The problem with Crying Wolf or, in a modern Canadian context, declaring everything the Harper government does as the End of the World, is that people stop listening to you altogether. This seems to be the case with the Left-of-Centre political & media class in Canada.
Now the Tories are bringing in Bill C-51 aka the Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act. Its possible infringements into the privacy of Canadians does offer some legitimate pause for concern. Lorrie Goldstein offers a fairly balanced appraisal of the changes.
What say you?
h/t Several SDA commenters
It will compel Internet service providers to give to police information they now voluntarily provide 95% of the time — albeit more slowly than police like — making it easier for police to obtain search warrants.
That information is the individual’s name, address, telephone number, e-mail address, Internet Protocol (IP) address and the local service provider identifier — hardly state secrets for anyone who uses the Internet, or a phone book.
That’s total bullshit. That information is not readily available. I know because I’ve had this discussion with our local IP. The police need a warrant to obtain that information now, and should need a warrant to get that information in the future.
This is no different than requiring every firearm owner to register all their guns. What’s next, requiring everyone to have an internet access license? They could use the intrusive firearms license application as a model. Go to your local RCMP and get one, you’ll be surprised at the questions asked.
If the govt. wants to stop child-porn or other criminal activity, then focus on the criminal activities and the specific people that use them. Register criminals not law abiding citizens. The government should not have carte blanche fishing licenses, ever.
I agree with No60. In just the past week, we’ve seen how the DHS in the US took a couple of innocent comments about parties by some British young people completely out of context, and denied them entry to the US, ruining their vacation, and permanently preventing them from ever visiting the US in the future.
When a highly probable outcome of these proposed powers is numerous “false positives”, when the interpretation of the information intercepted is left to poorly read neo-Neanderthals with high school educations and chips on their shoulders, and when the ability to challenge that interpretation is either non-existent (hi NDAA!) or difficult, I am extremely leery of giving the police greater powers. As we saw in the G20 fiasco, the police rounded up dozens of innocent citizens, including an elderly couple who’d just stepped out of the subway on the way home to their condo, and forced them to stand for hours in the rain without toilets or shelter, refused to answer questions about why people were being detained or for how long, denied them communication with anyone at all (let alone counsel), and then finally released them without apology or explanation or charges. Another group of six healthy and well muscled police swarmed one man, and beat him severely for the “crime” of recording the chaos on his cellphone.
Anyone who asks me on faith to accept that the police would never overstep their bounds, misuse their powers, or after they make a mistake and it’s discovered, just let them throw up their hands and say “My bad” with no restitution or consequences is going to have keep asking.
For a very, very, very long time.
I abhor child pornography and I abhor this bill. It is the worst piece of legislature I have seen after the gun registration bill. I am a conservative from way back and cannot support this lose of privacy for some ephemeral hope of catching a child pornographer.
The Conservatives keep bringing out more unpopular legislation. This one takes the cake. It is like they no longer want to be the government.
I doubt this costs them any votes unfortunately. This is Canada, the only thing that would cost them votes would be to implement something like a 50 cent fee on the right to take up a doctor’s time.
Any law that has the clause “without a warrant” is just plain wrong. Yes, I know there are other laws (such as CRA) on the books that allow warrantless invasion, but they too are unjust.
I admit I have not gone over the bill with a fine-toothed comb, rather relied on the related reporting (they get paid to do that, not me). I think I could abide the provisions were there no way for police to execute searches without a warrant. To me, that’s a showstopper.
I guess Virtual Vic The Peeping Toews is getting a taste of his own medicine. Someone has released his personal nasty divorce information on a twitter account called Vicki Leaks. Toews lied about getting rid of C-68. He kept all of the C-68 provisions except the registry of firearms for LG. When he promised to end c-68. So we still have warrantless searches of our homes and now the SOB wants to read everybodies mail and use our cell phones like electronic tracking bracelets. He needs tyo go. And if he doesn’t go, then Harper needs to go. They are doing with this what the Liberals did with C-68. If they don’t back down, then throw them out. Call and write your MP on this one. I have no problem with them seeing my personal info, if they get a warrant…I have no problem if they search my house, if they get a warrant. Otherwise we are no longer in Kansas Dorothy, we are in North Korea or Cuba…
Why don’t they just listen in on phone calls while they’re at it? And ask for our papers.
