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: (Score:3)
Slashdot on Google: "So what if they have all my personal info? We're living in the internet era. I'm not concerned that they can index my email or track my browsing habits."
Slashdot on governments: "How dare law enforcement be able to track criminals without a warrant. What happened to the public's right to privacy?"
Re:Disgusting. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Disgusting. (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, from requests I've had (I work from a small ISP), they already have something on the books for this and it doesn't require a warrant. The RCMP officer refered to section 7(3)(c.1)(ii) of the "Pursuant to the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Document Act" (PIPEDA). Apparently it requires no warrant in cases where disclosure is required to enforce a law... That leaves an aftertaste of gigantic loophole in my mouth but I'm no lawyer.
Re: (Score:2)
IANAL, but my understanding of PIPEDA is that personal information can be gathered without the individual's consent when this information is required for law enforcement. This is NOT the same as you (your company) handing that information over freely, i.e. the RCMP can snoop around and find that information on their own without having to tell the individual that they collected his info. Your company on the other hand, asked for the individual's consent before collecting and part of that consent covers the f
Re: (Score:2)
Cool (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Updated copyright laws including DMCA like provisions as written by America (Wikileaks leaked a document showing our glorious leader responding to the American ambassadors pressure to pass the law before the election as saying it would make them unelectable. This shows who they're representing).
Tougher crime laws including 3 strike type laws and building more prisons even though the crime rate has been seriously dropping.
Getting rid of most government scientists because they keep making business unfriendly
What injustice (Score:1, Funny)
At least State-side you have to call them a terr'ist first.
Wow (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Same reason Canadians have been sacrificing their lives in Afghanistan and Iraq, while not a single Canadian supports those missions.
Even leaving aside the massive overgeneralization, this is simply not true. Particularly for Afghanistan. On 9/11, I remember very anti-american Canadians saying "Basically it's the same country." The war in Iraq has terrible support--of course it does, it had bad support even in the US--but Afghanistan is a different war, and I would expect it to have much higher support numbers.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
And none of this was a surprise. The Tories were completely open about the Omnibus bill which this contains. You know we are under extreme assault by terrorists and pedophiles. And pretty much there is nothing anyone can do since they have a majority. Sure you can contact your MP and all they will do is tow the line about how it is keeping us safe, blah blah blah.
Re: (Score:2)
Can you not bring something like a declaratory judgment action in a Canadian Court?
Re: (Score:2)
Would the Grandpartent have standing to file such an action? After all, similar challenges to various laws in the United States have been denied for lack of standing, since the filer was unable to show that their rights had been violated or would most likely be violated in the near term future.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not sure--quite aside from YMMV by judge and IANAL, I think the question would be whether you could show that the breach of police powers in some way caused you "injury in fact." I think you wouldn't have standing if you're just someone random, but you might have standing if you could show that the government violated your rights personally--so maybe if you are a subscriber to an ISP that you know shares some piece of information about you personally with the government, if you believe that sharing to
Re: (Score:2)
To get that information, law enforcement won't necessarily need a warrant. Each agency can designate up to 5 percent of its total employees as authorized to request the information, and it can ban telcos from admitting that they have provided any such information.[emphasis mine]
In other words, you can make FOIA requests until you're blue in the face, but it won't get you anywhere.
Re: (Score:2)
The first paragraph of the charter of rights says we only have any of the listed rights long as the government thinks they're reasonable. All they have to say is that they don't think it's reasonable that we have them on the internet.
Re: (Score:2)
The first paragraph of the charter of rights says we only have any of the listed rights long as the government thinks they're reasonable.
(1) It's not about whether the rights are reasonable, it's that any restrictions of those rights need to be reasonable.
(2) It's not the government that gets to decide what limits are reasonable, it is the judiciary.
The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.
Re: (Score:2)
They gave lip service to it during the Arab uprisings
You got to be kidding me. They put ona brave smiling face, but when the camera was off, it was much more along the lines of "Oh SHIT! People can really just toss us out of office, power and into prison or exile when enough of them get together! We need to really nip this information thing in the bud NOW!".
Re: (Score:2)
It's not done. The *unmonitored* flow of information may be approaching nonexistence, but the vast majority of information flows freely. You can tell because you're posting on slashdot without any significant fear that a guy is going to show up and take your life away with a bullet or pen.
Wait, what? (Score:1, Informative)
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.
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:Wait, what? (Score:5, Informative)
Really?
http://www.cbc.ca/m/touch/news/story/2011/08/09/pol-internet-privacy.html [www.cbc.ca]
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/pm-vows-to-rush-comprehensive-slate-of-crime-bills-into-law/article2046544/ [theglobeandmail.com]
These links are a tad newer than the election
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (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
Re: (Score:1)
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.
