barrack Obama could get elected President? Holy shit, we would have elected a cartoon character over a Republican after Bush.

      Then it's like we collectively woke up from a drinking bender and said "we elected who??" In the wake of this, the Republicans have been trying to gain traction and with the help of Rightwing media outlets like Fox News, drop the blame from Bush's atrocities onto this President. It's one giant case of denial as they try to gloss over the fact that this party produced one of the worse Presidents in human history.

      Is Obama shitty? Yes. Do we have better options? No. We have even worse options, ones that will give you nightmares.

      We are a fragmented people with our heads up our collective ass. If we ever take politics as seriously as we do sports or fashion then we might have a chance of making the correct choices for our democracy. But that isn't going to happen, we are fucking retarded collectively and will continue to be fed shit sandwiches by the powers that be until we snap and burn it all to the ground.

      --
      Take the Red Pill.
  3. Soon ... by PPH · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ... they will make you pay for the bullet at your own execution.

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
    1. Re:Soon ... by someone1234 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I don't understand you. Government bullets were always bought on taxpayer money.

      --
      Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
  4. Police Services are a scam by HeavyDDuty · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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].

    1. Re:Police Services are a scam by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      the occupy movement got their mantra wrong.

      government spending is nuts, especially in bc. now they want more money, and want to screw those that deserve a bit more. my wage has steadily declined since 1992 to the point where i can't even afford cable and internet, let alone desire it. hell, gas is getting harder to buy.

      government entities are the first to give themselves a fat raise on a whim. icbc, translink, bc ferries, the mlas themselves. all got huge or multiple raises in recent years. and our taxes go up.

      now the cops, who do jack shit but hand out road tax speeding tickets, want a tax on the internet?

      screw that. DO MORE WITH LESS. i have to.

      DO MORE WITH LESS

    2. Re:Police Services are a scam by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Your logic seems to be flawed.

      If a record low crime rate is due to the effectiveness of police, one would suspect that reducing the economic support for police would reduce their effectiveness, resulting in an increase in crime.

      So no you don't want to cut their budget if they are doing a good job.

    3. Re:Police Services are a scam by MacGyver2210 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That's like saying "Just because there is no war on doesn't mean we should pull the soldiers back from the most recent battlefield. If they leave, surely the fighting will resume again!" It's flawed logic.

      The real problem facing everyone in North America right now is that there are TOO MANY LAWS. Eventually, the 'lawmakers' and 'amenders' of law will need to stop. Otherwise, it is an eternal cycle of creating more laws without ever losing them. How long do you think it will take until breathing in a certain area is illegal? Until every single thing we do is so regulated, that a step 6" too far to the right will land us a ticket or in jail?

      What we need is lawDESTROYERS, not lawmakers. The legal system in the US and Canada is completely overrun with trivial nonsense laws, and the current round of lawmakers is busy trying to find something to do. Instead of going back to reform clearly bogus laws which their constituents hate, they're trying to find the next hot topic for their fellow party campaigners.

      I wish they had built a big RESET button into the US Government. I would be pushing the SHIT out of it right now.

      --
      If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
    4. Re:Police Services are a scam by Wildclaw · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Government spending as a total is actually to low. It is how you keep people unemployed in a fiat economy (in a non-fiat economy you keep people unemployed by simply being rich and withholding the currency), so that corporations can buy slaves cheaper.

      That the government debt at the same time is high and rising is because the government is funneling money via both corrupt spending (as you mention) as well as a corrupt tax system that since the 1980s has been setup to allow the rich to slowly but surely drain money from the economy, hence forcing the government to inject more. (although as mentioned above, they deliberately inject less money than is needed to keep full employment rates)

      It is the simple goal of supply side economy and always has been. Unemployment for the poor and government paying rent to the rich, all in one nice package.

      And best of all. The left will defend the corrupt spending, while the right will defend the corrupt tax laws. It is the perfect fraud.

  5. Wait, what? by epp_b · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So, they want to invade privacy in what should be an illegal manner and they want me to pay them to do it?

    1. Re:Wait, what? by hilather · · Score: 3, Funny

      So, they want to invade privacy in what should be an illegal manner and they want me to pay them to do it?

      Well, when you say it like that, it just sounds stupid.

  6. Do something about it by ifwm · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.