Canadian Govt To Introduce Massive Internet Surveillance Law

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."

last chance to be an anonymous coward

[Anonymous Coward]

This may be close to your last chance to be an anonymous coward, so sign the petition at openmedia,
http://openmedia.ca/StopSpying

Re:To stop child pornographers and organized crime

[arthurpaliden]

Back in the 1030s Hitler is reported to have said something along these lines. "If you want to pass a draconian piece of legislation wrap it in 'protecting our most precious resource, our children' such legislation will never be defeated." He went on to use this tactic in regards to several pieces of anti-Jewish anti-Polish legislation.

Ok, Conservative Party

[MonsterTrimble]

Remind me why I should ever vote for you again? I have voted against you in the previous number of federal elections (even while considering myself conservative) because of this stuff. You're not helping change my mind!

Re:Double speak

[dittbub]

the conservative base is retarded. they will always support surveillance and spying because 'they have nothing to hide'. thats all the excuse they need in their retarded heads.

New Fee

[Anonymous Coward]

Perfect, I can't wait to pay the new Internet Surveillance Fee of $7.85 on both my home internet and my cell phone to cover the cost of this ridiculous display of Harper's majority government. I hope you conservatives are happy, way to ruin Canada.

Re:To stop child pornographers and organized crime

[camperdave]

Have you actually read the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms?

Guarantee of Rights and Freedoms 1. 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.

2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:

(a) freedom of conscience and religion;
(b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
(c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
(d) freedom of association.

In other words, you only have as much fundamental freedom of expression as the law allows.

C-30 is awful, RCMP have proven it unnecessary.

[benmhall]

The proposed lawful access legislation that will give law enforcement sweeping new powers, put a tremendous strain on smaller ISPs, and put all Canadians at risk of inappropriate and unnecessary surveillance. This 1984-like legislation is something that has been in the works in one form or another since 1999. It seeks to add far more warrantless Internet surveillance options for law enforcement officers. While I very much respect and support our fine police men and women, the information that the proposed bill will grant, without warrant or or oversight, should concern all privacy-loving citizens. Ontario’s fantastic privacy commissioner, Ann Cavoukian, outlines her concerns eloquently in an interview with Search Engine’s Jesse Brown:
http://searchengine.tvo.org/blog [tvo.org]

Anyone interested, and we should all be interested, should read up on the details, listen to what others are saying, and let your MP know how you feel about this potential invasion of our privacy. If you feel strongly about this, you may also want to fill out the Open Media petition.

http://www.realprivacy.ca/write-my-mp [realprivacy.ca]
http://openmedia.ca/StopSpying [openmedia.ca]

The Internet is what we make it. We should all be active participants.

Re:To stop child pornographers and organized crime

[morethanapapercert]

Actually; the sharing of intelligence is already required between the USA and Commonwealth nations under the UKUSA treaty. Officially, under the terms of that treaty, Canada is assigned the duty of spying on large chunks of the now former Soviet Union and shares all results with the US while the US does Latin America, and large chunks of Asia and likewise shares. However; it is commonly believed that one of the primary signals intelligence systems (Echelon) operated by the signing countries has not been limited to foreign powers.

As a result, this bill will change nothing new on that front. It can be assumed that the US has been spying on Canada extensively and sharing almost everything it gathers with Canada since 1947. (And vice versa)

What I believe it will achieve is a dramatic increase in the size of the intel databases, allowing intel to go from detective-style work to wholesale data mining.