Rick Mercer has pretty much put into words the general Canadian opinion on invasion of privacy. The minister of Public Safety in Canada, Vic Toews has recently been criticized over bill C-30 and his comment "either stand with us or the child pornographers". Accusations have been made regarding the amount of power the police force has, or even the government over our internet activities. According to a recent Globe and Mail article, " ...[Bill-C30] require[s] Internet companies – loosely defined – to cough up your name, Internet protocol address and a few other identifiers if the police ask for them, even without a warrant".
Bill C-30 is called the "Investigating and Preventing criminal Electronic Communications Act". To understand the purpose of this act, I went to the Canadian Parliament's website and I found a summary, which you can find here.
One of the main purposes of this act is to give the RCMP, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the Commissioner of Competition and any police service constituted under the laws of a province (in essence anyone with police authority) to have access over whatever you do on an electronic device.
According to Vic, this bill will help keep Canadians, in particular children, more safe. It will be easier to catch child-pornographers and even other online criminals. However, there is always a trade-off when it comes to security. Are we really bring protected? It seems to me that while closing one possible door to danger, another on is being opened. This includes more cost for the Internet and telecommunication companies to maintain the data required, a risk of their systems getting hacked, information being misused by police-men and much more.
Canadians, or any other person for that matter, are very concerned about who can access their information. With Bill C-30, a lot of people are able to get information about any consumer that partakes in online activities some possibly without a warrant.
So all in all, personally I don't think bill C30 will solve more problems than it will create.
I completely agree, especially considering Mr. Toews' argument was based on child safety. There are always harbours for people to do what they wish. For instance the whole Reddit scandal which after years has finally reached an end. This bill would infringe on Canadians' rights and criminals could simply move on to some other jurisdiction. Thereby not stopping anything and giving the government free access to personal information. I don't think that people should have the right to do anything in Canada but this bill has too broad an effect.
ReplyDeleteYes, tottaly. The bill needs to be restricted and cultivated in order to be as effective as Toews proposes it to be. I mean you cant just let anyone with some authority access your information. Also Toew's statement about standing with pornographers suggests that if we require privacy then we must be committing a crime (as someone mentioned in lecture today). Its not that we have something to hide, its the fact that if anyone else has our information, they can misuse it and purposefully derive information against us. Anything can be used as weapon in a battle.
DeleteI find it quite funny how Rick Mercer said that most people if they only had a few minutes to live they would wipe their hard drives. I agree with that, or at least make sure someone else does it before I die. Personal computers are meant to be personal/private and our information should not be an 'open for all' sort of thing. Too bad our information isnt only stored in our hard drives, I would also like my fingerprint erased from the net too.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I like the video posted on your blog. It was informative, funny, and very Canadian.
I find that as humans we do a lot of things in our lives that we want to forget about after, and also want others to forget about. One of my professors used to say, "What goes on the internet, never goes away!" that is pretty scary to me. And yes I love the video too, thank you!
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