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Canadian Government Scrapping Internet Predators Act
dakohli writes "The Conservative Goverment of Canada is scrapping the controversial bill C-30 They will instead make 'modest' changes to the existing Warrantless Wiretap bill. This bill was widely panned by Privacy Critics and members of the opposition. Another victory for online privacy!"
I suspect that by modest changes they mean that they are going to gut our rights. Anyone who works in government quickly learns that control of information is power. It makes them angry that they can't get more information and it makes them scared that we can get so much.
Exhibit #1: Egypt. They want to turn off Youtube for a month because of "blasphemy" what they really don't want people seeing is the growing discontent that is visibly displayed every day along with the misdeeds of the police; this will work of course because youtube is the only site on the whole Internet that hosts videos.
We don't need a new internet law we need something at the constitutional level that protects us from government spying while also enshrining our rights to force the government to expose its secrets.
What they mean by 'they will instead make modest changes to' is 'we will change the name of this and insert it wholly unchanged into this other legislation'.
Less than a year ago support for Bill C-30, the so-called Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act, was presented to Canadians by the government as a binary choice.
"He can either stand with us or stand with the child pornographers," Public Safety Minister Vic Toews scolded a Liberal critic in the House of Commons last February.
The comment set off a public fire storm concerning the Internet and personal privacy — a nasty fight that resulted in unsavoury details of Toews' divorce being splashed across the web by a Liberal party operative.
Toews, who introduced the legislation, did not attend Monday's news conference where Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said Bill C-30 is dead.
After announcing changes to emergency warrantless wiretap laws, Nicholson let drop that C-30 was gone, in response to a reporter's question — an inquiry the minister was clearly expecting.
"We will not be proceeding with Bill C-30 and any attempts we will have to modernize the Criminal Code will not contain the measures in C-30 — including the warrantless mandatory disclosure of basic subscriber information, or the requirement for telecommunications service providers to build intercept capabilities within their systems," Nicholson said.
"Any modernization of the Criminal Code ... will not contain those."
The legislation would have forced Internet service providers to maintain systems that allowed police to intercept and track online communications.
It also would have given police, intelligence and Competition Bureau officers warrantless access to Internet subscriber information, including name, address, telephone number, email address and Internet protocol address.
Police said they needed these powers to track child pornographers, among others.
"We have inadvertently created safe havens for those who exploit technology to traffic in weapons, drugs and people," Vancouver police Chief Jim Chu, the president of the Canadian Association of Police Chiefs, wrote in an op-ed last November.
"It is a boon to pedophile networks, money launderers, extortionists, deceitful telemarketers, fraudsters and terrorists. Cyber bullies communicate their vitriol with impunity."
Chu said police were "handcuffed by legislation introduced in 1975, the days of the rotary telephone."
Dick Fadden, the director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, said he was not aware the bill was to be shelved.
"We said all along that there were some aspects of it that would be helpful to us," Fadden told reporters on Parliament Hill following a committee appearance on another matter. "It's not absolutely critical for us to do our work."
The proposed legislation infuriated a wide cross-section of opponents, including privacy and civil liberties advocates and many conservative libertarians who opposed what they called Big Brother oversight in the legislation.
"I don't think we should underestimate the significance of a majority government backing down on a piece of its legislation," Michael Geist, the chair of Internet and E-commerce law at the University of Ottawa, said in an interview.
"This is truly unprecedented within the context of this government certainly."
Nicholson had little to say Monday when asked about police concerns over child pornography, noting the government was responding to Canadians "who have been very clear on this."
The debate over modernizing surveillance of the Net has been going on for a decade, said Geist, and police have yet to clearly demonstrate the need for some of the warrantless powers they were seeking. Examples of investigations hampered or stopped by the current legislation have not been provided.
"It was bad policy, badly marketed and the government had litt
It's not a victory if they are proposing these laws in the first place.
If your brat can't handle online insults or virtual sexual advances when YOU LET THEM ONLINE then there are bigger problems ahead; when they are older and move out of the trailer park they will do other stupid things... they'll probably do stupid things while at home because parents who want government to do their job are negligent. Unsupervised kids were a problem BEFORE the internet -> correlation is not causation! We have more lousy parents now than in the past - but nobody has the guts to say it.
Sex criminals have problems with REPEATING the crime - so when you catch them, properly handle them - label them crazy and don't them them out of the padded room until you cure them (that could be a life sentence.) Telling everybody around where the sex offenders are is not helping things a whole lot either... I've seen the secret map of the minor offenders that are not made public. Its almost ever 3rd house is flagged. Every divorce or domestic mess these days has lawyers bringing up accusations of stuff that gets the address flagged. Maybe you move into that house... it's on that map for years too!
If your brat can't handle online insults or virtual sexual advances ... telling everybody around where the sex offenders are is not helping things a whole lot either ... almost ever 3rd house is flagged.
Well the solution is obvious then, isn't it? Let's get rid of all the kids, then pedos won't be problem.
Probably everything will get thrown into the next budget omnibus bill which will pass and then we'll only find out six months later what was contained in it.
And by contrast in New Zealand, our Beloved Leader is bending over in the shower for his MPAA/RIAA pals, again.