Plus the cops have let us down more than enough recently to convince me that expanding their presence in our lives in the way they’ve been directed by their leadership is a bad idea.
Child porn should be stamped out.
Perhaps life terms for child pornographers?
How will these new powers affect the millions of masturbators perusing standard porn sites?
Of course no SDA reader would ever be…(cough)
This bill is stupid on every level.
I’ve been railing against this bill, based on drafts, for some months. No one seemed to care. Now every is paying attention finally.
I hope that Harper is paying attention, or this could be the kind of disaster for him that the Long Gun Registry has been for the Liberals.
Toews should be replaced.
Yes, this smacks of Orwell.
I think this whole line about child porn is complete BS. Why don’t we allow cops to just walk into our homes without a warrant from now on? After all there could be child porn hiding under the bed.
This is getting as bad as Al Quaeda in everyone’s closet and the need for the TSA to grope your privates to make sure you don’t have a scud missile hidden away in your underwear.
So what happens when we do get a nasty piece of work of a government that uses this legislation to arrest political dissidents, online bloggers, online anti global warming protesters? Or maybe that is the purpose for this Bill C-51 all along.
As a teenager during PET’s War Measures Act in a small town in BC. I experienced first hand what the police do when you give them more power. The RCMP would tell us that if we were in groups of 2 or more they would arrest us under the ” War Measures Act” we did not know that the act did not apply in BC. Then a year and a half ago I was driving tow trucks when the Liberal’s in BC brought in their make the police judge, jury and executor law. And a RCMP officer called for a tow the first day of it and when I arrived to tow the vehicle he told me “to stay near the phone as he was going to keep me very busy tonight”.
If you give the police the power they will use it no question about it.
I would not support a bill requiring all bars and restaurants to place listening devices under the tables and hand over the recordings to the police if asked.
What Toews said was technically correct. It would be easier to track and arrest child predators if no one had any privacy. For instance, if each individual Canadian had an officer follow him around 24 hours in a day, I’m sure that there would be less children sexually abused. Toews had a right to say what he said.
The problem is that we require our government to strike an appropriate balance between competing interests. It appears that most people (outside of the police) agree that our government is on the verge of going to far.
On this particular issue, I stand with the Canadians that don’t want to live in a place where the privacy rights of the citizens take a back seat to crime investigation. I acknowledge that this will benefit child predators. It will also benefit the vast majority of Canadians who communicate online and have no interest in diddling children.
“As a conservative who’s suspicious of the power of the state, especially of what can happen when police operate without meaningful judicial and civilian oversight, I’m not convinced of the wisdom of the law, as written.”
Goldstein,and North of 60 said it very well, agree completely.
If child porn is that serious a problem, expand the “trap” program,and when they’re caught, deal with them in a harsh manner.
I’d say to anyone who is in favor of this Bill, imagine it’s expansion once a Liberal or NDP government gets into power.
I see the media is now concerned about warrantless searches. Well, good, but it’s hard for me to get worked up. Canadians gave up that protection 15 years ago.
The police, as I understand it(SDA readers with facts, please substantiate.), are essentially free to enter the residence of anyone on the long-gun registry. Even if you don’t own a gun, if someone reports that you do, you forfeit your right to a warrant. What’s more those are real searches of real residences, not virtual searches of documents. And there are real stories of real abuses, not hypotheticals about potential abuses.
By all means, let’s get this bill right, but don’t ask me to take up your cause when there are more egregious affronts to justice to deal with.
The police need to have less power, not more. The state compelling free individuals to hand over information without a check is wrong. I send my MPs to parliment to stop this sort of thing, and not encourage it.
I’m sure,like most legislation,that this is a trial balloon just to see how far they could go. I am surprised at how many “journalists” got sucked in. Our privacy was compromised years ago. However, do keep in mind that police work for gov’ts, not citizenry.
