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Canadian Internet Surveillance Dies a Quiet, Lonely Death

Dr Caleb writes "According to the Globe and Mail, 'The Internet surveillance legislation sponsored by Public Safety Minister Vic Toews has disappeared down a dark legislative hole. For all intents and purposes, the bill is dead. If the Harper government still wants to pass a law that would make it easier for police to track people who use the web to commit crimes, it will have to start from scratch.' The bill has been sent to a public safety committee for extensive revision, but it must be debated for five hours on the House floor first, and that won't happen before summer recess. This is a followup to the story we discussed in February titled 'Against Online Surveillance? You Must Be "For" Child Porn.'"

4 of 110 comments (clear)

  1. But by future+assassin · · Score: 4, Informative

    the Cons are in full swing to get Bill C11 passed http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/6488/125/

    I'm am of the belief that only taking up arms is the way to go in the next 15 years to remove corruption and corporate influence and introduce liability to political positions and decisions.

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    by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
  2. Re:Quiet? Lonely? by MightyMartian · · Score: 3, Informative

    Orders in Council can only be made where legislation has given the Government the authority to do so. It cannot concoct new government powers out of thin air.

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    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  3. Re:harper didn't keep us from sinking by MightyMartian · · Score: 3, Informative

    And now they're running neck-in-neck with the NDP. The problem in the end isn't the Tories, it's that the bottom fell out of the Liberal party, and someone had to govern in the meantime. Now that it looks like the Bloc is about to be taken off life support and Quebec has decided to re-engage with Federalism, and the majority of center and left-of-center voters have decided to send the last remaining major Western liberal party into the dustbin and gone with a left-of-center party, we ought to see things change.

    Yes, Harper's policies, or at least some of them, are pretty fucking stupid. But it's not like the Liberals before the didn't have stupid policies. You go back to Confederation, and it's littered with stupid policies, and some outright abusive ones. Canada has survived far worse governments than Harper's, but because so many people are either just as ideologically handicapped as Tory supporters are, or have so little knowledge of the country's political history, they make Harper into this almost comically Darth Vaderesque figure. It's moronic. He isn't that good and he isn't that bad, and he's now facing a country that's basically throwing the Liberals into a distant third place rump and saying "Those NDP guys look interesting."

    And you know what, if the NDP gets in, they'll pass a bunch of stupid policies, and you'll have a bunch of right wing morons of about your equivalent mental capacity comparing Mulcair to Josef Stalin and claiming Canada is going to become a Communist state, blah blah blah,

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    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  4. Re:Quiet? Lonely? by tixxit · · Score: 3, Informative

    Recently discussed this with a cop. It isn't so easy. He said most warrants for wiretaps are 600-odd pages and take a god awful long time to get through. Part of the bill would let them tell the phone company to start collecting data on someone while they went through the process of getting warrant signed. Once the warrant was approved, then they'd get access to all the data and could make their case. One of the problems, even with pedos, is that they know the guy is a Bad Dude, they know he's committing crimes, but they can't get the evidence because they can't get the wiretap in time. I definitely don't agree with the bill, but it isn't so cut a dry as some people make it out to be.