Canadian Police Recommend Online Spying Tax For Internet Bills 110
An anonymous reader writes "One of the major unanswered questions about Bill C-30, Canada's lawful access/online surveillance bill, is who will pay for the costs associated with responding to law enforcement demands for subscriber
information ('look ups') and installation of surveillance equipment ('hook ups'). Michael Geist recently obtained documents (PDF) from Public Safety under the Access to Information Act that indicates the government doesn't really have its own answer. But he reports that the police do — a new 'public safety' tax to be added to Internet and wireless bills."
who will pay? (Score:5, Insightful)
Its *always* the consumer. Be it from direct taxes and fees, or just passing the cost down from the companies, we, the consumer, always pay the cost.
Good, do it... (Score:5, Insightful)
Do it. That will make it a whole lot easier to drum up some outrage at the next election.
Soon ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Soon ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand you. Government bullets were always bought on taxpayer money.
Re:Police Services are a scam (Score:5, Insightful)
the occupy movement got their mantra wrong.
government spending is nuts, especially in bc. now they want more money, and want to screw those that deserve a bit more. my wage has steadily declined since 1992 to the point where i can't even afford cable and internet, let alone desire it. hell, gas is getting harder to buy.
government entities are the first to give themselves a fat raise on a whim. icbc, translink, bc ferries, the mlas themselves. all got huge or multiple raises in recent years. and our taxes go up.
now the cops, who do jack shit but hand out road tax speeding tickets, want a tax on the internet?
screw that. DO MORE WITH LESS. i have to.
DO MORE WITH LESS
Re:Police Services are a scam (Score:4, Insightful)
Your logic seems to be flawed.
If a record low crime rate is due to the effectiveness of police, one would suspect that reducing the economic support for police would reduce their effectiveness, resulting in an increase in crime.
So no you don't want to cut their budget if they are doing a good job.
Re:Good, do it... (Score:2, Insightful)
That doesn't work the way you would think. Here in the US, our president is responsible for killing 200 Mexican civilians, arming Mexican drug lords, killing US citizens without trial or even arrainment, signing ACTA, embezzeling around $50 Billion given directly to campaign donors, trying to destroy one of the only industries that is actually creating jobs (oil), signed into law that you could eventually end up in jail for not buying what the government wants you to, hiding dangers of Chevy Volts randomly catching fire, falsly accusing Toyota Priuses of being unsafe, not closing or even attempting to close Gitmo, and on and on.
Any three of these would prevent a normal candidate from getting reelected, but liberals in the US still support him fully. We have proven no matter what our president does about half the country will support him and blame someone else for what he did. At this point Obama could put live kittens in a pie, bake it in an oven and eat them on live TV and the next day I would be reading stories about how it was Bush's fault that he had to do it.
So like I said, don't expect it to work that way, you will be disappointed.
Re:Police Services are a scam (Score:5, Insightful)
That's like saying "Just because there is no war on doesn't mean we should pull the soldiers back from the most recent battlefield. If they leave, surely the fighting will resume again!" It's flawed logic.
The real problem facing everyone in North America right now is that there are TOO MANY LAWS. Eventually, the 'lawmakers' and 'amenders' of law will need to stop. Otherwise, it is an eternal cycle of creating more laws without ever losing them. How long do you think it will take until breathing in a certain area is illegal? Until every single thing we do is so regulated, that a step 6" too far to the right will land us a ticket or in jail?
What we need is lawDESTROYERS, not lawmakers. The legal system in the US and Canada is completely overrun with trivial nonsense laws, and the current round of lawmakers is busy trying to find something to do. Instead of going back to reform clearly bogus laws which their constituents hate, they're trying to find the next hot topic for their fellow party campaigners.
I wish they had built a big RESET button into the US Government. I would be pushing the SHIT out of it right now.
Re: who will pay? (Score:4, Insightful)
While true I hate the continual addition of different types of taxes. It is horribly in efficient. Lets say the bill passes. Rather than add some revenue from existing taxes to pay for it (or the opposite: remove some unnecessary tax credits) they dream up another tax that than has to be collected, another dozen people get jobs doing nothing but making sure people pay this particular 0.1% of the governments revenue etc. Same thing with arguments for gambling as an alternative revenue source, horribly in efficient but sadly hidden tax everywhere distracts people from the total amount of their money that does to government.
Re:Good, do it... (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's say for sake of argument that this all true.
He's by far the better candidate, still.
Yes, it's all kinds of wrong, but what are the options? Republicans? Seriously? They have lost their minds. I used to be one. I didn't vote this last time for President because I was Republican and I couldn't vote for the shitbags they put up. The Bush Republicans all needed FIRED. It wasn't about voting for someone, it was about firing Republicans. How else do you think that a black man, with a name like Barrack Obama could get elected President? Holy shit, we would have elected a cartoon character over a Republican after Bush.
Then it's like we collectively woke up from a drinking bender and said "we elected who??" In the wake of this, the Republicans have been trying to gain traction and with the help of Rightwing media outlets like Fox News, drop the blame from Bush's atrocities onto this President. It's one giant case of denial as they try to gloss over the fact that this party produced one of the worse Presidents in human history.
Is Obama shitty? Yes. Do we have better options? No. We have even worse options, ones that will give you nightmares.
We are a fragmented people with our heads up our collective ass. If we ever take politics as seriously as we do sports or fashion then we might have a chance of making the correct choices for our democracy. But that isn't going to happen, we are fucking retarded collectively and will continue to be fed shit sandwiches by the powers that be until we snap and burn it all to the ground.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)