Canadian Govt To Introduce Massive Internet Surveillance Law 215
An anonymous reader writes "The Canadian government will introduce
new Internet surveillance legislation tomorrow that will mandate a
massive new surveillance infrastructure at all Canadian ISPs and remove
the need for court oversight of the disclosure of customer information.
Michael Geist has a detailed FAQ
on the history of the bill, the likely contents, the lack of government
evidence supporting the need for the invasive legislation, and what
Canadians can do about it."
Re:To stop child pornographers and organized crime (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually we do. It's 'freedom of expression' in our Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Then one of the Jewish backed lobby groups got some 'hate speech' mechanism added - which is used to crush reporting of Israel's warcrimes, and patently ignored when peddling war propaganda about any of Israel's enemies.
Re:Petition (Score:3, Interesting)
Can we start a petition to evict Canada from North America? They're giving us a bad name. Mexico is welcome to stay.
So you have no problem with that form the DHS now requires all US citizens to fill out when they "leave" the US for any reason be it business trip or vacation? I don't know of any other country in North America that requires its citizens to report to the government when the "leave".
Re:Thin Veil (Score:4, Interesting)
The 'net was decentralized at it's start. That only lasted a few years before the corporations bought up all the hubs and trunks. And now, the tool of said corporations is making laws to ensure eternal control.
It seems that there is nothing that can be built that won't get taken away and turned into a tool of control.
Re:I don't understand (Score:4, Interesting)
See, I don't have a problem with the police getting a warrant for surveillance. That's because you've got to have a person check and you can't just go fishing. It's a terrible invasion of privacy to just have to police looking over your shoulders.
What you can do now though is that if anyone comes out against a party or against any idea AT ALL, they can just blackmail you with your Internet history. "Hey Beardo, it looks like you like this and this, would be a shame if this went to the CBC, wouldn't it? I guess you're not all that opposed to this pipeline after all." (In my case I have no shame and no pride so it wouldn't really bother me.)
They also don't have to get probable cause to see if you're downloading stuff. grep everyones_history_Telco mp3 "Here's everyone that downloaded any mp3s in the last month, Sony." It's akin to drugtesting the sewer to see if anyone in a suburb has taken drugs, and then checking every toilet in the neighbourhood.
There's not even a chance that this law will be found Constitutional by the SCC or acceptable by the privacy comissionner.
Or if not, what we can do is get PI licences and publish the web history of every MP and Senator and their familes every single day.
Creepy (Score:3, Interesting)
"The new system would require the disclosure of customer name, address, phone number, email address, Internet protocol address, and a series of device identification numbers. "
That part about the "series of device identification numbers" will likely be a hardware profile similar to the kind used for DRM'ing software and not just a MAC address, if every access point records this profile then this type of surveillance is extensive, very extensive.
Your Internet fingerprint as it were.
For some reason I never associated Canada with this draconian crap, but there it is, along with Australia's equally intrusive measures soon the Internet will no longer be a forum of open discussion but rather one demoted to "content delivery" system, just like TV.
Re:To stop child pornographers and organized crime (Score:2, Interesting)
That's not true. The Liberals lost their government for far less with the sponsorship scandal. By comparison, the Conservatives have done far, far worse in their favouritism, their contempt for evidence-based policy, and utter lack of transparency which they were elected to improve in the first place, and to suggest the Liberals would have done the same if they were in power is disingenuous at best.
Also, the election really came down to a last minute NDP surge, an anomaly in the campaign. If the left's power hadn't diluted at the last possible minute, then the Conservatives would have gotten a minority, which would have resulted in a joint Liberal/NDP government rule, given that the two parties had expressed no intention in working with the Conservatives should another Conservative minority come to pass. It was a political gamble that the left lost, but a failed gambit is far from 'committing suicide' or 'shooting themselves in the ass'.
Re:To stop child pornographers and organized crime (Score:5, Interesting)
The easiest way for them to do this is to adopt another legal fallacy: like corporations are people, encryption is a munition, money is speech, the national "border" is 200 miles thick (100 miles to each side), and DRM is effective protection, declare the Internet as a public space and you can surveil with impunity.
(Acknowledged, those are US official legal fallacies and this is about Canada.)