Canadian Minister Lies On Net Surveillance Claims 155
An anonymous reader writes "As we discussed last month, the Canadian government has introduced Internet surveillance legislation that requires ISPs to disclose customer information without a warrant. Peter Van Loan, the Minister in charge, claims that a Vancouver kidnapping earlier this year shows the need for these powers. Michael Geist did some digging and revealed this as a lie — the Vancouver police acknowledge that the case did not involve an ISP request and the suspect is now in custody."
Re:Of course it is a lie... (Score:5, Interesting)
That's right - and we saw it again last week. Somehow it's OUR fault that Roman Polanski avoided justice all these decades. "We", the peons, don't "get it".
Fortunately, the power of the Internet [nationalpost.com] is able to route around the brain-damaged "celebrity types" who signed that stupid petition expressing outrage that a pedophile should actually be arrested [altfg.com]. counter-petition [breitbart.com]
Maybe we need to charge public officials with corruption or fraud when they try to lie so blatantly. "That statement is no longer operative" is just one more fuddle duddle.
Re:STOP THE PRESSES! (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been looking at the top of the Google results for Peter Van Loan, and he seems to be the Canadian version of Don Rumsfeld. Honest mistake? YMMV.
Re:STOP THE PRESSES! (Score:4, Interesting)
Nobody is an expert on everything. That's a fact. Funny though that we kinda expect that from politicians.
He got asked about it and instead of giving the honest answer (i.e. "I dunno, but I'll ask my experts and come back to you") he made up some answer. Why? Because for some odd reason people expect politicians to have an answer for everything.
Personally I'd prefer a politician who just admits that he doesn't have an answer for everything but at least is honest. I'm just fed up with BS answers to the tune of "Get offa my back and just shut up".
Re:Well, what do you know (Score:4, Interesting)
Most governments tend to lean "liberal" economically and "conservative" socially so authoritarian all around.
Re:Of course it is a lie... (Score:1, Interesting)
Actually, it's worse than that. They pass laws because that's their metric for success. They don't want to take your freedoms away, it's just a byproduct of them passing new laws which they feel required to do.
Re:STOP THE PRESSES! (Score:3, Interesting)
As a Canadian, I can assure you that he most certainly is the Canadian version of Don Rumsfeld. And the Prime Minister is our very own Dick Cheney. (He's not Bush, he's much smarter than that, which makes him all the more dangerous)