The CanaDoper Café (2012 edition of The great, ongoing Canadian current events and politics thread.)

[Flutterby]

@Cat_Whisperer

On a completely different subject, what do you all think of the Lawful Access bill to monitor online activity? I don’t think I like it much at all, but maybe I don’t understand it well enough.

I don’t like it. I don’t know if I’ve heard right but I thought they said yesterday it would allow police to get all sorts of info about you (address, email, phone # and IP) but not necessarily what you are doing without a warrant. That makes no sense to me, sort of ass backwards actually, but with this cold I’m not thinking straight so I probably got what the radio said ass backwards.

[mnemosyne]

Vic Toews is a vile, disgusting two-faced, hypocritical paranoid nutbag, basically accusing anyone who opposes him of being a child pornographer. I loathe that man.

Seriously, I know the accusation towards “the left” is that they are soft on crime, but the “right” seem to see boogy-men around every corner and monsters under their beds. There’s “tough on crime” and then there’s “flat-out batshit paranoid” and this bill - and Vic Toews - is the latter (as is the Omnibus crime bill, IMHO).

Is this even constitutional? I am obviously not a lawyer but what right does the government/police have to find out who I contract services to (phone, internet, cable) without a warrant? Aren’t we protected from unreasonable searches? Child pornography is bad, for sure, but I’m willing to bet all I own that the vast majority of Canadians aren’t child pornographers.

The long form census was a breach of privacy for these morons, but this is A-OK? :rolleyes:

[Leaffan]

My understanding is:

This information is provided voluntarily by ISPs to police 95% of the time anyway,

It is limited to: address, email, phone # and IP address.

Really, as a typical Canadian this worries you?

Come on and request my address, email, phone # and IP from my ISP. Why should I be worried, and from what I understand these are measures that most of the rest of western democracies have in place?

ETA: This bill only allows limited requests on information. It’s no different than a police officer knowing your name, age, and address from your license plate. Or Air Miles knowing your age, gender, location, and shopping preferences. Get over it.

[Uzi]

@Leaffan

ETA: This bill only allows limited requests on information. It’s no different than a police officer knowing your name, age, and address from your license plate. Or Air Miles knowing your age, gender, location, and shopping preferences. Get over it.

Can the police or government go to MasterCard and request my purchase history without a warrant. Or HomeDepot, or any other business. My bank records? They can get some personal information from my license plate because the government requires me to register that information to drive. Do they require me to register to access the internet?

[Uzi]

@Gorsnak

No statute is ever going to provide a rule that’s appropriate for every case it describes. Since it’s impossible for politicians to spell out every extenuating circumstance where it’s unreasonable to impose their minimum sentence, howsabout we let people experienced in adjudicating these sorts of things make judgement calls about them rather than tying their hands?

Obviously, laws can’t take every situation into account. If the judge wants to make a decision, make the decision that a person isn’t guilty of the offence that requires such a sentence. If a person is guilty of a crime where he fits the meaning and purpose for which the law was created to address, then there is no reason that a minimum sentence can’t be imposed. If not, then the law that was ‘broken’ didn’t apply to him. Maybe he should have thrown the case out rather than try it. Have 3 possible outcomes of a trial: Guilty, Not guilty, or the law as intended doesn’t apply in this case. Just spit balling here.

[Leaffan]

@Uzi

Can the police or government go to MasterCard and request my purchase history without a warrant. Or HomeDepot, or any other business. My bank records? They can get some personal information from my license plate because the government requires me to register that information to drive. Do they require me to register to access the internet?

Why does this worry you?

I really don’t want to hear the slippery fucking slope diatribe either. Really, I have no concerns whatsoever that my personal data is is of any concern to anyone in the police service or CSIS.

Big fucking deal.

ETA: Never in a million years will I be of any concern to them. Never in a million years will any law-abiding citizen be of any concern to them.

[Le_Ministre_de_l_au-dela]

Vic Toews is now the subject of a Twitter account which is revealing some pretty embarrassing details about his divorce.

[Muffin]

@Cat_Whisperer

But if we left all the discretion up to judges, it seems possible that we’d get into a situation where sentencing becomes too subjective (get the right judge on the right day, get a light sentence; get the wrong judge on the wrong day, get a heavy sentence). I’d like to see some discretion left to the judges (like in the linked story), but not all of it. I’m not entirely sure how we’d get that, though.

