Canadian Government Seeking New Net Snooping Powers 77
An anonymous reader writes "A bill being considered by the Canadian federal parliament includes two clauses specifically to reduce the 'due process' imposed when the police need information from ISPs. Under the proposed bill, law enforcement officers will not require a warrant to acquire information about internet subscribers from Canadian ISPs ... Paul Ducklin has criticized the bill saying that it 'doesn't even seem to propose that the requests be based on any sort of specific identifier, such as a name or an email address ... This suggests, in the worst case, that an ISP might be compelled simply to hand over information about all subscribers. No warrant needed, and thus no proactive oversight by the judiciary.'"
Disgusting. (Score:2, Insightful)
The US and Canadian governments illustrate more and more every day how the interests of big money outweigh the duty to the public.
Re:Wait, what? (Score:4, Insightful)
You pulled a bill from a year ago, that has been effectively tabled by the fact that we just had an election? And where no current bill of the same authority is under consideration?
There is no bill, hence no discussion anymore, hence NO FUCKING STORY. Way to factcheck.
Yeah that is pretty lame.
Still, it is definitely a problem that anyone holding any public office would even think of doing this.
The legal definition of "treason" needs to be expanded to include "any elected official, appointed official, or employee or agent of either, who makes any effort to subvert, reduce, eliminate, or work around due process for any reason or no reason at all". For both the US and Canada. It's hard to think of more effective ways to permanently damage a nation.
Re:Don't like this but...... (Score:4, Insightful)
When our country is being compared to China in copyright issues that is just bad. Too many cheap people out their stealing.
You must be trolling, or you decided that complete ignorance about a subject shouldn't stop you from taking a position concerning it.
This bill is for law enforcement officers to obtain ISP information with less due process. Copyright infringement is generally not a crime. Therefore, it generally wouldn't involve police.
Instead, the vast majority of copyright infringement cases would involve discovery/subpoenas issued during a civil suit. That implies authorization by a court for such information to be obtained.
Even if you had a point, and you don't, I'd rather see every last copyright cartel go out of business and sell its assets at auction. In the scheme of things, that would be a far lesser loss compared to liberty and privacy.
Re:Wow (Score:0, Insightful)
Pity; Harper keeps on thinking he's the Fuhrer whilst causing a furor in the country. Just had to have idiots combined with first past the post bullshit for this idiot to get in again. With Harper and his constant lying to the public; it is no wonder that he is making even Brian Mulroney look good.
Re:Wait, what? (Score:2, Insightful)
The NDP stand on the issue will be almost irrelevant now that the Conservatives have a majority. The government can ram through whatever they want after respecting the token amount of opposition comment that they have to tolerate in parliamentary procedure. The ONLY way that the NDP or any other opposition is going to have an influence is if the general public takes an interest in the issue and loudly voices an opinion on what is being said. Even if the public does take an interest, the Conservatives can still pass the legislation as-is. All the good intentions in the world aren't going to stop that unless the Conservatives think the issue is going to affect the next election, and it seems unlikely that net neutrality and privacy are going to be deciding issues for most ordinary voters.
The same goes for another pending bill for copyright reform, which the Conservatives have also said is going to be tabled more-or-less like the previous legislation that didn't get passed. How much do you want to bet that they change it to address the broad public complaints about the previous bill? I doubt it's going to change much at all, and it will be passed regardless of whatever the NDP says. I'm not looking forward to the Canadian DMCA either.
If people are going to have any hope of influencing either of these pending bills when the September session of Parliament starts, the time to start talking about it and organizing opposition to what was presented previously is now. Then there would be some tiny chance they would start worrying about the public reaction and change the legislation before it is tabled. I think the chances they'd change it between tabling and the vote are pretty much nil, because that would be perceived as giving in to opposition demands.
Re:Disgusting. (Score:5, Insightful)