Canadian Bill C-416 to Require Wiretapping 228
Matthew Skala writes "Bill C-416, recently introduced in the Canadian Parliament, would if passed require Internet providers to provide wiretapping facilities to law enforcement — without a warrant, and with 'confidentiality' requirements reminiscent of the secret-spying cases we've seen recently in the States. This new Act is a reprise of last Parliament's C-74, which failed when the Government's term ended. Coming back as a Liberal "private member's Bill" in a minority government, it will have little chance of success without cross-party support; but with the Conservatives in charge, all bets are off if they can find a way to claim it's about terrorism or child pornography."
where (Score:5, Insightful)
Who can reach 1884 first? (Score:2, Insightful)
Editorial comments...bleh (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, I know Conserviative-bashing has been "the cool thing to do" in Canada for a while, but at least look who introduced the bill: "Marlene Jennings (Notre-Dame-de-Grâce--Lachine)." Click on her name, and you'll see she's part of the LIBERAL party. Believe it or not, the liberals have been responsible for a lot of crap too- stop blaming the Conservatives for every little thing that goes wrong up here.
Re:Editorial comments...bleh (Score:4, Insightful)
crypto (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:you know ... (Score:4, Insightful)
WTF?? (Score:5, Insightful)
The government is not allowed to listen in on my phone without a warrant.
Why the hell should they be allowed to read my internet packets without a warrant?
A Liberal bill? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, duh...
Re:you know ... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, you care if YOU or a loved one dies in a terrorist bombing, and you care if YOUR kid gets raped and photographed by some perv. Spare me the bleeding heart. And please, if you're so concerned, then make damned sure we make those people we PROVE to have commited those crimes as miserable as possible, so that other idiots might think twice about doing something like that.
But leave ME the fuck alone. Thank you.
Re:WTF?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because the Internet is today the one truly democratic medium of choice of the citizenry. The Authoritarians' inability to read you mail comes from the fact that in the day where letters were the democratic medium of the citizenry, those citizens were willing to fight and die in the battle with the Psychopathic Authoritarians who have always desired to monitor and spy on everyone. This battle has to be re-fought each time the progress of technology changes our modes of communication just as each new generation of these Sociopaths will try again and again to enslave us.
Private-members' bills almost never pass (Score:3, Insightful)
This has no chance.
Re:Editorial comments...bleh (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:you know ... (Score:3, Insightful)
That was back in 1991. I have yet to see anything that has threatened Americans freedoms more than our own government.
Re:Government and political recap (Score:2, Insightful)
We're entitled to everything, we give up some things to ensure safety and equality. How much we give up is also up to us, or at least it is supposed to be. To say the opposite is to invite totalitarianism, which is the proper word for what most people mean by 'communism.' A society without freedom can happen no matter what you call your government or what the idiots in office preach.
Stopping the government from doing stupid things (in the absence of a reliable voting system) means protest. Protest means organization. The right to assemble is protected by the first amendment. To nullify this right you only need two ingredients: the ability to investigate and detain any criminal without oversight, and a policy of 'those who speak against the government in wartime are criminals.' All surveillance without oversight does is make it easy to assume everyone is guilty without actually saying it. We punish criminals by taking their rights and freedoms, the purpose of the criminal justice system is to way the potential for taking the rights of the innocent versus the public interest in taking the rights of the guilty.
We are in yet another endless war, millions of our people won't die, so no one will think to do anything to stop it. Instead yet more of our rights will be lost, and our country will start looking even more fundamentalist. We added "under god" to the pledge to respond to 'the evil communist atheists.' What will we do to respond to 'the evil terrorist muslims?' Maybe we'll put a crucifix on the flag, or on the Great Seal. It's true that symbolic actions like this take away no one's rights, but they contribute to a culture of intolerance, which is exactly what is intended.
Re:you know ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Sentiments like these are of course the wet dream of every would-be-fascist out there. Because there is really no way to tell if someone who expressed violent thoughts about some politician or business-feudal-lord actually means it or is just venting. Not until an act of violence is commited, which is the actual crime. Any attempts at "pre-emption" inevietably lead to persecutions of all of those who express "sufficiently extreme" thoughts against the ruling elites. Following which everyone becomes "careful" (read: terrorized) about what they say and write. Following which the rulers announce that they know that the "extremists" (who hide under every bed by now) are "secretly" communicating and thinking their "violent desires". And after that comes Gestapo, Stasi, KGB etc.
You see the problem with your thinking is that you missed the fact that "fictional works" are simply recordings of thought. And once they become subject to monitoring and abuse by the authorities (who after all only want to protect us poor sods from the evil terrorists who hide in every closet) so do the thoughts in your head. As Orwell predicted with frightening foresight.
Re:you know ... (Score:3, Insightful)
No. Works of fiction, fantasy, and straight reporting — in any medium, for any purpose — are not indicative of either "unhealthy behavior" or even an unhealthy tendency towards such behavior. Nor is the consumption / appreciation of such works. It is also worth noting that the production of such works may have an agenda that 100% aligns with yours, that is, carries a message that is entirely anti-sexuality for children and/or teenagers.
However, I would view your outlook as incredibly unhealthy for society at large, and for art in general, and by art, I mean creative works in any medium.