That’s where sentencing guidelines and appeal courts come in, to provide consistency without being arbitrary.

[Uzi]

@Leaffan

Why does this worry you?

Hey, I’d have no problem if the police had cameras on every street corner recording 24 hours a day. I’m not the one who will be doing anything wrong other than the occasional speeding ticket. I’d have an issue if they wanted to install their cameras into my house.
I’d rather not have my personal information floating around for anyone to access. I’ve had my identity stolen before and the fewer people who have access to that information the better. If police have a reason to get that information then they can go to a judge and get a warrant.
It is no different than if they showed up at your door and asked to enter your house. Yet, this is more like they show up at your house when you aren’t there and don’t ask permission to enter. They just do.
Why does it not worry you that the police can’t do that simple task of demonstrating a reason before they go rooting around in your personal information?
You don’t have a problem with the judge doing his job when it comes to a sentence, why not when it comes to deciding on what the police do?

[mnemosyne]

@Leaffan

My understanding is:

This information is provided voluntarily by ISPs to police 95% of the time anyway,

It is limited to: address, email, phone # and IP address.

Really, as a typical Canadian this worries you?

Yes, this worries me. I don’t approve of this practice as-is; there are a lot of things that are perfectly legal that shouldn’t be part of any police database on individuals. If they have something they need to know, they can get a warrant.

The bill also would force ISPs to store data generated by individuals (at their cost) - which means that data could be accessed by ISP employees, even if the police need a warrant at that point. I’m not comfortable with that.

Come on and request my address, email, phone # and IP from my ISP. Why should I be worried, and from what I understand these are measures that most of the rest of western democracies have in place?

ETA: This bill only allows limited requests on information. It’s no different than a police officer knowing your name, age, and address from your license plate. Or Air Miles knowing your age, gender, location, and shopping preferences. Get over it.

No, I’m not going to get over it. I disapprove.

Funny enough, so do other members of the Conservative Party.

This is a party that thinks the bloody long-form census is too invasive. This is a party that things that gun registries (you know, actual dangerous objects) are too invasive, but want the police/government to have free reign over what people do on the internet, potentially to have it be used against them? Really?

[mnemosyne]

Hit enter too soon:

With an IP address anything at all that you do on the internet - what you read, where you shop, what fetishes (legal!) you like, everything - can be traced unless you use a proxy, and even that can be broken through. Nothing is secret anymore, without a warrant. It’s like having a permanent phone tap on your house.

Are you really OK with that, Leaffan?

But “how many people live in your home, and do you own it or rent it” is too intrusive?

Un-f-ing-believable.

[Le_Ministre_de_l_au-dela]

I would say that individual Canadians are becoming rather poor custodians of their own privacy. Information that one would refuse to give a telemarketer gets entered freely on Facebook, where it gets used to tailor the Google ads that are shown. People download apps to their smart phones with no real notion of how much information about their movements will then be uploaded to whatever company commissioned the development of the app. It wouldn’t take very long for someone to figure out my real life name, despite the ‘anonymity’ of having an SDMB user name.

However, that is the choice of the individual, to be free or guarded with their online privacy, as they see fit. As far as what I want the RCMP or CSIS to know, I’m much more comfortable with them having to go through a judge to get anything more than what is on my vehicle registration, passport or driver’s license. I say that as a law-abiding citizen; just because I have nothing to hide doesn’t mean I want the authorities to have easy access to it.

Also, if the Privacy Commissioner has concerns, I’m happy to say I should have concerns, too.

[Le_Ministre_de_l_au-dela]

Sorry, too late for the edit window…

Canada’s privacy commissioners, however, aren’t buying it.

They banded together last year to write an open letter to Toews, saying police shouldn’t have unrestricted access to basic subscriber information held by telecommunications companies. This, along with other new powers, adds “significant new capabilities for investigators to track and search and seize digital information about individuals.”

Jennifer Stoddart, Canada’s privacy commissioner, and Ann Cavoukian, Ontario’s privacy commissioner, followed up with two separate public pleadings last fall, reiterating their concerns.

At a minimum, the “untenable” proposal for warrantless access to subscriber information “should be withdrawn,” Ms. Cavoukian argued.

from this article.

