The Disastrous Privacy Consequences of Canada's Anti-Terrorism Bill

An anonymous reader writes "Canada's proposed anti-terrorism legislation is currently being debated in the House of Commons, with the government already serving notice that it plans to limit debate. Michael Geist argues that decision has enormous privacy consequences, since the bill effectively creates a "total information awareness" approach that represents a radical shift away from our traditional understanding of public sector privacy protection. The bill permits information sharing across government for an incredibly wide range of purposes, most of which have nothing to do with terrorism and opens the door to further disclosure "to any person, for any purpose." The cumulative effect is to grant government near-total power to share information for purposes that extend far beyond terrorism with few safeguards or privacy protections."

Comments

Re:It was always just a matter of time...

[gstoddart]

No, it's a feedback loop. The exact same thing is happening with copyright.

America (and all of the five eyes) want additional laws and powers. Those laws and powers are currently illegal and unpopular.

So, one of the five eyes gets talked into passing a law which goes much further. And then the rest of them all say "see, we need these powers too".

The exact same thing has been happening with copyright, and spying provisions ... they play off one another to expand the powers internationally, and then push to get the same things domestically.

Essentially most western governments now have three magic keys to the kingdom: copyright, terrorism, and child porn.

These three things are being used to march the goalposts further down the field, and the consequences for the rest of our liberties be damned.

The five-eyes are flunkies in advancing the interests of corporations, and conspiring together to give us global fascism and surveillance. The Western democracies are all actively trying to say "fuck you and your rights, this is what we do, this is who we share it with, and if you don't like it fuck off".

Essentially the governments and spy agencies of the five-eyes are larger threats to our liberties than the people they claim to be protecting us from.

And they seem to not give a damn what they do to get there.

Re:Like all governments ...

[bobbied]

They're quick to tell us how this is going to make us more secure, but they've utterly failed to demonstrate how existing laws are inadequate.

And we stumbled onto a VERY important point. Legislators are often guilty of passing a new law because they want to be seen as "doing something" about a problem. FEW of them actually ask the question "So what laws do we have NOW that address this and do we need to modify them?" Even fewer would actually understand the answer.

This is about politics, about Public Relations and how I can burnish my image and tarnish my opponent. So if I can pass a law and claim to have addressed the issue, I have advanced MYSELF. Who cares if it's the right thing to do or if making a minor tweak to existing law or budgets would be a better, faster, cheaper fix? Oh no, it's about appearances, not effectiveness..