I have to throw up my hands in frustration right now. The gun registry itself may be gone but the rest of Bill C-68 still stands and, included in that bill, is the right of police to enter and search your home without warrant if you are a legal law-abiding gun owner. There is huge possibility for law enforcement to abuse these powers given to them by our government officials. I agree with Pete E.
Let me just give you a quote of those people who support C-68 as I suppose it would apply to the proposed internet changes: If you have nothing to hide, you shouldn’t be worried about these changes.
Ask all of those law-abiding gun owners who have had their property confiscated and been treated like serious threats to the police while their homes have been invaded and their property raided about how having nothing to hide protects any Canadian from the police and ill-conceived laws.
Well, it is unanimous so far. It is a bad bill and gives the police too much power.
dmorris is right. Can you imagine what a Liberal or NDP government would do with powers like this.
Lorrie Goldstein is right though, the hypocrisy on the left is laughable as they are the first to puch for more restrictions on freedoms.
Oops, should be push for more restrictions in my 9:39 comment.
Toews is an idiot to suggest that to question this bill is to support pedophilia. One can stand up for due process for accused murders, say, without condoning murder.
Yep – long time Conservative cheerleader here, but I do NOT support this bill one bit. Giving police access to your privacy is like leaving your valuables on the front seat of your car with the door unlocked.
They need to spend more time catching the criminals rather than trying to open the doors to my privacy.
Vic’s gotta go for this one.
Oh and #TellVicEverything is pretty funny. lol.
It’s the same bill, with minor modifications, the Liberals tried to pass twice already (2002 and 2005).
The child porn thing is a smokescreen and always has been. In 2005 it was all about protecting us from terrorists. The police chiefs (especially our good friend, Julian Fantino) have been pushing for this kind of access for more than a decade using whatever excuse seems expedient at the time.
I will say this, though: I’ve been forced to work with the local police a couple of times on computer crime cases and in general they are woefully ill-equipped and unqualified to deal with them, and white-collar crime in general. But “Technology is hard, let’s go fishing!” is not the answer.
In any event, the real criminals in this area are way ahead of the police in any event. Military-grade encryption is freely available in the West and anyone serious about their lawbreaking is going to have their computer and Internet traffic locked down tight.
Just like the gun registry, all this law will do is enable to police to harass the people who aren’t breaking the law, because it’s too hard to go after the real criminals.
Stephen Harper is doing an excellent job as Prime Minister so far.
Why would he want to soil his impeccable conservative record with this monstrosity is beyond me.
Once patriotism was the last refuge of the scoundrel, now it is ‘protect the children’. This is an unnecessary and useless piece of legislation that does nothing but erode our rights and privacy. As a long time conservative I am appalled by the recent moves by the government I helped elect. Increased costs, more innocent people in jail, more money for police and yet would deny us the right to protect ourselves in our own homes. Sad and disgusting.
The problem is that this proposed legislation assumes all the police agencies are noble and honest , and would never use the information for political retribution … of all the people who who should understand this is Toews because of his divorce info being splashed on Twitter.
Anyone … especially politicians could easily become prey to anyone in the police establishment or prosecutor who have an axe to grind !!!!
This legislation won’t protect kids, the poor little wee ones in the pictures have already been abused or molested. I’d rather they spent their time and resources protecting children before they’re molested not after. Second if this is about net pedophiles why does the legislation give the Competition bureau of Canada access to our internet mined date. Lastly why are internet providers providing and storing our personal data without the legal right or legislation to do so?
9-11 was the best thing to ever happen to governments and big business, a trump excuse if there ever was one, but now “terrorists” is “so yesterday” and pedophiles is the current trend.
I have always voted conservative, and if I didn’t like what I see and hear, I have withheld my vote.
I have learned never to trust a government or its bureaucracy.
Yesterday, I was stuck in a hospital waiting room with Newsworld on … argghhhh.
Anyway, some stupid “privacy advocate” came on to claim IP address is secret.
As someone who has written a little bit of software to run on webservers, may I note that every website you visit knows what your IP address is.
“Warrentless” – remember that word. Whenever it shows up in proposed legislation, there is a potential despot as the drafter.
