Slashdot

Anywhere, anytime, it seems.

the courts will very likely find the Minister to be incorrect in his interpretation of the constitution, and that everything he is proposing violates Section 8 of the Charter, "Everyone has the right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure."

I would point out the Supreme Court has ruled that that whether information is subject to protection by Section 8 is not at the whim of the government, but whether a person has a "reasonable expectation of privacy" of information which could "reveal intimate, personal information", in that particular situation.

It is not particularly difficult to envision a situation where linking an IP address to a name would potentially reveal personal information to the state. Imagine a woman posting on a support forum for victims of sexual assault which tracks posters by IP...

Since IP addresses and so on are identifying information, and this being information people would reasonably expect their ISPs to keep private, I suspect that this entire thing is just begging for a Charter challenge and to have the courts clearly specify that a warrant is required.

CanLII has a very interesting brief on section 8 of the Charter [canlii.org] here.

Supposedly Canada is a liberal democracy... clearly the powers that be think differently... Sieg Heil Harper and the Queen! The brand of fascism that is sweeping Canada is spooky for sure.

My parents and grand parents didn't fight off the Nazi's to have the likes of the new Canadian fascism take hold.

I'm sorry to tell the government boobs but yes we Canadians don't like them interfering with our private lives or spying on us.

Take your delusion of government power and shove it up your where the sun don't shine.

Peter Van Loan, the new Canadian Public Safety minister can suck on my big fat ___.

It's assholes like Peter Van Loan that give government a bad name and make the entire notion of government an idea whose time has past into the dust bin of history.

I guess I'll be having a knock on the door in the middle of the night tonight and be taken away because I expressed the view that governments are simply groups of power grubbing nobs who don't have anything better to do with their time than attempt to control the minutia of people's lives. Come through my door without permission and I have a surprise waiting government brown shirts.

here is some information from Canadian providers -- none of them specifically state what information they will or will not provide when requested or what is specifically logged. Most pages include contact information for a privacy rep. I suggest you contact that person(s) and see what information you can opt out of having tracked.

I have excluded TELUS because they are wh0r3ish and don't listen anyway.

From http://www.shaw.ca/en-ca/AboutShaw/PrivacyPolicy/Index [www.shaw.ca]
3.3 How does Shaw obtain your consent? Consent is required for the collection of Personal Information and the subsequent use or disclosure of the Personal Information. Consent can be either expressed or implied. The form of consent sought by Shaw may vary, depending upon the circumstances and the type of Personal Information. In determining the form of consent to use, Shaw takes into account the sensitivity of the information and the reasonable expectations of the Customer, Employee or Web Site User. Shaw generally seeks express consent when the Personal Information is likely to be considered sensitive. Implied consent is typically appropriate when the Personal Information is less sensitive. In exceptional circumstances, as permitted by law, Shaw may collect, use or disclose Personal Information without a Customer, Employee or Web Site Userâ(TM)s knowledge or consent.

In general, the use of products and services by a Customer, or a Web Site User, or the acceptance of employment or benefits by an Employee, will constitute implied consent required by Shaw to collect, use and/or disclose Personal Information for the purposes identified in this Privacy Policy.

Consent may be withdrawn by Customers and Web Site Users at any time, subject to legal or contractual restrictions and upon providing Shaw reasonable notice. If you wish to withdraw your consent to certain collection, use or disclosure of Personal Information, please contact Shaw at privacy@shaw.ca.

and of course Rogers http://your.rogers.com/privacy1.asp [rogers.com]

Van Loan is one of the neo-cons currently blighting the Canadian political stage. They've been wandering around like lost sheep ever since Obama was elected in the US, and this kind of wholesale destruction of personal privacy is just their version of pigging out on comfort food when things go wrong.

The purpose of the new legislation is to clearly define what information is and is not covered by the need for a warrant. Done right, this is a Good Thing.

As the Minister pointed out, the police already have access to lots of information about you without the need for a warrant. This includes things like your phone number and address. Because this information is considered to be publicly available, the police can do reverse phone number lookups without a warrant. This does not allow them to tape your conversations, however.

The proposed law is identical in nature, allowing the police to find your name from the IP address. AND NOTHING ELSE. They cannot read your mail, they cannot look at your search patterns, they cannot sniff your traffic. Those require a warrant.

The situation seems perfectly analogous to the phone system, with the exception that we don't normally make big lists of IP addresses.

You don't own your phone number, the phone company does. They are free to sell it to anyone they want - including the people you don't want them to, like telemarketers. So if Bell owns your phone number and is free to do what they want with it, how is it that someone connecting using Bell Internet expects them not to do the same with the IP they gave you? They own it too.

And that's what the courts have decided, that the IP address you happen to be using is a routing code internal to the company that provides access, you have no control over it, and they can change it or give it away at any time. That being the case, they see no difference between IP's and telephone numbers, and applied the same expectation of privacy to both.

Maury

He was adamant that in regard to IP addresses, names, cell phone numbers, and email addresses: '...that is not the kind of information about which Canadians have a legitimate expectation of privacy.' The minister denied - even when presented with an audio clip proving otherwise - that his predecessor had promised never to allow the police to wiretap the Internet without a warrant."

Getting someone's name, address, cell phone number, and email addresses is not the Internet equivalent of wiretapping. The Internet equivalent of wiretapping would be getting the content of your emails and other data that you send and receive.

I'm not a fan of this bill to give these powers to police over ISPs, but it isn't as bad as too many of it critiques make it out to be. It isn't allowing police to warrantlessly get the contents of your email or other data that you send and receive - they can already get that information with a warrent and this bill does not seek to change that requirement.