[Spoons]

From the Globe and Mail, posted recently (well, a few hours ago). Facing a backlash, Ottawa moves to retool cybercrime bill:

… The climb-down came the same day that some Conservative MPs, in a rare display of candour, went public with their concerns over Bill C-30, which the Harper government has named the Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act.

“I think it’s too intrusive as it currently stands and does need to be looked at,” said New Brunswick Tory MP John Williamson, one of several MPs to talk to reporters. “There’s a lot of concern, I think, across the country as well.” <snip>

[Cat_Whisperer]

I have to say, part of what I don’t like about this bill is that name - “Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act.” That’s the most bullshit name for a piece of legislature I’ve heard in a long, long time (right up there with The Patriot Act).

[mnemosyne]

The words “children” or “predators” apparently don’t even appear in the act (nor related forms of the words). I started reading it, then gave up because it was tedious and I didn’t want to any more, but it really doesn’t seem to have anything at all to do with child porn.

Shame on Vic Toews for using victimized children to further his intrusive agenda.

[Spoons]

This struck me, from the last paragraph of the Globe and Mail story I linked to above:

… Government officials said similar or more intrusive measures have already been adopted by the United States, Britain, Australia and numerous European countries.

I guess I’ve been a Doper too long. To those unnamed “government officials,” I’d ask, “Cite?”

[Spoons]

@mnemosyne

The words “children” or “predators” apparently don’t even appear in the act (nor related forms of the words). I started reading it, then gave up because it was tedious and I didn’t want to any more, but it really doesn’t seem to have anything at all to do with child porn.

I’m giving it a fast read, and the only part I’ve seen so far about child porn is in the Short Title. (Statutes often have a Long Title and a Short Title.) In this Bill’s case:

Long Title: *An Act to enact the Investigating and Preventing Criminal Electronic Communications Act and to amend the Criminal Code and other Acts.
*
Short Title: Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act.

My brief and quick reading tells me that the key sections are 16 and 17. They are full of cross references and legal blather, but both jumped out. From Bill C-30 (full text here); redactions indicated by ellipses:

16. (1) On written request by a person designated under subsection (3) that includes prescribed identifying information, every telecommunications service provider must provide the person with identifying information in the service provider’s possession or control respecting the name, address, telephone number and electronic mail address of any subscriber to any of the service provider’s telecommunications services and the Internet protocol address and local service provider identifier that are associated with the subscriber’s service and equipment…

16. (3) The Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the Commissioner of Competition and the chief or head of a police service constituted under the laws of a province may designate for the purposes of this section any employee of his or her agency, or a class of such employees, whose duties are related to protecting national security or to law enforcement…

17. (1) Any police officer may, orally or in writing, request a telecommunications service provider to provide the officer with the information referred to in subsection 16(1)…

My overall impression is that the Bill is far too broad. If it really is about protecting children, it should state that more than in just the Short Title. Sections 16 and 17 say nothing about children, but they do say a great deal about police asking for information. I am left to assume that police requests for the stated information in regards to more than child porn, would have to be honored under this Act, if it passes.

[Hypnagogic_Jerk]

@Leaffan

ETA: Never in a million years will I be of any concern to them. Never in a million years will any law-abiding citizen be of any concern to them.

Well, we have no idea what the government will consider a “law-abiding citizen” in the future. Pro-environment activists are already called “dangerous foreign radicals” by officials in that government. You certainly don’t care about that, but some of us who are currently law-abiding citizens do.

@Cat_Whisperer

I have to say, part of what I don’t like about this bill is that name - “Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act.” That’s the most bullshit name for a piece of legislature I’ve heard in a long, long time (right up there with The Patriot Act).

I had no idea that this was done in Canada, actually. (I’m talking of giving bills bullshit self-serving titles.) We all know about it from watching US politics, but is it a recent trend in Canada or has it been done for some time?

[Kenm]

@Hypnagogic_Jerk

We all know about it from watching US politics, but is it a recent trend in Canada or has it been done for some time?

It started when the Conservative Party (a.k.a. the Bible-belt Alberta Reform) took over five or six years ago from the then-thoroughly corrupt Liberal Party, though now that these Tories have a majority they’ve taken to trashing Parliament big-time.

Thanks to these Tories, ecologists (and probably the SPCA) are terrorists, and protesting against that mindset of their way or the highway makes you a pedophile.