We need to sent these Tories a strong message, that having survived 17 years of Librano statist invasive repression of ou civil liberties, we sure as fug ain’t gonna stand for the same thing from the Tories.
All parties in the big government system have a nasty authoritarian streak, that seems to go for the CPC as well. Gotta slap that idea right out of them.
This is NOT like the requirements put on gun owners. You are not being required to get a license before buying a computer, nor does your computer have to be registered, etc.
This is more like the government being able to watch you when you go shooting.
This is the kind of legislation the Libs and NDP cry out against, but will be very pleased to use if they ever get into power.
Left/right divide false dichotomy.
This government efforts to fight crime are of pseudo-macho posturing nature. Let’s get tough, it feels good, never mind the results. The criminals will get more sophisticated (and violent), the jails will be populated with kids smoking pot or pulling a torrent from the Net.
Anyone familiar with the digital culture knows that keeping logs is a double edge sword. Any Chinese girlfriends for ISP admins in Ottawa?
The government make spying mandatory? What is it old Soviet Union?
Dumb Vic Toews try to catch really dumb criminals who won’t use technology to their advantage.
This is an excerpt of the letter I sent to Rob Nicholson. I sent something similar to Vic Toews, and the PM. I hope it does some good. I hope that if enough of the base let them their concerns we can affect change.
Dear Minister Rob Nicholson,
As a Conservative supporter I am sincerely proud of the way your government has protected the liberty of all Canadians by moving to end the Long Gun Registry and by changing the intrusive nature of the Census. I am deeply troubled by the recent bill announced by yourself Rob Nicholson and then later defended Minister of Public Safety Ric Toews, that would allow police officials to access private emails without a warrant.
While I support our police 100% and know that the vast majority are doing their job to the best of their ability, giving this kind of unsupervised power to anyone is exceptionally dangerous, but is especially dangerous if it is power afforded to the State at the expense of the long-standing rights of Canadians.
If it is an invasion of privacy and our liberty to have the government force us to disclose information on a Census, how is it not an even greater invasion of privacy and liberty to have the police read our private correspondence solely on the whim of the investigating officer?
This egregious attack on liberty is undoubtedly rooted in the best of intentions, but it will go down in history as yet again, another example of unintended consequences. I recognize that your government has done more good than any other in a generation, yet all of this good will be erased with this one Bill. It must be revised. If warrants are too difficult to receive in a timely manner, then perhaps that is the area that needs reforming?
It is important for you to know, that although I support the Conservatives, and have voted PC, Reform, Alliance, and Conservative my entire adult life, I will choose to withhold any future financial or electoral support if this Bill becomes law. I would rather have a socialist nightmare like the NDP that would destroy the economy, than have legislation like this, that will destroy our liberty. An economy once hurt may be revived, but liberties once surrendered, are rarely returned.
I hope you will reconsider this bad legislation,
“may I note that every website you visit knows what your IP address is.”
Sort of. Yes, if you do not take measures to hide your IP address, then it is open for any site you visit (and your ISP) to see. Trouble is, if someone takes the time to hide their IP address, especially with an off-shore proxy, then this legislation is useless. There is no way that having access to our private information will allow them to connect the pedo with a hidden IP to the child porn he is accessing. All this legislation does is open up law abiding citizens to warrantless snooping … something every citizen should oppose.
It would be very easy for the police to do what they want to do using fake sites and phishing tools. If the pedo is visiting the fake site with his IP address open, then the police have all they need for a warrant to get his physical address from the ISP. All legal and above board without violating our rights to privacy.
Further, nothing is stopping the police from using this access to our privacy for other things. It would be very simple to build a profile of someone who *might* commit a crime based on the sites they visit. Then using the information they snoop on us they could match your surfing habits to the profile and catch you before you actually commit a crime … sort of a pre-crime unit. Wait a sec, where have I seen that before??? Some movie I think …
Long time conservative supporter here,but this is wrong.
a)I thought the police had to have a warrant to get my personal info,issued by a judge,after producing very compelling evidence I had committed a crime.(Oooopppppsss.My bad.The Lieberals threw that out with the LGR)
b)So if the providers of our internet service all ready provide 95% of this info willingly,what’s up with this bill?Oh right.Not “fast enough” for the cops.Since when has this been a problem,as for a very long time now(starting with Turdeau),the cops are only there to react to crime,and harry the innocents.
c)Any one who thinks the cops will not grab this and run with it like a 4 year old carrying scissors,has their head so far up their butt,they are beyond all modern medical/surgical/physcological help.
