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

yup!

[ZorglubZ]

Restrict freedom, that'll make them stop trying to take it all away...

Formatting.

[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.

Ugh!

[ottawanker]

So, they've said that they knew something like this was going to happen eventually.. If they knew it was going to happen eventually, they should have planned for it. And, if they were happy with the security measures before, why do they need to change them now?

Let's keep this in context.. One guy, seemingly acting alone, shot a few people. Unfortunately he did it on government land, so the instant response is 'Terrorism'.

One guy (well, two if you count our PM), screwing with our freedoms.

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.

waiting for the right time

[Dorianny]

"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."

Its introduction was obviously waiting for a trauma to capitalize on.

Re:Won'd past constitutional challenge

[davester666]

"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"

Of course it was drafted some time ago. Harper was just waiting for something like this to get a way to quickly get it passed into legislation without all that pesky complaining that he got last time he tried doing it.

Unfortunately, the opposition and the press are busy deifying the couple of soldiers [well, two soldiers and a glorified security guard at a cemetary] and Harper for being so courageous, for standing up to this terrorist, and not giving into fear, while fighting for Canadian freedoms.

Of course, Harper is wallowing in fear, greatly increasing security around himself, and leaping at the chance to be able to spy on more and more citizens, I mean, terrorists. Nevermind also giving up Canadian freedoms so that Harper can really give it to his wife tonight.

Our supreme court MIGHT overturn this legislation, but who's going to fund the couple million dollars in legal fee's challenging it?