You mad bro. How much you get from haarpers goons to post this? Just because its first reading was a year ago doesn't mean it isn't currently under consideration, or can't be revived at a moment's notice and passed very quickly once the proper representatives have been paid off.
Re: (Score:1)
Yes, it is highly likely a new version will be tabled.
But it is stupid to try and stir up shit over a version of the bill that is defunct. Call up your MP and mention this bill and they'll laugh at you. When the new bill is tabled and you can identify the sections you have issues with then your MP might actually listen to what you have to say. Most of them aren't even smart enough to correlate what is in the old bill with what may appear in a new bill. Assume they are all stupid and wait for the new bill to
stale info (Score:2)
This was from last year.
Re: (Score:3)
This is what bothers me. I consider it a serious flaw in all forms of government.
The advocates of this kind of fascism can just keep trying, again and again, defeat after defeat, to get this into law. They know that eventually they will find one set of legislators who will pass it. It's just a matter of persistence. Once it becomes law, it will never be repealed. No amount of protesting or lack of popularity will change that.
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.
Where to now? (Score:1)
So for those who always play the "Baw, I'm moving to Canada" card... where to now?
Re: (Score:2)
There is no way this will get passed... come on over! We have excellent beer!
Re: (Score:2)
Umm... you understand what a majority government is right? If Harper says to pass it, it will get passed. It was one of their platforms for the election.
How about... (Score:1)
Information is information, violence is violence, theft is theft. Canada is fortunate to have one of the broadest freedom of speech policies in the world.
Dangerous information:
Bombs: Yea, good for preventing fascism.
Yelling fire: No one takes the Internet that seriously.
Child porn: This is an interesting one. Apparently viewing child porn has a high incidence of creating child molesters. This is based off a study conducted by the CIA and FBI to justify wire tapping, in the 80s. I'd really like to s
Harper should have had Jack Layton cancer (Score:2)
Harper should have had Jack Layton cancer !
Easy Fix (Score:2)
Just have the chief of police, or whomever, come before Parliament and state, for the record...
"I have a team of 100 officers, standing by to make phone calls to the ISPs of every single one of you, and will be requesting ALL information regarding YOUR accounts. Where you've been, who you've been chatting with, what sites you've been browsing. Because past behavior has given us MORE than enough reason to investigate you all."
Re: (Score:2)
Except the police are in bed with the ruling conservatives. That's generally how fascists operate.
Four more years (Score:2)
'You won't recognize Canada when I get through with it,' -Harper
I'm also looking to the mandatory minimum sentences and other idiocy they'll be cooking up. I really wish we had PR.
Re: (Score:1)
You can get all kinds of other absurd quotes/actions he's said/done with sources cited here: http://shitharperdid.com/ [shitharperdid.com]
Monitor politicians actively (Score:2)
The bill will be dropped fairly fast if all Canadians agree to it on one condition: real time uncensored logs of all Internet use (work and private) of all federal and provincial politicians, judges and anyone invovled in law enforcement or the court system. See how long the bill lasts.
maybe no bill, but just in case... (Score:2)
As others have noted, this (anonymous) submission may be pointless. (I haven't verified that, though.)
With that said, Canadians, please look to the future and learn about your options.
There is a great article/tutorial on Surveillance Self Defense [eff.org] at the EFF. Although it is aimed primarily at US citizens, much of it also applies to you - and the technical tools described are equally effective in any country.
I really want Canada to be a place of enlightened freedom, so I have someplace to go when the Corpora
The real bill is worse (Score:1)
"A bill [michaelgeist.ca] will soon be passed into law by the Canadian government, which will require that ISPs disclose customer information such as name, phone number, email address, IP address, house address, and more, and furthermore requir
There Is No Such Thing As 'Due Process' In Canada (Score:1)
There is no such thing as due process in Canada. There never was. Authorities can decide on a whim what they will do to you.
There is also no recourse, no accountability, no freedom from intrusion. The 'reasonable grounds' dictate for search and seizure are based on some drones best imaginings of you at the time.
The Canadian government also collects information about the population on a regular basis ans stores it away in
CPIC and among various vestigial databases.
There are no real controls over how CPIC data
Canadian Gestapo searches (Score:1)
Redux (Score:2)
This was tried a few years ago under the auspices of "Save the children from kiddy porn"...
It didn't fly then, and was defeated.
Now that the Conservatives have a majority, and are making silly decisions in an effort to "look tough on crime"...
I hope it doesn't pass, but if it ever will, now is the time.