Finally,the one’s screaming the hardest against this are the exact same ones who would expand its powers a magnitude of a thousand,if given the chance.They are just leftards/marxists projecting their own desires.And a lot of cops,and especially their chiefs(not all)are just closet brown shirts to begin with.That said,just because it is the left screaming about it doesn’t make it bad or good.We conservatives should carefully evaluate just what they(left) are whinging about,and then pressure our MPs and PMSH to have it removed from this bill.For if the left is against it in its present form,it is only because it doesn’t repress enough freedoms far enough for their totaltarian plans.Remember,the left doesn’t fight things because they are bad for the people,they fight them because it doesn’t advance their socialist/marxist view far enough.That is simply the way of the left,as has been proven for centuries,and it’s time we conservatives woke up and realized this.But overall,this bill stinks of big PC(Progressive{?}Conservatism)
With apologies to Robert, while I haven’t listened to Goldstein’s “balanced” assessment, I don’t go for balance in this kind of issue. Balance just means slippery slope. More police power is NEVER EVER ANYWHERE a good thing. Period.
Just a “little more state” and that’ll be it, is never … it.
With all our mockery of the LEFT and their incessant, bogus “for the children” (the ones not slaughtered in the womb) how can any serious person accept this pedophilia premise for unwarranted police intervention!?
Again, here’s where conservatives and libertarians often part ways. Cons are all too often prone to favour expansive military and/or police power. The “War on Drugs” being a good example.
Nice to see that sda nation leans decidely libertarian here! Good ole self-interest at work here eh? YOU use the internet. YOU don’t do drugs.
This is a horrible piece of legislation. Stephen Harper has had an excellent legacy as a PM so far, but he needs to remove Vic Toews from his position immediately. Between this and Vic Toews support of the RCMP’s latest campaign of confiscation of legally owned firearms, he has demonstrated an extremely ugly fascist streak. This is not the sort of person that you want to have any kind of power.
The fact that Robert has posited that this bill might not be all that bad does not surprise me given that he had previously posted about sympathizing with China’s murderous population control poicies.
er… “policies”
Strathy…
You can not hide your IP from ISP. However, a criminals) may rent a server in non-compliant or even sympathetic jurisdiction, set VPN and encrypt everything with strength, that military dreamed of ten years ago.
btw…..how old was Vic Toews babysitter when the affair started?
I can’t claim to know all the ins and outs of the bill, but from what I’ve read, I really don’t like it. Having worked in law enforcement in the past, I can only say that police work is only easy in a police state. No thanks. Keep up the stings.
The CPC is replacing the LGR with something worse.
I’m all for protecting children, but I think the ones to do it should be the parents, not the government. What the hell is WRONG with parents nowadays, anyway? Who in their right mind lets a kid have a computer with Internet access in the privacy of their own bedroom? Computers should be in a main room of the house and their use by kids should be strictly supervised. As for hand-held devices with Internet access, these too should be monitored by parents and any misuse should result in confiscation.
The governemnt should not be a substitute for useless, careless, negligent parents.
“Despite government assurances the bill increases safeguards against unwarranted invasions of privacy…”
Pfft, nothing safeguards against unwarranted invasions like legislation that says they don’t need no steenking warrant to invade./
*note to Harper regime:
George Orwell’s 1984 in NOT a How To manual.
