Days After Shooting, Canada Proposes New Restrictions On and Offline

New submitter o_ferguson writes As Slashdot reported earlier this week, a lone shooter attacked the war memorial and parliament buildings in Ottawa, Canada on Wednesday. As many comments predicted, the national government has seized this as an opportunity to roll out considerable new regressive legislation, including measures designed to* increase data access for domestic intelligence services, institute a new form of extra-judicial detention, and, perhaps most troubling, criminalize some forms of religious and political speech online. As an example of the type of speech that could, in future, be grounds for prosecution, the article mentions that the killer's website featured "a black ISIS flag and rejoiced that 'disbelievers' will be consigned to the fires of Hell for eternity." A government MP offers the scant assurance that this legislation is not "trauma tainted," as it was drafted well prior to this week's instigating incidents. Needless to say, some internet observes remain, as always, highly skeptical of the manner in which events are being portrayed. (Please note that some articles may be partially paywalled unless opened in a private/incognito browser window.)

Comments

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[o_ferguson]

Not really sure why I should go to the trouble of properly formatting with paragraph tags, italics and footnotes (using Slashdot's own markup conventions) just to have the editors strip it all out again before pushing to the front page. If you want to optimize for mobile, just remove the option to use markup tags in the first place.

This guy tried to rob McDonald’s with pointy

[Truth_Quark]

I think that mental instability and social issues is at the heart of this tragedy, not terrorism nor insufficient power to monitor or detain. He actively tried to be detained, to no avail, and made himself well enough known to the authorities.