For the record, I was absolutely appalled by the content of your post. You'll note, however, that I neither suggest you need monitoring or that you be repressed. I'm simply appalled by your thinking, which as far as I am concerned has stepped beyond "think of the children" and well into "abuse the adults."
Could this be any more partisan? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:you know ... (Score:3, Insightful)
I sure hope you never let your kids get in a car or leave the house at all, given how many ways they can die in those situations. Hell, stuff them in a clean room for their whole lives so that a disease won't kill them. Actually given the massive number of genetic disorders just conceiving kids is condemning to early death or lifelong suffering at a much higher rate that any sexual predator or terrorist ever could. I recommend you go get a vasectomy asap for the sake of your unborn children.
The Honourable Mr. Harper, our champion. (Score:2, Insightful)
Privacy, yeah, he respects privacy by wishing he could tell us who we can marry. The bedroom, that's a good public place for conservatives to govern, isn't it? We already know that he's happy to tell me what substances I can put in MY body, that's mighty libertarian of him. Next thing you know they'll be messing around with people's wombs. Oh, opposed to big government (but not a big military), sure, so long as that works for big business, and when big business calls the policy, that's a good substitute for democracy and government, is it? Oh, and censorship; we don't really know about that yet, do we? It's a minority government.
Unless, of course, you'd rather listen to what a politician says, rather than watch what they do. Then you'd be perfectly right.
Re:Canadian History Lesson... (Score:5, Insightful)
"(in which only about 6 people were killed in terrorist attacks)."
ONLY 6 people? Would invoking the War Measures Act have been more acceptable to you if there had been a hundred or a thousand killed by terrorists?
"sent in military troops to occupy Canadian territory"
You make it sound as the Canadian Forces are a foreign entity in their own land.
"the RCMP carried out hundreds of illegal searches and wiretaps."
Technically the searches and wiretaps were NOT illegal, because essentially martial law was in effect.
"allowing U.S. draftees to escape to Canada during the Vietnam war"
They did no such thing as allow them to "escape." They weren't prisoners.
"There was full-on military style domestic counter-insurgency operations being conducted on a huge scale in Canada in most people's lifetime."
It was NOT Iraq. There was no street-to-street fighting, no sieges of holy shrines, no massive numbers of casualties. True there were tanks in the neighbourhoods and soldiers on street corners, but they were relatively few and far between compared to the image your statement invokes (I know because I was there). This was not a massive military presence, and it was limited to Québec. The military was nowhere to be seen in the rest of Canada. You make it sound as if the entire country was "occupied" as you put it. It was not a "huge scale".
"Far crazier stuff has gone down in Canada's recent past!"
The October Crises was 36 years ago. MANY things have changed since then, and much of that change was because of the invocation of that draconian law, which was one of the only counter-insurgency tools available at the time. Smashing a fly with a sledgehammer? Certainly, but it worked. There have been no real terrorist threats since. Thankfully.
You could have simply been informative in your post, but instead you chose to editorialize, while seemingly ignoring the context of the time. This does a disservice to people, who are perfectly capable of deciding for themselves, after studying the links you provided, if the government of the time (not just Pierre Trudeau) acted improperly or excessively. You and I may agree that the War Measures Act was an outdated and overreaching Act, but if we choose to say that there were alternatives to invoking it, it should be our responsibility to show what those alternative were, and that they were would have been effective in ending the crisis of murder, kidnapping and terrorism.
Re:Editorial comments...bleh (Score:3, Insightful)
Regardless of what Harper was once a champion of (and I'd dispute your claims that he was ever much of a supporter of freedom and privacy given his opposition to same-sex marriage and his strong anti-drug, law'n'order stance) he has shown himself in power to be an extreme pragmatist. The GST rate reduction is a perfect example of wrong-headed economic policy that Harper with good academic credentials in economics understands perfectly. But his knowledge of the principles made no difference when he realized it would get him votes.
Successful Canadian politicians have always been brutal pragmatists. Jean Cretien is typical of a successful Canadian prime minister, and that fellow who came after him, like Joe what-his-name in the late '70's, is typical of the failures.
On the good side, because of our lottery-style electoral system, where a five percent shift in popular vote can produce a fifty percent shift in parliamentary representation, it is very difficult for any party to stray very far from mainstream Canadian values and stay in power for long. Ergo, it is very unlikely that we will ever see the kind of police powers that have been granted in the U.S. and Britain lately, because the Canadian public have very little feeling that we need such things.
Re:you know ... (Score:3, Insightful)
I care just as much as you do - in that vague, detached sort of way we care about stuff happening to other people. Aww isn't that tragic - hey look, the Simpsons are on!
However I don't pretend to be some altruistic image of perfect love and caring. I admit that I'm human, and I care a hell of a lot MORE if it happens to me or someone I love than if it happens to someone I hear about in the news. I don't DO hypocrisy.
Bullshitters (on BOTH sides of the lines) are the people that get us into trouble. You take care of yourself, I'll take care of myself.
And if we run into one of these nutjobs on a plane or elsewhere, we can both take him out together - that's something worth taking a bullet for. But spare me the paternalism, please.
Anyone who spies on my surfing... (Score:1, Insightful)
Enjoy. I sure do!