Just because the loonies on the left are hypocrites, and liars, and oppose this Bill,does not make the justness of this Bill any more palatable to a Conservative who believes in the inherent right of individual liberty. This is no different then the police setting up shop at your local post office, monitoring, recording, peering at everyone’s mail with a flashlight behind it. Any evidence they garnered through such a technique would be instantly ruled unconstitutional. Lets be clear here at what is at stake. The Internet is an evolution of old technology, quickly replacing old mediums such as phone, snail mail and also creating new mediums of communications. At the end of the day, it is all still your personal communications regardless of the medium used. What the government is doing with this bill, is legalizing circumvention of judicial oversight and privacy laws by grouping new communication technology that you use for your personal communications today, as somehow outside the statutes enjoyed under the old privacy laws concerning your personal communications. To me, whether I use an old landline phone or the Internet, I expect the same privacy protection the law provided from interference from the state. That is what is at stake with this bill. Hiding the implications of this bill under the guise of protecting the children, is a technique I would expect coming from the NDP or Liberals, not a Conservative government.It is the crack in the door, that allows the movie 1984 too cross from science fiction to reality. Shame on you Toews, and shame on you Harper.
@xiat Right – but you can stop them from seeing your end point. They know who you are, but they don’t know where you’ve been. This law will not help them do this … so it is a law based on a false premise … they hoping that we will be baffled by their BS and just accept that they know what they are doing. They don’t. They just want to snoop and fish around and see what they can find.
Controlling the citizenry is easy if you know what the citizenry is thinking … ahhh – I hate how that makes me sound, but it’s a historical lesson we should have learned years ago. I’m not a conspiracy guy – got several good friends that are cops. I just know a bit about computers and IP routing. Oh BTW, I would not want my cop friends snooping on my browsing habits either – it’s like giving them permission to peek in the windows at night.
Beyond stupid. Cons need to be the party of individual liberty and a bulwark against a coercive state, and this bill flys in the face of that.
I mailed my MP and told them if they passed this bill, I wouldn’t be supporting them anymore; and I’ve been an enthusiastic supporter for years.
Dumb, dumb, dumb.
I also think they should reconsider Nicholson & Toews as spokesmen for these kinds of policies; these guys are dinosaurs and have no idea what they’re talking about.
The governemnt should not be a substitute for useless, careless, negligent parents.
Posted by: Ellie in T.O. at February 16, 2012 12:02 PM
YES, to every word in that post Ellie in T.O. Every damn word.
Something I’ve observed as a “regulated entity” in BC: heavy-handed interventionist regulation often has the opposite effect than the one intended.
Think of the banking industry (normalized, legalized embezzlement, i.e., fractional reserve banking).
We have a bank-sourced economic disaster on our hands ‘cos regulation, incl. deposit insurance, has ramped up moral hazard, viz., no one feels the need to watch the lending practices of the banks and has no hesitation seeking the highest yield (read: riskiest) deposits.
Securities regulation: Can we say, honestly, that investor rip-offs have been reduced by this. Definitely No. The public relies on this as a substitute for knowledge and vigilance.
Finally, this is all out-of-whack from a risk-reward point of view. Do we think that “if just one child” is spared, this kind of police state intervention is justified? Do we not count the costs of liberty forfeited?
Does anyone favour drunk-driving?
And yet, wouldn’t we gladly accept a few more drunk-driver deaths over what is now happening in BC: roadside summary conviction; automobile confiscation, licence suspension, based on suspicion only.
Nothing grows the STATE more than accepting the notion that “if just one life can be spared”.
Bill C-51 is a travesty by any definition.
To begin with the alleged intention to ensnare smut purveyors is a ruse at best. It’s all about instilling fear and controlling the sheeple. The CPC desperately needs to justify their “tough on crime” stance.
As a specialist in personal computer forensics, security and data recovery I’m somewhat familiar with the methods as commonly used by the hard-core criminal players. In a nutshell – they’ll use strong encryption and secure virtual
private networks as well as various spoofing techniques to ensure they won’t get caught.
Who may well get caught in the net is the hapless home network user whose open (unsecured) wireless router is exploited by a nefarious neighbour or war driver.
Well they haven’t got rid of all the LGR, thanks for that lie..and now I hear so-called “Conservatives” offering “balanced” views on giving the yellow-tape installers access without warrant to our internetz.
With this bit of power how about collecting the ip’s and personal info of everybody who frequents this site? For later re-education…
Does anyone really think that won’t happen? Ever?
Fire Vick, slap Stevy in head.