Canada: New powers would allow police to snoop on web

Submitted by Matt on Fri, 2009-06-19 13:57

Article here. Excerpt:

'Police will be given new powers to eavesdrop on Internet-based communications as part of a contentious government bill, to be announced today, which Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan has said is needed to modernize surveillance laws crafted during "the era of the rotary phone."

The proposed legislation would force Internet service providers to allow law enforcement to tap into their systems to obtain information about users and their digital conversations.

Police have lobbied for a new law for almost 10 years, saying that they need to access "Internet safe havens" for gangsters, sexual predators and terrorists.
...

"This is really not about the warrantless tracking of Canadians' Internet use," said Clayton Pecknold, of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police.

Privacy advocates and civil libertarians, however, have vocally opposed the prospect of giving police "lawful access" to the digital conversations of Canadians by being able to access such things as their text messages, e-mails, web surfing habits and Internet phone lines.
...
Federal Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddard recently warned that forcing ISPs to surrender information "is a serious step forward toward mass surveillance" that violates the rights of Canadians.'

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Comments

With this kind of thinking we could post cameras and microphones everywhere and still use the same argument. And indeed it may start out that such surveillance powers are used exclusively to look for pedophiles, terrorists, etc. But eventually, when such people have learned to avoid using the Internet to do their bad things, this power will find other uses.

History shows that every new technology ever made public also gets used, no matter how distasteful it is to some. Machine guns, when first conceived, were condemned as barbarous mass-killing machines even by the Austrian Junkers, but nonetheless, machine guns are now standard equipment in ever army in the world (except a handful of ceremonial guard armies). The inventors of the nuclear bomb quickly regretted what they had done, but still, they were used in a war not once but twice, and you can find the damned things in far too many places these days. Cloning? If you object to it, too bad. It is a known technology. In 100 years (or less), cloning will be an at-home science project kit used by 10-year-olds to "explore science".

Likewise for political powers. Once granted, governments are very slow to give back these powers. And powers given a government are like new tools - they always get used (and misused) eventually, some sooner rather than later.

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Submitted by mcc99 on Fri, 2009-06-19 14:11

"The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation."
-- Adolph Hitler in Mein Kampf

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Submitted by Ragtime on Fri, 2009-06-19 17:03

I have heard this quote before attributed to Hitler, but I think the attribution is false. I found Mein Kampf on-line at the Gutenberg project: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200601.txt and searched "children" and nothing close to it came up.

A lot of other bizarre stuff, yes. But not that sentence. Nonetheless, the sentence itself is IMO correct. You can get people to do damn near anything once you convince them, rightly or wrongly, that their kids are in danger if they don't.

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Submitted by Matt on Fri, 2009-06-19 18:19

Everyone talks about the Internet part of the bill. But NO ONE talks about the part where the polices can remotely turn on tracking systems ALREADY installed in your cars and cell phones. Like that can't be misused!

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Submitted by Stinger503 on Fri, 2009-06-19 20:35